History for ready reference, Volume 1, A-Elba

by J. N. Larned

makes him follow the lines, so the city draws the laws, which
were the invention of good law-givers who were of old times;
these are given to the young man, in order to guide him in his
conduct whether as ruler or ruled; and he who transgresses
them is to be corrected, or, in other words, called to
account, which is a term used not only in your country, but
also in many others. Now when there is all this care about
virtue private and public, why, Socrates, do you still wonder
and doubt whether virtue can be taught?"
Plato, Protagoras (Dialogue; trans. by Jowett, volume 1).
The ideas of Aristotle on the subject are in the following:
"There can be no doubt that children should be taught those
useful things which are really necessary, but not all thing's;
for occupations are divided into liberal and illiberal; and to
young children should be imparted only such kinds of knowledge
as will be useful to them without vulgarizing them. And any
occupation, art, or science, which makes the body or soul or
mind of the freeman less fit for the practice or exercise of
virtue, is vulgar; wherefore we call those arts vulgar which
tend to deform the body, and likewise all paid employments,
for they absorb and degrade the mind. There are also some
liberal arts quite proper for a freeman to acquire, but only
in a certain degree, and if he attend to them too closely, in
order to obtain perfection in them, the same evil effects will
follow. The object also which a man sets before him makes a
great difference; if he does or learns anything for his own
sake or for the sake of his friends, or with a view to
excellence, the action will not appear illiberal; but if done
for the sake of others, the very same action will be thought
menial and servile. The received subjects of instruction, as I
have already remarked, are partly of a liberal and partly of
an illiberal character. The customary branches of education
are in number four; they are--(l) reading and writing, (2)
gymnastic exercises, (3) music, to which is sometimes added
(4) drawing. Of these, reading and writing and drawing are
regarded as useful for the purposes of life in a variety of
ways, and gymnastic exercises are thought to infuse courage.
Concerning music a doubt may be raised--in our own day most
men cultivate it for the sake of pleasure, but originally it
was included in education, because nature herself, as has been
often said, requires that we should be able, not only to work
well, but to use leisure well; for, as I must repeat once and
again, the first principle of all action is leisure.
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Both are required, but leisure is better than occupation; and
therefore the question must be asked in good earnest, what
ought we to do when at leisure? Clearly we ought not to be
amusing ourselves, for then amusement would be the end of
life. But if this is inconceivable, and yet amid serious
occupations amusement is needed more than at other times (for
he who is hard at work has need of relaxation, and amusement
gives relaxation, whereas occupation is always accompanied
with exertion and effort), at suitable times we should
introduce amusements, and they should be our medicines, for
the emotion which they create in the soul is a relaxation, and
from the pleasure we obtain rest. ... It is clear then that
there are branches of learning and education which we must
study with a view to the enjoyment of leisure, and these are
to be valued for their own sake; whereas those kinds of
knowledge which are useful in business are to be deemed
necessary, and exist for the sake of other things. And
therefore our fathers admitted music into education, not on
the ground either of its necessity or utility, for it is not
necessary, nor indeed useful in the same manner as reading and
writing, which are useful in money-making, in the management
of a house-hold, in the acquisition of knowledge and in
political life, nor like drawing, useful for a more correct
judgment of the works of artists, nor again like gymnastic,
which gives health and strength; for neither of these is to be
gained from music. There remains, then, the use of music for
intellectual enjoyment in leisure; which appears to have been
the reason of its introduction, this being one of the ways in
which it is thought that a freeman should pass his leisure.
... We are now in a position to say that the ancients witness
to us; for their opinion may be gathered from the fact that
music is one of the received and traditional branches of
education. Further, it is clear that children should be
instructed in some useful things,--for example, in reading and
writing,--not only for their usefulness, but also because many
other sorts of knowledge are acquired through them. With a
like view they may be taught drawing, not to prevent their
making mistakes in their own purchases, or in order that they
may not be imposed upon in the buying or selling of articles,
but rather because it makes them judges of the beauty of the
human form. To be always seeking after the useful does not
become free and exalted souls. ... We reject the professional
instruments and also the professional mode of education in
music--and by professional we mean that which is adopted in
contests, for in this the performer practises the art, not for
the sake of his own improvement, but in order to give
pleasure, and that of a vulgar sort, to his hearers. For this
reason the execution of such music is not the part of a
freeman but of a paid performer, and the result is that the
performers are vulgarized, for the end at which they aim is
bad."
Aristotle, Politics (Jowett's Translation), book 8.
"The most striking difference between early Greek education
and ours was undoubtedly this; that the physical development
of boys was attended to in a special place and by a special
master. It was not thought sufficient for them to play the
chance games of childhood; they underwent careful bodily
training under a very fixed system, which was determined by
the athletic contests of after life. ... When we compare what
the Greeks afforded to their boys, we find it divided into two
contrasted kinds of exercise: hunting, which was practised by
the Spartans very keenly, and no doubt also by the Eleans and
Arcadians, as may be seen from Xenophon's 'Tract on (Hare)
Hunting'; and gymnastics, which in the case of boys were
carried on in the so-caned palæstra, a sort of open-air
gymnasium (in our sense) kept by private individuals as a
speculation, and to which the boys were sent, as they were to
their ordinary school-master. We find that the Spartans, who
had ample scope for hunting with dogs in the glens and coverts
of Mount Taygetus, rather despised mere exercises of dexterity
in the palæstra, just as our sportsmen would think very little
of spending hours in a gymnasium. But those Greeks who lived
in towns like Athens, and in the midst of a thickly populated
and well-cultivated country, could not possibly obtain
hunting, and therefore found the most efficient substitute.
Still we find them very far behind the English in their
knowledge or taste for out-of-door games. ... The Greeks had
no playgrounds beyond the palæstra or gymnasium; they had no
playgrounds in our sense, and though a few proverbs speak of
swimming as a universal accomplishment which boys learned, the
silence of Greek literature on the subject makes one very
suspicious as to the generality of such training. ... In one
point, certainly, the Greeks agreed more with the modern
English than with any other civilised nation. They regarded
sport as a really serious thing. ... The names applied to the
exercising-places indicate their principal uses. Palæstra
means a wrestling place; gymnasium originally a place for
naked exercise, but the word early lost this connotation and
came to mean mere physical training. ... In order to leave
home and reach the palæstra safely as well as to return, Greek
boys were put under the charge of a pædagogue, in no way to be
identified (as it now is) with a schoolmaster. ... I think we
may be justified in asserting that the study of the epic
poets, especially of the Iliad and Odyssey, was the earliest
intellectual exercise of schoolboys, and, in the case of
fairly educated parents, even anticipated the learning of
letters. For the latter is never spoken of as part of a
mother's or of home education. Reading was not so universal or
so necessary as it now is. ... We may assume that books of
Homer were read or recited to growing boys, and that they were
encouraged or required to learn them off by heart. This is
quite certain to all who estimate justly the enormous
influence ascribed to Homer, and the principles assumed by the
Greeks to have underlain his work. He was universally
considered to be a moral teacher, whose characters were drawn
with a moral intent, and for the purpose of example or
avoidance. ... Accordingly the Iliad and Odyssey were supposed
to contain all that was useful, not only for godliness, but
for life. All the arts and sciences were to be derived (by
interpretation) from these sacred texts. ... In early days,
and in poor towns, the place of teaching was not well
appointed, nay, even in many places, teaching in the open air
prevailed. ... This was ... like the old hedge schools of
Ireland, and no doubt of Scotland too. They also took
advantage, especially in hot weather, of colonnades, or shady
corners among public buildings, as at Winchester the summer
term was called cloister-time, from a similar practice, even
in that wealthy foundation, of instructing in the cloisters.
On the other hand, properly appointed schools in respectable
towns were furnished with some taste, and according to
traditional notions. ...
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We may be sure that there were no tables or desks, such
furniture being unusual in Greek houses; it was the universal
custom, while reading or writing, to hold the book or roll on
the knee--to us an inconvenient thing to do, but still common
in the East. There are some interesting sentences, given for
exercise in Greek and Latin, in the little known
'Interpretamenta' of Dositheus, now edited and explained by
German scholars. The entry of the boy is thus described, in
parallel Greek and Latin: 'First I salute the master, who
returns my salute: Good morning, master; good morning, school
fellows. Give me my place, my seat, my stool. Sit closer. Move
up that way. This is my place, I took it first.' This mixture
of politeness and wrangling is amusing, and no doubt to be
found in all ages. It seems that the seats were movable. ...
The usual subdivision of education was into three parts;
letters, ... including reading, writing, counting, and
learning of the poets; music in the stricter sense, including
singing and playing on the lyre; and lastly gymnastic, which
included dancing. ... It is said that at Sparta the education
in reading and writing was not thought necessary, and there
have been long discussions among the learned whether the
ordinary Spartan in classical days was able to read. We find
that Aristotle adds a fourth subject to the three above
named--drawing, which he thinks requisite, like music, to
enable the educated man to judge rightly of works of art. But
there is no evidence of a wide diffusion of drawing or
painting among the Greeks, as among us. ... Later on, under
the learned influences of Alexandria, and the paid
professoriate of Roman days, subjects multiplied with the
decline of mental vigour and spontaneity of the age, and
children began to be pestered, as they now are, with a
quantity of subjects, all thought necessary to a proper
education, and accordingly all imperfectly acquired. This was
called the encyclical education, which is preserved in our
Encyclopædia of knowledge. It included,(1) grammar,(2)
rhetoric, (3) dialectic, (4) arithmetic, (5) music, (6)
geometry, (7) astronomy, and these were divided into the
earlier Trivium, and the later Quadrivium."
J. P. Mahaffy, Old Greek Education, chapters 3-5.
"Reading was taught with the greatest pains, the utmost care
was taken with the intonation of the voice, and the
articulation of the throat. We have lost the power of
distinguishing between accent and quantity. The Greeks did not
acquire it without long and anxious training of the ear and
the vocal organs. This was the duty of the phonascus. Homer
was the common study of all Greeks. The Iliad and Odyssee were
at once the Bible, the Shakespeare, the Robinson Crusoe, and
the Arabian Nights of the Hellenic race. Long passages and
indeed whole books were learnt by heart. The Greek, as a rule,
learnt no language but his own. Next to reading and repetition
came writing, which was carefully taught. Composition
naturally followed, and the burden of correcting exercises,
which still weighs down the backs of schoolmasters, dates from
these early times. Closely connected with reading and writing
is the art of reckoning, and the science of numbers leads us
easily to music. Plato considered arithmetic as the best spur
to a sleepy and uninstructed spirit; we see from the Platonic
dialogues how mathematical problems employed the mind and
thoughts of young Athenians. Many of the more difficult
arithmetical operations were solved by geometrical methods,
but the Greeks carried the art of teaching numbers to
considerable refinement. They used the abacus, and had an
elaborate method of finger reckoning, which was serviceable up
to 10,000. Drawing was the crowning accomplishment to this
vestibule of training. By the time the fourteenth year was
completed, the Greek boy would have begun to devote himself
seriously to the practice of athletics."
O. Browning, An Introduction to the History of
Educational Theories, ch 1.
"It has sometimes been imagined that in Greece separate
edifices were not erected as with us expressly for
school-houses, but that both the didaskalos and the
philosopher taught their pupils in fields, gardens or shady
groves. But this was not the common practice, though many
schoolmasters appear to have had no other place wherein to
assemble their pupils than the portico of a temple or some
sheltered corner in the street, where in spite of the din of
business and the throng of passengers the worship of learning
was publicly performed. ... But these were the schools of the
humbler classes. For the children of the noble and the opulent
spacious structures were raised, and furnished with tables,
desks,--for that peculiar species of grammateion which
resembled the plate cupboard, can have been nothing but a
desk,--forms, and whatsoever else their studies required.
Mention is made of a school at Chios which contained one
hundred and twenty boys, all of whom save one were killed by
the falling in of the roof. ... The apparatus of an ancient
school was somewhat complicated: there were mathematical
instruments, globes, maps, and charts of the heavens, together
with boards whereon to trace geometrical figures, tablets,
large and small, of box-wood, fir, or ivory, triangular in
form, some folding with two, and others with many leaves;
books too and paper, skins of parchment, wax for covering the
tablets, which, if we may believe Aristophanes, people
sometimes ate when they were hungry. To the above were added
rulers, reed-pens, pen-cases, pen-knives, pencils, and last,
though not least, the rod which kept them to the steady use of
all these things: At Athens these schools were not provided by
the state. They were private speculations, and each master was
regulated in his charges by the reputation he had acquired and
the fortunes of his pupils. Some appear to have been extremely
moderate in their demands. ... The earliest task to be
performed at school was to gain a knowledge of the Greek
characters, large and small, to spell next, next to read. ...
In teaching the art of writing their practice nearly resembled
our own. ... These things were necessarily the first step in
the first class of studies, which were denominated music, and
comprehended everything connected with the development of the
mind; and they were carried to a certain extent before the
second division called gymnastics was commenced. They reversed
the plan commonly adopted among ourselves, for with them
poetry preceded prose, a practice which, coöperating with
their susceptible temperament, impressed upon the national
mind that imaginative character for which it was preëminently
distinguished.
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And the poets in whose works they were first initiated were of
all the most poetical, the authors of lyrical and dithyrambic
pieces, selections from whose verses they committed to memory,
thus acquiring early a rich store of sentences and imagery
ready to be adduced in argument or illustration, to furnish
familiar allusions or to be woven into the texture of their
style. ... Among the other branches of knowledge most
necessary to be studied, and to which they applied themselves
nearly from the outset, was arithmetic, without some inkling
of which, a man, in Plato's opinion, could scarcely be a
citizen at all. ... The importance attached to this branch of
education, nowhere more apparent than in the dialogues of
Plato, furnishes one proof that the Athenians were
preëminently men of business, who in all their admiration for
the good and beautiful never lost sight of those things which
promote the comfort of life, and enable a man effectually to
perform his ordinary duties. With the same views were geometry
and astronomy pursued. ... The importance of music, in the
education of the Greeks, is generally understood. It was
employed to effect several purposes. First, to sooth and
mollify the fierceness of the national character, and prepare
the way for the lessons of the poets, which, delivered amid
the sounding of melodious strings, when the soul was rapt and
elevated by harmony, by the excitement of numbers, by the
magic of the sweetest associations, took a firm hold upon the
mind, and generally retained it during life. Secondly, it
enabled the citizens gracefully to perform their part in the
amusements of social life, every person being in his turn
called upon at entertainments to sing or play upon the lyre.
Thirdly, it was necessary to enable them to join in the sacred
choruses, rendered frequent by the piety of the state, and for
the due performance in old age of many offices of religion,
the sacerdotal character belonging more or less to all the
citizens of Athens. Fourthly, as much of the learning of a
Greek was martial and designed to fit him for defending his
country, he required some knowledge of music that on the field
of battle his voice might harmoniously mingle with those of
his countrymen, in chaunting those stirring, impetuous, and
terrible melodies, called pæans, which preceded the first
shock of fight. For some, or all of these reasons, the science
of music began to be cultivated among the Hellenes, at a
period almost beyond the reach even of tradition."
J. A. St. John, The Hellenes, book 2, chapter 4.
"In thinking of Greek education as furnishing a possible model
for us moderns, there is one point which it is important to
bear in mind: Greek education was intended only for the few,
for the wealthy and well-born. Upon all others, upon slaves,
barbarians, the working and trading classes, and generally
upon all persons spending their lives in pursuit of wealth or
any private ends whatsoever, it would have seemed to be thrown
away. Even well-born women were generally excluded from most
of its benefits. The subjects of education were the sons of
full citizens, themselves preparing to be full citizens, and
to exercise all the functions of such. The duties of such
persons were completely summed up under two heads, duties to
the family and duties to the State, or, as the Greeks said,
œconomic and political duties. The free citizen not only
acknowledged no other duties besides these, but he looked down
upon persons who sought occupation in any other sphere.
Œconomy and Politics, however, were very comprehensive terms.
The former included the three relations of husband to wife,
father to children, and master to slaves and property; the
latter, three public functions, legislative, administrative,
and judiciary. All occupations not included under these six
heads the free citizen left to slaves or resident foreigners.
Money-making, in the modern sense, he despised, and, if he
devoted himself to art or philosophy, he did so only for the
benefit of the State."
T. Davidson, Aristotle, book 1, chapter 4.
EDUCATION: Greek
Spartan Training.
"From his birth every Spartan belonged to the state, which
decided ... whether he was likely to prove a useful member of
the community, and extinguished the life of the sickly or
deformed infant. To the age of seven however the care of the
child was delegated to its natural guardians, yet not so as to
be left wholly to their discretion, but subject to certain
established rules of treatment, which guarded against every
mischievous indulgence of parental tenderness. At the end of
seven years began a long course of public discipline, which
grew constantly more and more severe as the boy approached
toward manhood. The education of the young was in some degree
the business of all the elder citizens; for there was none who
did not contribute to it, if not by his active interference,
at least by his presence and inspection. But it was placed
under the especial superintendence of an officer selected from
the men of most approved worth; and he again chose a number of
youths, just past the age of twenty, and who most eminently
united courage with discretion, to exercise a more immediate
command over the classes, into which the boys were divided.
The leader of each class directed the sports and tasks of his
young troop, and punished their offences with military rigour,
but was himself responsible to his elders for the mode in
which he discharged his office. The Spartan education was
simple in its objects; it was not the result of any general
view of human nature, or of any attempt to unfold its various
capacities: it aimed at training men who were to live in the
midst of difficulty and danger, and who could only be safe
themselves while they held rule over others. The citizen was
to be always ready for the defence of himself and his country,
at home and abroad, and he was therefore to be equally fitted
to command and to obey. His body, his mind, and his character
were formed for this purpose, and for no other: and hence the
Spartan system, making directly for its main end, and
rejecting all that was foreign to it, attained, within its own
sphere, to a perfection which it is impossible not to admire.
The young Spartan was perhaps unable either to read or write:
he scarcely possessed the elements of any of the arts or
sciences by which society is enriched or adorned: but he could
run, leap, wrestle, hurl the disk, or the javelin, and wield
every other weapon, with a vigour and agility, and grace which
were no where surpassed. These however were accomplishments to
be learnt in every Greek palæstra: he might find many rivals
in all that he could do; but few could approach him in the
firmness with which he was taught to suffer. From the tender
age at which he left his mother's lap for the public schools,
his life was one continued trial of patience. Coarse and
scanty fare, and this occasionally withheld, a light dress,
without any change in the depth of winter, a bed of reeds,
which he himself gathered from the Eurotas, blows exchanged
with his comrades, stripes inflicted by his governors, more by
way of exercise than of punishment, inured him to every form
of pain and hardship. ...
{682}
The Muses were appropriately honoured at Sparta with a
sacrifice on the eve of a battle, and the union of the spear
and the lyre was a favourite theme with the Laconian poets,
and those who sang of Spartan customs. Though bred in the
discipline of the camp, the young Spartan, like the hero of
the Iliad, was not a stranger to music and poetry. He was
taught to sing, and to play on the flute and the lyre: but the
strains with which his memory was stored, and to which his voice
was formed, were either sacred hymns, or breathed a martial
spirit; and it was because they cherished such sentiments that
the Homeric lays, if not introduced by Lycurgus, were early
welcomed at Sparta. ... As these musical exercises were
designed to cultivate, not so much an intellectual, as a moral
taste; so it was probably less for the sake of sharpening
their ingenuity, than of promoting presence of mind, and
promptness of decision, that the boys were led into the habit
of answering all questions proposed to them, with a ready,
pointed, sententious brevity, which was a proverbial
characteristic of Spartan conversation. But the lessons which
were most studiously inculcated, more indeed by example than
by precept, were those of modesty, obedience, and reverence
for age and rank; for these were the qualities on which, above
all others, the stability of the commonwealth reposed. The
gait and look of the Spartan youths, as they passed along the
streets, observed Xenophon, breathed modesty and reserve. In
the presence of their elders they were bashful as virgins, and
silent as statues, save when a question was put to them. ...
In truth, the respect for the laws, which rendered the Spartan
averse to innovation at home, was little more than another
form of that awe with which his early habits inspired him for
the magistrates and the aged. With this feeling was intimately
connected that quick and deep sense of shame, which shrank
from dishonour as the most dreadful of evils, and enabled him
to meet death so calmly, when he saw in it the will of his
country."
C. Thirlwall, History of Greece, volume 1, chapter 8.
EDUCATION:
Free-School Ideas in Greece.
"It is a prevalent opinion that common schools, as we now have
them, were an American invention. No legislation, it is
asserted, taxing all in order that all may be taught can be
traced back further than to the early laws of Massachusetts.
Those who deny this assertion are content with showing
something of the sort in Scotland and Germany a generation or
two before the landing of the Plymouth pilgrims. The truth is,
however, that, as much of our social wit is now credited to
the ancient Greeks, something of our educational wisdom ought
to be. Two centuries ago John Locke, as an able political
writer, was invited to draw up a code of fundamental laws for
the new colony of Carolina, and in like manner, more than
2,300 years ago, Charondas, a master of a similar type in
Magna Græcia, was called to a similar task. This was to frame
a series of statutes for the government of a Greek colony
founded about 446 B. C., in the foot of Italy. This colony was
Thurii, and conspicuous among the enactments of Charondas was
the following: 'Charondas made a law unlike those of lawgivers
before him, for he enacted that the sons of the citizens
should all learn letters (or writing) ... the city making
payment to the teachers. He thought that the poor, not able to
pay wages themselves, would otherwise fail of the best
training. He counted writing the most important study, and
with reason. Through writing, most things in life, and those
the most useful, are accomplished--as ballots, epistles, laws,
covenants. Who can sufficiently praise the learning of
letters? ... Writing alone preserves the most brilliant
utterances of wise men and the oracles of gods, nay philosophy
and all culture. All these things it alone hands down to all
future generations. Wherefore nature should be viewed as the
source of life, but the source of living well we should
consider the culture derived from writing. Inasmuch, then, as
illiterates are deprived of a great good, Charondas came to
their help, judging them worthy of public care and outlay.
Former legislators had caused the sick to be attended by
physicians at the public expense, thinking their bodies worthy
of cure. He did more, for he cured souls afflicted with
ignorance. The doctors of the body we pray that we may never
need, while we would fain abide for ever with those who
minister to the mind diseased.'--This extract is from the
'Bibliotheca Historica' of Diodorus Siculus (Book x. § 13),
who was flourishing at the birth of Christ and was the most
painstaking chronicler of the Augustan age. The legislation is
worth notice for more than one reason. It rebukes the
self-conceit of those who hold that the education of all at
the charge of all is an idea born in our own time or country.
It has also been strangely unnoticed by historians who ought
to have kept it before the people."
The Nation, March 24, 1892, pages 280-231.
EDUCATION:
Socrates and the Philosophical Schools.
"Before the rise of philosophy, the teacher of the people had
been the rhapsode, or public reciter; after that event he
gradually gives place to the sophist (... one who makes wise),
or, as he later with more modesty calls himself, the
philosopher (... lover of wisdom). The history of Greece for
centuries is, on its inner side, a history of the struggle
between what the rhapsode represents and what the philosopher
represents, between popular tradition and common sense on the
one hand, and individual opinion and philosophy on the other.
The transition from the first to the second of these mental
conditions was accomplished for the world, once for all, by
the Greeks."
T. Davidson, Aristotle, book 1, chapter 5.
"There is no instance on record of a philosopher whose
importance as a thinker is so closely bound up with the
personality of the man as it was in the case of Socrates. ...
His teaching was not of a kind to be directly imparted and
faithfully handed down, but could only be left to propagate
itself freely by stirring up others to a similar self·culture.
... The youth and early manhood of Socrates fall in the most
brilliant period of Grecian history. Born during the last
years of the Persian war, he was a near contemporary of all
those great men who adorned the age of Pericles. As a citizen
of Athens he could enjoy the opportunities afforded by a city,
which united every means of culture by its unrivalled
fertility of thought. Poverty and low birth were but slender
obstacles in the Athens of Pericles. ... Socrates, no doubt,
began life by learning his father's trade, ... which he
probably never practised, and certainly soon gave up.
{683}
He considered it to be his special calling to labour for the
moral and intellectual improvement of himself and others--a
conviction which he felt so strongly that it appeared to him
in the light of a divine revelation. Moreover he was confirmed
in it by a Delphic oracle, which, of course, must not be
regarded as the cause of, but rather as an additional support
to his reforming zeal. ... To be independent, he tried, like
the Gods, to rise superior to his wants; and by carefully
practising self-denial and abstemiousness, he was really able
to boast that his life was more pleasant and more free from
troubles than that of the rest of mankind. Thus he was able to
devote his whole powers to the service of others, without
asking or taking reward; and thus he became so engrossed by
his labours for his native city, that he rarely passed its
boundaries or even went outside its gates. He did not,
however, feel himself called upon to take part in the affairs
of the state. ... Anyone convinced as he was, that care for
one's own culture must precede care for public business, and
that a thorough knowledge of self, together with a deep and
many-sided experience, was a necessary condition of public
activity, must have thought that, to educate individuals by
influence, was the more pressing need, and have held that he
was doing his country a better service by educating able
statesmen for it, than by actually discharging a statesman's
duties. Accordingly, Socrates never aimed at being anything
but a private citizen. ... Just as little was he desirous of
being a public teacher like the Sophists. He not only took no
pay, but he gave no methodical course. He did not profess to
teach, but to learn in common with others, not to force his
convictions upon them, but to examine theirs; not to pass the
truth that came to hand like a coin fresh from the mint, but
to stir up a desire for truth and virtue, to point out the way
to it, to overthrow what was spurious, and to seek out real
knowledge. Never weary of talking, he was on the look out for
every opportunity of giving an instructive and moral turn to
the conversation. Day by day he was about in the market and
public promenades, in schools and workshops, ever ready to
converse with friends or strangers, with citizens and
foreigners, but always prepared to lead them to higher
subjects; and whilst thus in his higher calling serving God,
he was persuaded that he was also serving his country in a way
that no one else could do. Deeply as he deplored the decline
of discipline and education in his native city, he felt that
he could depend but little on the Sophists, the moral teachers
of his day. The attractive powers of his discourse won for him
a circle of admirers, for the most part consisting of young
men of family, drawn to him by the most varied motives,
standing to him in various relations, and coming to him, some
for a longer, others for a shorter time. For his own part, he
made it his business not only to educate these friends, but to
advise them in everything, even in worldly matters. But out of
this changing, and in part loosely connected, society, a
nucleus was gradually formed of decided admirers,--a Socratic
school, which we must consider united far less by a common set
of doctrines, than by a common love for the person of
Socrates."
E. Zeller, Socrates and the Socratic Schools, chapter 3.
"Nowhere, except in Athens, do we hear of a philosophic body
with endowments, legal succession, and the other rights of a
corporation. This idea, which has never since died out of the
world, was due to Plato, who bequeathed his garden and
appointments in the place called after the hero Hekademus, to
his followers. But he was obliged to do it in the only form
possible at Athens. He made it a religious foundation, on the
basis of a fixed worship to the Muses. ... The head or
President of Plato's 'Association of the Muses,' was the
treasurer and manager of the common fund, who invited guests
to their feasts, to which each member contributed his share.
... The members had, moreover, a right to attend lectures and
use the library or scientific appointments, such as maps,
which belonged to the school. It was this endowment on a
religious basis which saved the income and position of Plato's
school for centuries. ... This then is the first Academy, so
often imitated in so many lands, and of which our colleges are
the direct descendants. ... The school of Plato, then governed
by Xenocrates, being the bequest of an Athenian citizen who
understood the law, seems never to have been assailed. The
schools of Epicurus and Zeno were perhaps not yet recognised.
But that of Theophrastus, perhaps the most crowded, certainly
the most distinctly philo-Macedonian, ... this was the school
which was exiled, and which owed its rehabilitation not only
to the legal decision of the courts, but still more to the
large views of King Demetrius, who would not tolerate the
persecution of opinion. But it was the other Demetrius, the
philosopher, the pupil of Aristotle, the friend of
Theophrastus, to whom the school owed most, and to whom the
world owes most in the matter of museums and academies, next
after Plato. For this was the man who took care, during his
Protectorate of Athens in the interest of Casander, to
establish a garden and 'peripatos' for the Peripatetic school,
now under Theophrastus. ... It is remarkable that the Stoic
school--it too the school of aliens--did not establish a local
foundation or succession, but taught in public places, such as
the Painted Portico. In this the Cynical tone of the Porch
comes out. Hence the succession depended upon the genius of
the leader."
J. P. Mahaffy, Greek Life and Thought, chapter 7.
An account of the Academy, the Lyceum, etc., will be found
under the caption GYMNASIA.
EDUCATION:
University of Athens.
"Some scholars ... may doubt if there was anything at Athens
which could answer to the College Life of modern times. Indeed
it must be owned that formal history is nearly silent on the
subject, that ancient writers take little notice of it, and
such evidences as we have are drawn almost entirely from a
series of inscriptions on the marble tablets, which were
covered with the ruins and the dust of ages, till one after
another came to light in recent days, to add fresh pages to
the story of the past. Happily they are both numerous and
lengthy, and may be already pieced together in an order which
extends for centuries. They are known to Epigraphic students
as the records which deal with the so-called Ephebi; with the
youths, that is, just passing into manhood, for whom a special
discipline was provided by the State, to, fit them for the
responsibilities of active life. It was a National system with
a many-sided training; the teachers were members of the Civil
Service; the registers were public documents, and, as such,
belonged to the Archives of the State.
{684}
The earlier inscriptions of the series date from the
period of Macedonian ascendency, but in much earlier times
there had been forms of public drill prescribed for the
Ephebi. ... We find from a decree, which, if genuine, dates
even from the days of Pericles, that the young men of Cos were
allowed by special favour to share the discipline of the
Athenian Ephebi. Soon afterwards others were admitted on all
sides. The aliens who had gained a competence as merchants or
as bankers, found their sons welcomed in the ranks of the
oldest families of Athens; strangers flocked thither from
distant countries, not only from the isles of Greece, and from
the coasts of the Ægean, but, as Hellenic culture made its way
through the far East, students even of the Semitic race were
glad to enrol their names upon the College registers, where we
may still see them with the marks of their several
nationalities affixed. The young men were no longer, like
soldiers upon actual service, beginning already the real work
of life, and on that account, perhaps, the term was shortened
from the two years to one; but the old associations lasted on
for ages, even in realistic Athens, which in early politics at
least had made so clean a sweep. The outward forms were still
preserved, the soldier's drill was still enforced, and though
many another feature had been added, the whole institution
bore upon its face the look rather of a Military College than
of a training school for a scholar or a statesman. The College
year began somewhat later than the opening of the civil year,
and it was usual for all the students to matriculate together;
that is, to enter formally their names upon the registers,
which were copied afterwards upon the marble tablets, of which
large fragments have survived. ... 'To put the gown on,' or,
as we should say, 'to be a gownsman,' was the phrase which
stood for being a member of the College; and the gown, too,
was of black, as commonly among ourselves. But Philostratus
tells us, by the way, that a change was made from black to
white at the prompting of Herodes Atticus, the munificent and
learned subject of the Antonines, who was for many years the
presiding genius of the University of Athens. The fragment of
an inscription lately found curiously confirms and supplements
the writer's statement. ... The members of the College are spoken
of as 'friends' and 'messmates'; and it is probable that some
form of conventual life prevailed among them, without which
the drill and supervision, which are constantly implied in the
inscriptions, could scarcely have been enforced by the
officials. But we know nothing of any public buildings for
their use save the gymnasia, which in all Greek towns were the
centres of educational routine, and of which there were
several well known at Athens. ... The College did not try to
monopolise the education of its students. It had, indeed, its
own tutors or instructors, but they were kept for humbler
drill; it did not even for a long time keep an organist or
choirmaster of its own; it sent its students out for teaching
in philosophy and rhetoric and grammar, or, in a word, for all
the larger and more liberal studies. Nor did it favour any
special set of tenets to the exclusion of the rest. It
encouraged impartially all the schools of higher thought. ...
The Head of the College held the title of Cosmetes, or of
rector. ... The Rector, appointed only for a year by popular
election, was no merely honorary head, but took an important
part in the real work of education. He was sometimes clothed
with priestly functions. ... The system of education thus
described was under the control of the government throughout.
... It may surprise us that our information comes almost
entirely from the inscriptions, and that ancient writers are
all nearly silent on the subject. ... But there was little to
attract the literary circles in arrangements so mechanical and
formal; there was too much of outward pageantry, and too
little of real character evolved."
W. W. Capes, University Life in Ancient Athens, chapter 1.
J. H. Newman, Historical Sketches, chapter 4.
The reign of the Emperor Justinian "may be signalised as the
fatal epoch at which several of the noblest institutions of
antiquity were abolished. He shut the schools of Athens (A. D.
529), in which an uninterrupted succession of philosophers,
supported by a public stipend, had taught the doctrines of
Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, and Epicurus, ever since the time of
the Antonines. They were, it is true, still attached to
paganism, and even to the arts of magic."
J. C. L. de Sismondi, Fall of the Roman Empire,
volume 1, chapter 10.
See ATHENS: A. D. 529.
EDUCATION:
Alexandria.
"Ptolemy, upon whom, on Alexander's death, devolved the
kingdom of Egypt, supplies us with the first great instance of
what may be called the establishment of Letters. He and
Eumenes may be considered the first founders of public
libraries. ... A library, however, was only one of two great
conceptions brought into execution by the first Ptolemy; and
as the first was the embalming of dead genius, so the second
was the endowment of living. ... Ptolemy, ... prompted, or at
least, encouraged, by the celebrated Demetrius of Phalerus,
put into execution a plan for the formal endowment of
literature and science. The fact indeed of the possession of
an immense library seemed sufficient to render Alexandria a
University; for what could be a greater attraction to the
students of all lands, than the opportunity afforded them of
intellectual converse, not only with the living, but with the
dead, with all who had anywhere at any time thrown light upon
any subject of inquiry? But Ptolemy determined that his
teachers of knowledge should be as stationary and as permanent
as his books; so, resolving to make Alexandria the seat of a
'Studium Generale,' he founded a College for its domicile, and
endowed that College with ample revenues. Here, I consider, he
did more than has been commonly done, till modern times. It
requires considerable knowledge of medieval Universities to be
entitled to give an opinion; as regards Germany, for instance,
or Poland, or Spain; but, as far as I have a right to speak,
such an endowment has been rare down to the sixteenth century,
as well as before Ptolemy. ... To return to the Alexandrian
College. It was called the Museum,--a name since appropriated
to another institution connected with the seats of science.
... There was a quarter of the city so distinct from the rest
in Alexandria, that it is sometimes spoken of as a suburb. It
was pleasantly situated on the water's edge, and had been set
aside for ornamental buildings, and was traversed by groves of
trees. Here stood the royal palace, here the theatre and
amphitheatre; here the gymnasia and stadium; here the famous
Serapeum.
{685}
And here it was, close upon the Port, that Ptolemy placed his
Library and College. As might be supposed, the building was
worthy of its purpose; a noble portico stretched along its
front, for exercise or conversation, and opened upon the
public rooms devoted to disputations and lectures. A certain
number of Professors were lodged within the precincts, and a
handsome hall, or refectory, was provided for the common meal.
The Prefect of the house was a priest, whose appointment lay
with the government. Over the Library a dignified person
presided. ... As to the Professors, so liberal was their
maintenance, that a philosopher of the very age of the first
foundation called the place a 'bread basket,' or a 'bird
coop'; yet, in spite of accidental exceptions, so careful on
the whole was their selection, that even six hundred years
afterwards, Ammianus describes the Museum under the title of
'the lasting abode of distinguished men.' Philostratus, too,
about a century before, calls it 'a table gathering together
celebrated men.' ... As time went on new Colleges were added
to the original Museum; of which one was a foundation of the
Emperor Claudius, and called after his name. ... A diversity
of teachers secured an abundance of students. 'Hither,' says
Cave, 'as to a public emporium of polite literature,
congregated, from every part of the world, youthful students,
and attended the lectures in Grammar, Rhetoric, Poetry,
Philosophy, Astronomy, Music, Medicine, and other arts and
sciences'; and hence proceeded, as it would appear, the great
Christian writers and doctors, 'Clement, ... Origen,
Anatolius, and Athanasius. St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, in the
third century, may be added; he came across Asia Minor and
Syria from Pontus, as to a place, says his namesake of Nyssa,
'to which young men from all parts gathered together, who were
applying themselves to philosophy.' As to the subjects taught
in the Museum, Cave has already enumerated the principal; but
he has not done justice to the peculiar character of the
Alexandrian school. From the time that science got out of the
hands of the pure Greeks, into those of a power which had a
talent for administration, it became less theoretical, and
bore more distinctly upon definite and tangible objects. ...
Egyptian Antiquities were investigated, at least by the
disciples of the Egyptian Manetho, fragments of whose history
are considered to remain; while Carthaginian and Etruscan had
a place in the studies of the Claudian College. The Museum was
celebrated, moreover, for its grammarians; the work of
Hephæstion 'de Metris' still affords matter of thought to a
living Professor of Oxford; and Aristarchus, like the Athenian
Priscian, has almost become the nickname for a critic. Yet,
eminent as is the Alexandrian school in these departments of
science, its fame rests still more securely upon its
proficiency in medicine and mathematics. Among its physicians
is the celebrated Galen, who was attracted thither from
Pergamus; and we are told by a writer of the fourth century,
that in his time the very fact of a physician having studied
at Alexandria, was an evidence of his science which superseded
further testimonial. As to Mathematics, it is sufficient to
say, that, of four great ancient names, on whom the modern
science is founded, three came from Alexandria. Archimedes
indeed was a Syracusan; but the Museum may boast of Apollonius
of Perga, Diophantus, a native Alexandrian, and Euclid, whose
country is unknown. To these illustrious names, may be added,
Eratosthenes of Cyrene, to whom astronomy has obligations so
considerable; Pappus; Theon; and Ptolemy, said to be of
Pelusium, whose celebrated system, called after him the
Ptolemaic, reigned in the schools till the time of Copernicus,
and whose Geography, dealing with facts, not theories, is in
repute still. Such was the celebrated 'Studium' or University
of Alexandria; for a while in the course of the third and
fourth centuries, it was subject to reverses, principally from
war. The whole of the Bruchion, the quarter of the city in
which it was situated, was given to the flames; and, when
Hilarion came to Alexandria, the holy hermit, whose rule of
life did not suffer him to lodge in cities, took up his
lodgment with a few solitaries among the ruins of its
edifices. The schools, however, and the library continued; the
library was reserved for the Caliph Omar's famous judgment; as
to the schools, even as late as the twelfth century, the Jew,
Benjamin of Tudela, gives us a surprising report of what he
found in Alexandria."
J. H. Newman, Historical Sketches:
Rise and Progress of Universities, chapter 8.
"In the three centuries which intervened between Alexander and
Augustus, Athens was preëminently the training school for
philosophy, Rhodes, on the other hand, as the only Greek state
of political importance in which a career of grand and
dignified activity was open for the orator, distinguished
itself in the study of eloquence, while Alexandria rested its
fame chiefly on the excellence of its instruction in Philology
and Medicine. At a subsequent period the last mentioned
University obtained even greater celebrity as having given
birth to a school of philosophers who endeavored to combine
into a species of theosophic doctrine the mental science of
Europe with the more spiritual minded and profoundly human
religions of the East. In the third century Alexandria became
conspicuous as the headquarters of the Eclectics and
Neo·Platonists."
E. Kirkpatrick, Historical Development of Superior
Instruction (Barnard's American Journal of Education,
volume 24, pages 466-467).
EDUCATION:
Rome.
"If we cast a final glance at the question of education, we
shall find but little to say of it, as far as regards the
period before Cicero. In the republican times the state did
not trouble itself about the training of youth: a few
prohibitory regulations were laid down, and the rest left to
private individuals. Thus no public instruction was given;
public schools there were, but only as private undertakings
for the sake of the children of the rich. All depended on the
father; his personal character and the care taken by the
mother in education decided the development of the child's
disposition. Books there were none; and therefore they could
not be put into the hands of children. A few rugged hymns,
such as those of the Salii and Arval brothers, with the songs
in Fescennine verse, sung on festivals and at banquets, formed
the poetical literature. A child would hear, besides, the
dirges, or memorial verses, composed by women in honour of the
dead, and sometimes, too, the public panegyrics pronounced on
their departed relatives, a distinction accorded to women also
from the time of Camillus.
{686}
Whatever was taught a boy by father or mother, or acquired
externally to the house, was calculated to make the Roman
'virtus' appear in his eyes the highest aim of his ambition;
the term including self-mastery, an unbending firmness of
will, with patience, and an iron tenacity of purpose in
carrying through whatever was once acknowledged to be right.
The Greek palestra and its naked combatants always seemed
strange and offensive to Roman eyes. In the republican times
the exercises of the gymnasium were but little in fashion;
though riding, swimming, and other warlike exercises were
industriously practised, as preparations for the campaign. The
slave pædagogus, assigned to young people to take charge of
them, had a higher position with the Romans than the Greeks;
and was not allowed to let his pupils out of his sight till
their twentieth year. The Latin Odyssey of Livius Andronicus
was the school-book first in use; and this and Ennius were the
only two works to create and foster a literary taste before
the destruction of Carthage. The freedman Sp. Carvilius was
the first to open a school for higher education. After this
the Greek language and literature came into the circle of
studies, and in consequence of the wars in Sicily, Macedon,
and Asia, families of distinction kept slaves who knew Greek.
Teachers quickly multiplied, and were either liberti, or their
descendants. No free-born Roman would consent to be a paid
teacher, for that was held to be a degradation. The Greek
language remained throughout the classical [age] one for
Romans: they even made their children begin with Homer. As, by
the seventh century of the republic, Ennius, Plautus,
Pacuvius, and Terence, had already become old poets,
dictations were given to scholars from their writings. The
interpretation of Virgil began under Augustus, and by this
time the younger Romans were resorting to Athens, Rhodes,
Apollonia, and Mitylene, in order to make progress in Greek
rhetoric and philosophy. As Roman notions were based entirely
on the practical and the useful, music was neglected as a part
of education; while, as a contrast, boys were compelled to
learn the laws of the twelve tables by heart. Cicero, who had
gone through this discipline with other boys of his time,
complains of the practice having begun to be set aside; and
Scipio Æmilianus deplored, as an evil omen of degeneracy, the
sending of boys and girls to the academies of actors, where
they learnt dancing and singing, in company with young women
of pleasure. In one of these schools were to be found as many
as five hundred young persons, all being instructed in
postures and motions of the most abandoned kind. ... On the
other hand, the gymnastic exercises, which had once served the
young men as a training for war, fell into disuse, having
naturally become objectless and burdensome, now that, under
Augustus, no more Roman citizens chose to enlist in the
legions. Still slavery was, and continued to be, the foremost
cause of the depravation of youth, and of an evil education.
... It was no longer the mothers who educated their own
children: they had neither inclination nor capacity for such
duty, for mothers of the stamp of Cornelia had disappeared.
Immediately on its birth, the child was intrusted to a Greek
female slave, with some male slave, often of the worst
description, to help her. ... The young Roman was not educated
in the constant companionship of youths of his own age, under
equal discipline: surrounded by his father's slaves and
parasites, and always accompanied by a slave when he went out,
he hardly received any other impressions than such as were
calculated to foster conceit, indolence, and pride in him."
J. J. I. Döllinger, The Gentile and the Jew,
volume 2, pages 279-281.
EDUCATION:
Higher Education under the Empire.
"Besides schools of high eminence in Mytilene, Ephesus,
Smyrna, Sidon, etc., we read that Apollonia enjoyed so high a
reputation for eloquence and political science as to be
entrusted with the education of the heir-apparent of the Roman
Empire. Antioch was noted for a Museum modelled after that of
the Egyptian metropolis, and Tarsus boasted of Gymnasia and a
University which Strabo does not hesitate to describe as more
than rivaling those of Athens and Alexandria. There can be
little doubt that the philosophers, rhetoricians, and
grammarians who swarmed in the princely retinues of the great
Roman aristocracy, and whose schools abounded in all the most
wealthy and populous cities of the empire east and west, were

prepared for their several callings in some one or other of
these institutions. Strabo tells us ... that Rome was overrun
with Alexandrian and Syrian grammarians, and Juvenal describes
one of the Quirites of the ancient stamp as emigrating in
sheer disgust from a city which from these causes had become
thoroughly and utterly Greek. ... That external inducements
were held out amply sufficient to prevail upon poor and
ambitious men to qualify themselves at some cost for vocations
of this description is evident from the wealth to which, as we
are told, many of them rose from extreme indigence and
obscurity. Suetonius, in the still extant fragment of his
essay 'de claris rhetoribus,' after alluding to the immense
number of professors and doctors met with in Rome, draws
attention to the frequency with which individuals who had
distinguished themselves as teachers of rhetoric had been
elevated into the senate, and advanced to the highest
dignities of the state. That the profession of a philologist
was occasionally at least well remunerated is evident from the
facts recorded by the same author in his work 'de claris
grammaticis,' section 3. He there mentions that there were at
one time upwards of twenty well attended schools devoted to
this subject at Rome, and that one fortunate individual, Q.
Remmius Palaemon, derived four hundred thousand sesterces, or
considerably above three thousand a year, from instruction in
philology alone. Julius Caesar conferred the citizenship,
together with large bounties in money, and immunity from
public burthens, on distinguished rhetoricians and
philologists, in order to encourage their presence at Rome.
... That individuals who thus enjoyed an income not greatly
below the revenues of an English Bishopric were not, as the
name might lead us to imagine, employed in teaching the
accidents of grammar, but possessed considerable pretensions
to that higher and more thoughtful character of the scholar
which it has been reserved for modern Europe to exhibit in
perfection, is not only in itself highly probable, but
supported by the distinctest and most unimpeachable evidence.
Seneca tells us that history was amongst the subjects
professed by grammarians, and Cicero regards the most thorough
and refined perception of all that pertains to the spirit and
individuality of the author as an indispensable requisite in
those who undertake to give instruction in this subject. ...
The grammatici appear to have occupied a position very closely
analogous to that of the teachers of collegiate schools in
England, and the gymnasial professors in Germany."
E. Kirkpatrick, Historical Development of Superior
Instruction (Barnard's American Journal of Education,
volume 24, pages 468-470.)
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EDUCATION: Mediæval.
The Chaos of Barbaric Conquest.
"The utter confusion subsequent upon the downfall of the Roman
Empire and the irruption of the Germanic races was causing, by
the mere brute force of circumstance, a gradual extinction of
scholarship too powerful to be arrested. The teaching of
grammar for ecclesiastical purposes was insufficient to check
the influence of many causes leading to this overthrow of
learning. It was impossible to communicate more than a mere
tincture of knowledge to students separated from the classical
tradition, for whom the antecedent history of Rome was a dead
letter. The meaning of Latin words derived from the Greek was
lost. ... Theological notions, grotesque and childish beyond
description, found their way into etymology and grammar. The
three persons of the Trinity were discovered in the verb, and
mystic numbers in the parts of speech. Thus analytical studies
like that of language came to be regarded as an open field for
the exercise of the mythologising fancy; and etymology was
reduced to a system of ingenious punning. ... Virgil, the only
classic who retained distinct and living personality, passed
from poet to philosopher, from philosopher to Sibyl, from
Sibyl to magician, by successive stages of transmutation, as
the truth about him grew more dim and the faculty to apprehend
him weakened. Forming the staple of education in the schools
of the grammarians, and metamorphosed by the vulgar
consciousness into a wizard, he waited on the extreme verge of
the dark ages to take Dante by the hand, and lead him, as the
type of human reason, through the realms of Hell and
Purgatory."
J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy:
the Revival of Learning; chapter 2.
EDUCATION: Mediæval.
Gaul: 4th-5th Centuries.
"If institutions could do all, if laws supplied and the means
furnished to society could do everything, the intellectual
state of Gaulish civil society at this epoch [4th-5th
centuries] would have been far superior to that of the
religious society. The first, in fact, alone possessed all the
institutions proper to second the development of mind, the
progress and empire of ideas. Roman Gaul was covered with
large schools. The principal were those of Trèves, Bordeaux,
Autun, Toulouse, Poitiers, Lyons, Narbonne, Aries, Marseilles,
Vienne, Besançon, &c. Some were very ancient; those of
Marseilles and of Autun, for example, dated from the first
century. They were taught philosophy, medicine, jurisprudence,
literature, grammar, astrology, all the sciences of the age.
In the greater part of these schools, indeed, they at first
taught only rhetoric and grammar; but towards the fourth
century, professors of philosophy and law were everywhere
introduced. Not only were these schools numerous, and provided
with many chairs, but the emperors continually took the
professors of new measures into favor. Their interests are,
from Constantine to Theodosius the younger, the subject of
frequent imperial constitutions, which sometimes extended,
sometimes confirmed their privileges. ... After the Empire was
divided among many masters, each of them concerned himself
rather more about the prosperity of his states and the public
establishments which were in them. Thence arose a momentary
amelioration, of which the schools felt the effects,
particularly those of Gaul, under the administration of
Constantius Clorus, of Julian, and of Gratian. By the side of
the schools were, in general, placed other analogous
establishments. Thus, at Trèves there was a grand library of
the imperial palace, concerning which no special information
has reached us, but of which we may judge by the details·
which have reached us concerning that of Constantinople. This
last had a librarian and seven scribes constantly
occupied--four for Greek, and three for Latin. They copied
both ancient and new works. It is probable that the same
institution existed at Trèves, and in the great towns of Gaul.
Civil society, then, was provided with means of instruction
and intellectual development. It was not the same with
religious society. It had at this epoch no institution
especially devoted to teaching; it did not receive from the
state any aid to this particular aim. Christians, as well as
others, could frequent the public schools; but most of the
professors were still pagans. ... It was for a long time in
the inferior classes, among the people, that Christianity was
propagated, especially in the Gauls, and it was the superior
classes which followed the great schools. Moreover, it was
hardly until the commencement of the fourth century that the
Christians appeared there, and then but few in number. No
other source of study was open to them. The establishments
which, a little afterwards, became, in the Christian church,
the refuge and sanctuary of instruction, the monasteries, were
hardly commenced in the Gauls. It was only after the year 360
that the two first were founded by St. Martin--one at Ligugé,
near Poitiers, the other at Marmoutiers, near Tours; and they
were devoted rather to religious contemplation than to
teaching. Any great school, any special institution devoted to
the service and to the progress of intellect, was at that
time, therefore, wanting to the Christians. ... All things in
the fifth century, attest the decay of the civil schools. The
contemporaneous writers, Sidonius Apollinaris and Mamertius
Claudianus, for example, deplore it in every page, saying that
the young men no longer studied, that professors were without
pupils, that science languished and was being lost. ... It was
especially the young men of the superior classes who frequented
the schools; but these classes ... were in rapid dissolution.
The schools fell with them; the institutions still existed,
but they were void--the soul had quitted the body. The
intellectual aspect of Christian society was very different.
... Institutions began to rise, and to be regulated among the
Christians of Gaul. The foundation of the greater portion of
the large monasteries of the southern provinces belongs to the
first half of the fifth century. ... The monasteries of the
south of Gaul were philosophical schools of Christianity; it
was there that intellectual men meditated, discussed, taught;
it was from thence that new ideas, daring thoughts, heresies,
were sent forth. ...
{688}
Towards the end of the sixth century, everything is changed:
there are no longer civil schools; ecclesiastical schools
alone subsist. Those great municipal schools of Treves, of
Poitiers, of Vienne, of Bordeaux, &c., have disappeared; in
their place have arisen schools called cathedral or episcopal
schools, because each episcopal see had its own. The cathedral
school was not always alone; we find in certain dioceses other
schools, of an uncertain nature and origin, wrecks, perhaps,
of some ancient civil school, which, in becoming
metamorphosed, had perpetuated itself. ... The most
flourishing of the episcopal schools from the sixth to the
middle of the eighth century were those of:
1. Poitiers. There were many schools in the monasteries of the
diocese at Poitiers itself, at Ligugé, at Ansion, &c.
2. Paris.
3. LeMans.
4. Bourges.
5. Clermont. There was another school in the town where they
taught the Theodosian code; a remarkable circumstance, which I
do not find elsewhere.
6. Vienne.
7. Châlons-sur-Saone.
8. ArIes.
9. Gap.
The most flourishing of the monastic schools of the same epoch
were those of:
1. Luxeuil, in Franche-Comté.
2. Fontenelle, or Saint Vandrille, in Normandy; in which were
about 300 students.
3. Sithiu, in Normandy.
4. Saint Médard, at Soissons.
5. Lerens.
It were easy to extend this list; but the prosperity of
monastic schools was subject to great vicissitudes; they
flourished under a distinguished abbot, and declined under his
successor. Even in nunneries, study was not neglected; that
which Saint Cesaire founded at Aries contained, at the
commencement of the sixth century, two hundred nuns, for the
most part occupied in copying books, sometimes religious
books, sometimes, probably, even the works of the ancients.
The metamorphosis of civil schools into ecclesiastical schools
was complete. Let us see what was taught in them. We shall
often find in them the names of sciences formerly professed in
the civil schools, rhetoric, logic, grammar, geometry,
astrology, &c.; but these were evidently no longer taught
except in their relations to theology. This is the foundation
of the instruction: all was turned into commentary of the
Scriptures, historical, philosophical, allegorical, moral,
commentary. They desired only to form priests; all studies,
whatsoever their nature, were directed towards this result.
Sometimes they went even further: they rejected the profane
sciences themselves, whatever might be the use made of them."
F. Guizot, History of Civilization to the French
Revolution, volume 2, lecture 4 and 16.
EDUCATION:
Ireland.
Scotland.
Schools of Iona.
Popular accounts represent St. Patrick as "founding at least a
hundred monasteries, and even those who consider that the
greater number of the Irish colleges were raised by his
followers after his death, admit the fact of his having
established an episcopal monastery and school at Armagh, where
he and his clergy carried out the same rule of life that he
had seen followed in the churches of Gaul. ... The school,
which formed a portion of the Cathedral establishment, soon
rose in importance. Gildas taught here for some years before
joining St. Cadoc at Llancarvan; and in process of time the
number of students, both native and foreign, so increased that
the university, as we may justly call it, was divided into
three parts, one of which was devoted entirely to students of
the Anglo-Saxon race. Grants for the support of the schools
were made by the Irish kings in the eighth century; and all
through the troublous times of the ninth and tenth centuries,
when Ireland was overrun by the Danes, and so many of her
sanctuaries were given to the flames, the succession of
divinity professors at Armagh remained unbroken, and has been
carefully traced by Usher. We need not stop to determine how
many other establishments similar to those of Armagh were
really founded in the lifetime of St. Patrick. In any case the
rapid extension of the monastic institute in Ireland, and the
extraordinary ardour with which the Irish cœnobites applied
themselves to the cultivation of letters remain undisputed
facts. 'Within a century after the death of St. Patrick,' says
Bishop Nicholson, 'the Irish seminaries had so increased that
most parts of Europe sent their children to be educated here,
and drew thence their bishops and teachers.' The whole country
for miles round Leighlin was denominated the 'land of saints
and scholars.' By the ninth century Armagh could boast of
7,000 students, and the schools of Cashel, Dindaleathglass,
and Lismore vied with it in renown. This extraordinary
multiplication of monastic seminaries and scholars may be
explained partly by the constant immigration of British
refugees who brought with them the learning and religious
observances of their native cloisters, and partly by that
sacred and irresistible impulse which animates a newly
converted people to heroic acts of sacrifice. In Ireland the
infant church was not, as elsewhere, watered with the blood of
martyrs. ... The bards, who were to be found in great numbers
among the early converts of St. Patrick, had also a
considerable share in directing the energies of their
countrymen to intellectual labour. They formed the learned
class, and on their conversion to Christianity were readily
disposed to devote themselves to the culture of sacred
letters. ... It would be impossible, within the limits of a
single chapter, to notice even the names of all the Irish
seats of learning, or of their most celebrated teachers,
everyone of whom has his own legend in which sacred and poetic
beauties are to be found blended together. One of the earliest
monastic schools was that erected by Enda, prince of Orgiel,
in that western island called from the wild flowers which even
still cover its rocky soil, Aran-of-the-Flowers, a name it
afterwards exchanged for that of Ara-na-naomh, or
Aran-of-the-Saints. ... A little later St. Finian founded his
great school of Clonard, whence, says Usher, issued forth a
stream of saints and doctors, like the Greek warriors from the
wooden horse. .... This desolate wilderness was soon peopled
by his disciples, who are said to have numbered 3,000, of whom
the twelve most eminent are often termed the Twelve Apostles
of Ireland. ... Among them none were more famous than St.
Columba, St. Kieran, and St. Brendan. The first of these is
known to every English reader as the founder of Iona; and
Kieran, the carpenter's son, as he is called, is scarcely less
renowned among his own countrymen. ... It was in the year 563
that St. Columba, after founding the monasteries of
Doire-Calgaich and Dair-magh in his native land, and incurring
the enmity of one of the Irish kings, determined on crossing
over into Scotland in order to preach the faith to the
Northern Picts. Accompanied by twelve companions, he passed
the Channel in a rude wicker boat covered with skins, and
landed at Port-na Currachan, on a spot now marked by a heap of
huge conical stones.
{689}
Conall, king of the Albanian Scots, granted him the island of
I, Hi, or Ai, hitherto occupied by the Druids, and there he
erected the monastery which, in time, became the mother of
three hundred religious houses. ... Iona, or I-Colum-kil, as
it was called by the Irish, came to be looked on as the chief
seat of learning, not only in Britain, but in the whole
Western world. 'Thither, as from a nest,' says Odonellus,
playing on the Latin name of the founder, 'these sacred doves
took their flight to every quarter.' They studied the
classics, the mechanical arts, law, history, and physic. They
improved the arts of husbandry and horticulture, supplied the
rude people whom they had undertaken to civilise with
ploughshares and other utensils of labour, and taught them the
use of the forge, in the mysteries of which every Irish monk
was instructed from his boyhood. They transferred to their new
homes all the learning of Armagh or Clonard. ... In every
college of Irish origin, by whomsoever they were founded or on
whatever soil they flourished, we thus see study blended with
the duties of the missionary and the cœnobite. They were
religious houses, no doubt, in which the celebration of the
Church office was often kept up without intermission by day
and night; but they were also seminaries of learning, wherein
sacred and profane studies were cultivated with equal success.
Not only their own monasteries but those of every European
country were enriched with their manuscripts, and the
researches of modern bibliopolists are continually
disinterring from German or Italian libraries a Horace, or an
Ovid, or a Sacred Codex whose Irish gloss betrays the hand
which traced its delicate letters."
A. T. Drane, Christian Schools and Scholars, chapter 2.
EDUCATION:
Charlemagne.
"If there ever was a man who by his mere natural endowments
soared above other men, it was Charlemagne. His life, like his
stature, was colossal. Time never seemed wanting to him for
anything that he willed to accomplish, and during his ten
years campaign against the Saxons and Lombards, he contrived
to get leisure enough to study grammar, and render himself
tolerably proficient as a Latin writer in prose and verse. He
found his tutors in the cities that he conquered. When he
became master of Pisa, he gained the services of Peter of
Pisa, whom he set over the Palatine school, which had existed
even under the Merovingian kings, though as yet it was far
from enjoying the fame to which it was afterwards raised by
the teaching of Alcuin. He possessed the art of turning
enemies into friends, and thus drew to his court the famous
historian, Paul Warnefrid, deacon of the Church of Rome, who
had previously acted as secretary to Didier, king of the
Lombards. ... Another Italian scholar, St. Paulinus, of
Aquileja, was coaxed into the service of the Frankish
sovereign after his conquest of Friuli; I will not say that he
was bought, but he was certainly paid for by a large grant of
confiscated territory made over by diploma to 'the Venerable
Paulinus, master of the art of grammar.' But none of these
learned personages were destined to take so large a part in
that revival of learning which made the glory of Charlemagne's
reign, as our own countryman Alcuin. It was in 781, on
occasion of the king's second visit to Italy, that the meeting
took place at Parma, the result of which was to fix the
English scholar at the Frankish court. Having obtained the
consent of his own bishop and sovereign to this arrangement,
Alcuin came over to France in 782, bringing with him several
of the best scholars of York, among whom were Wizo, Fredegis,
and Sigulf. Charlemagne received him with joy, and assigned
him three abbeys for the maintenance of himself and his
disciples, those namely, of Ferrières, St. Lupus of Troyes,
and St. Josse in Ponthieu. From this time Alcuin held the
first place in the literary society that surrounded the
Frankish sovereign, and filled an office the duties of which
were as vast as they were various. Three great works at once
claimed his attention, the correction of the liturgical books,
the direction of the court academy, and the establishment of
other public schools throughout the empire. ... But it was as
head of the Palatine school that Alcuin's influence was
chiefly to be felt in the restoration of letters. Charlemagne
presented himself as his first pupil, together with the three
princes, Pepin, Charles, and Louis, his sister Gisla and his
daughter Richtrude, his councillors Adalard and Angilbert, and
Eginhard his secretary. Such illustrious scholars soon found
plenty to imitate their example, and Alcuin saw himself called
on to lecture daily to a goodly crowd of bishops, nobles, and
courtiers. The king wished to transform his court into a new
Athens preferable to that of ancient Greece, in so far as the
doctrine of Christ is to be preferred to that of Plato. All
the liberal arts were to be taught there, but in such a way as
that each should bear reference to religion, for this was
regarded as the final end of of all learning. Grammar was
studied in order better to understand the Holy Scriptures and
to transcribe them more correctly; music, to which much
attention was given, was chiefly confined to the
ecclesiastical chant; and it was principally to explain the
Fathers and refute errors contrary to the faith that rhetoric
and dialectics were studied. 'In short,' says Crevier, 'the
thought both of the king and of the scholar who laboured with
him was to refer all things to religion, nothing being
considered as truly useful which did not bear some relation to
that end.' At first Alcuin allowed the study of the classic
poets, and in his boyhood, as we know, he had been a greater
reader of Virgil than of the Scriptures. ... The authors whose
study Charlemagne and Alcuin desired to promote, were not so
much Virgil and Cicero, as St. Jerome and St. Augustine; and
Charlemagne, in his excessive admiration of those Fathers,
gave utterance to the wish that he had a dozen such men at his
court. The 'City of God' was read at the royal table, and the
questions addressed by the court students to their master
turned rather on the obscurities of Holy Writ than the
difficulties of prosody. In one thing, however, they betrayed
a classic taste, and that was in their selection of names. The
Royal Academicians all rejoiced in some literary soubriquet;
Alcuin was Flaccus; Angilbert, Homer; but Charlemagne himself
adopted the more scriptural appellation of David. The
eagerness with which this extraordinary man applied himself to
acquire learning for himself, and to extend it throughout his
dominions, is truly admirable, when we remember the enormous
labours in which he was constantly engaged."
A. T. Drane, Christian Schools and Scholars, chapter 5.
See, also,
SCHOOL OF THE PALACE, CHARLEMAGNE'S,
{690}
EDUCATION: England
King Alfred.
King Alfred "gathered round him at his own court the sons of
his nobility to receive, in conjunction with his own children,
a better education than their parents would be able or willing
to give them in their own households. To this assemblage of
pupils Asser has attached the name of school, and a violent
controversy once distracted the literary world concerning the
sense in which the word was to be understood, and whether it
was not the beginning or origin of a learned institution still
existing. In speaking of this subject, Asser has taken
occasion to enumerate and describe the children who were born
to Alfred from his wife Elswitha, daughter of Ethelred the
'Big,' alderman of the Gaini, and a noble of great wealth and
influence in Mercia. 'The sons and daughters,' says Asser,
'which he had by his wife above mentioned, were Ethelfled the
eldest, after whom came Edward, then Ethelgiva, then
Ethelswitha, and Ethelwerd, besides those who died in their
infancy, one of whom was Edmund. Ethelfled, when she arrived
at a marriageable age, was united to Ethelred, earl of Mercia;
Ethelgiva was dedicated to God, and submitted to the rules of
a monastic life; Ethelwerd, the youngest, by the Divine
counsels and admirable prudence of the king, was consigned to
the schools of learning, where, with the children of almost
all the nobility of the country, and many also who were not
noble, he prospered under the diligent care of his teachers.
Books in both languages, namely, in Latin and Saxon, were read
in the school. They also learned to write; so that, before
they were of an age to practise manly arts, namely hunting and
such other pursuits as befit noblemen, they became studious
and clever in the liberal arts. Edward and Ethelswitha were
bred up in the king's court, and received great attention from
their servants and nurses; nay, they continue to this day,
with the love of all about them, and shew affability, and even
gentleness, towards all, both foreigners and natives, and are
in complete subjection to their father; nor, among their other
studies which appertain to this life and are fit for noble
youths, are they suffered to pass their time idly and
unprofitably, without learning the liberal arts; for they have
carefully learned the Psalms and Saxon books, especially the
Saxon Poems, and are continually in the habit of making use of
books.' The schools of learning, to which Asser alludes in
this passage, as formed for the use of the king's children and
the sons of his nobles, are again mentioned elsewhere by the
same author, as 'the school which he had studiously collected
together, consisting of many of the nobility of his own
nation:' and in a third passage, Asser speaks of the 'sons of
the nobility who were bred up in the royal household.' It is
clear, then, from these expressions, that the king's exertions
to spread learning among his nobles and to educate his own
children, were of a most active and personal nature,
unconnected with any institutions of a more public character:
the school was kept in his own household, and not in a public
seat of learning. We may perhaps adduce these expressions of
Asser as militating against the notion, that an University or
Public Seminary of Learning existed in the days of Alfred.
Though it is most probable that the several monasteries, and
other societies of monks and churchmen, would employ a portion
of their idle time in teaching youth, and prosecuting their
own studies; yet there is no proof that an authorized seat of
learning, such as the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge,
existed in England, until many hundred years after the time of
Alfred."
J. A. Giles, Life and Times of Alfred the Great, chapter 21.
EDUCATION:
Saracenic and Moorish learning.
"Even as early as the tenth century, persons having a taste
for learning and for elegant amenities found their way into
Spain from all adjoining countries; a practice in subsequent
years still more indulged in, when it became illustrated by
the brilliant success of Gilbert, who ... passed from the
Infidel University of Cordova to the papacy of Rome. The
khalifs of the West carried out the precepts of Ali, the
fourth successor of Mohammed, in the patronage of literature.
They established libraries in all their chief towns; it is
said that not fewer than seventy were in existence. To every
mosque was attached a public school, in which the children of
the poor were taught to read and write, and instructed in the
precepts of the Koran. For those in easier circumstances there
were academies, usually arranged in twenty-five or thirty
apartments, each calculated for accommodating four students;
the academy being presided over by a rector. In Cordova,
Granada, and other great cities, there were universities
frequently under the superintendence of Jews; the Mohammedan
maxim being that the real learning of a man is of more public
importance than any particular religious opinions he may
entertain. In this they followed the example of the Asiatic
khalif, Haroun Alraschid, who actually conferred the
superintendence of his schools on John Masué, a Nestorian
Christian. The Mohammedan liberality was in striking contrast
with the intolerance of Europe. ... In the universities some
of the professors of polite literature gave lectures on Arabic
classical works; others taught rhetoric or composition, or
mathematics, or astronomy. From these institutions many of the
practices observed in our colleges were derived. They held
Commencements, at which poems were read and orations delivered
in presence of the public. They had also, in addition to these
schools of general learning, professional ones, particularly
for medicine. With a pride perhaps not altogether inexcusable,
the Arabians boasted of their language as being the most
perfect spoken by man. ... It is not then surprising that, in
the Arabian schools, great attention was paid to the study of
language, and that so many celebrated grammarians were
produced. By these scholars, dictionaries, similar to those
now in use, were composed; their copiousness is indicated by
the circumstance that one of them consisted of sixty volumes,
the definition of each word being illustrated or sustained by
quotations from Arab authors of acknowledged repute. They had
also lexicons of Greek, Latin, Hebrew; and cyclopedias such as
the Historical Dictionary of Sciences of Mohammed Ibn
Abdallah, of Granada."
J. W. Draper, History of the Intellectual Development of
Europe, volume 2, chapter 2.
"The Saracenic kings formed libraries of unparalleled size and
number. That of Hakem amounted to 600,000 volumes, of which 44
were employed in the mere catalogue. Upwards of 70 public
libraries were established in his dominions. 100,000 volumes
were numbered in the library of Cairo, and were freely lent to
the studious citizen. The taste of the sovereign communicated
itself to the subject, and a private doctor declared that his
books were sufficient to load 400 camels.
{691}
Nor were the Saracens less attentive to the foundation
of schools and colleges. Eighty of the latter institutions
adorned Cordova in the reign of Hakem; in the fifteenth
century fifty were scattered over the city and plain of
Granada. 200,000 dinars (about £100,000 sterling) were
expended on the foundation of a single college at Baghdad. It
was endowed with an annual revenue of 15,000 dinars, and was
attended by 6,000 students. The princes of the house of Omeya
honoured the Spanish academies by their presence and studies,
and competed, not without success, for the prizes of learning.
Numerous schools for the purpose of elementary instruction
were founded by a long series of monarchs. ... In this manner
the Arabians, within two centuries, constructed an apparatus
for mental improvement which hitherto had not been equalled
save in Alexandria, and to which the Church, after ruling the
intellect of Europe for more than five hundred years, could
offer no parallel."
The Intellectual Revival of the Middle Ages
(Westminster Review, January, 1876).
EDUCATION:
Scholasticism.
Schoolmen.
In the later times of the Roman empire, "the loss of the
dignity of political freedom, the want of the cheerfulness of
advancing prosperity, and the substitution of the less
philosophical structure of the Latin language for the delicate
intellectual mechanism of the Greek, fixed and augmented the
prevalent feebleness and barrenness of intellect. Men forgot,
or feared, to consult nature, to seek for new truths, to do
what the great discoverers of other times had done; they were
content to consult libraries, to study and defend old
opinions, to talk of what great geniuses had said. They sought
their philosophy in accredited treatises, and dared not
question such doctrines as they there found. ... In the mean
time the Christian religion had become the leading subject of
men's thoughts; and divines had put forward its claims to be,
not merely the guide of men's lives, and the means of
reconciling them to their heavenly Master, but also to be a
Philosophy in the widest sense in which the term had been
used;--a consistent speculative view of man's condition and
nature, and of the world in which he is placed. ... It was
held, without any regulating principle, that the philosophy
which had been bequeathed to the world by the great geniuses
of heathen antiquity, and the philosophy which was deduced
from, and implied by, the Revelations made by God to man, must
be identical; and, therefore, that Theology is the only true
philosophy. ... This view was confirmed by the opinion which
prevailed, concerning the nature of philosophical truth; a
view supported by the theory of Plato, the practice of
Aristotle, and the general propensities of the human mind: I
mean the opinion that all science may be obtained by the use
of reasoning alone;--that by analyzing and combining the
notions which common language brings before us, we may learn
all that we can know. Thus Logic came to include the whole of
Science; and accordingly this Abelard expressly maintained.
... Thus a Universal Science was established, with the
authority of a Religious Creed. Its universality rested on
erroneous views of the relation of words and truth; its
pretensions as a science were admitted by the servile temper
of men's intellects; and its religious authority was assigned
it, by making all truth part of religion. And as Religion
claimed assent within her own jurisdiction under the most
solemn and imperative sanctions, Philosophy shared in her
imperial power, and dissent from their doctrines was no longer
blameless or allowable. Error became wicked, dissent became
heresy; to reject the received human doctrines, was nearly the
same as to doubt the Divine declarations. The Scholastic
Philosophy claimed the assent of all believers. The external
form, the details, and the text of this Philosophy, were
taken, in a great measure, from Aristotle; though, in the
spirit, the general notions, and the style of interpretation,
Plato and the Platonists had no inconsiderable share. ... It
does not belong to our purpose to consider either the
theological or the metaphysical doctrines which form so large
a portion of the treatises of the schoolmen. Perhaps it may
hereafter appear, that some light is thrown on some of the
questions which have occupied metaphysicians in all ages, by
that examination of the history of the Progressive Sciences in
which we are now engaged; but till we are able to analyze the
leading controversies of this kind, it would be of little
service to speak of them in detail. It may be noticed,
however, that many of the most prominent of them refer to the
great question, 'What is the relation between actual things
and general terms?' Perhaps in modern times, the actual things
would be more commonly taken as the point to start from; and
men would begin by considering how classes and universals are
obtained from individuals. But the schoolmen, founding their
speculations on the received modes of considering such
subjects, to which both Aristotle and Plato had contributed,
travelled in the opposite direction, and endeavored to
discover how individuals were deduced from genera and
species;--what was 'the Principle of Individuation.' This was
variously stated by different reasoners. Thus Bonaventura
solves the difficulty by the aid of the Aristotelian
distinction of Matter and Form. The individual derives from
the Form the property of being something, and from the Matter
the property of being that particular thing. Duns Scotus, the
great adversary of Thomas Aquinas in theology, placed the
principle of Individuation in 'a certain determining positive
entity,' which his school called Hæcceity or 'thisness.' 'Thus
an individual man is Peter, because his humanity is combined
with Petreity.' The force of abstract terms is a curious
question, and some remarkable experiments in their use had
been made by the Latin Aristotelians before this time. In the
same way in which we talk of the quantity and quality of a
thing, they spoke of its 'quiddity.' We may consider the reign
of mere disputation as fully established at the time of which
we are now speaking [the Middle Ages]; and the only kind of
philosophy henceforth studied was one in which no sound
physical science had or could have a place."
W. Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences,
book 4, chapter 4 (volume 1).
"Scholasticism was philosophy in the service of established
and accepted theological doctrines. ... More particularly,
Scholasticism was the reproduction of ancient philosophy under
the control of ecclesiastical doctrine. ... The name of
Scholastics (doctores scholastici) which was given to the
teachers of the septem liberales artes [seven liberal arts]
(grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, in the Trivium; arithmetic,
geometry, music and astronomy, in the Quadrivium), or at least
some of them, in the Cloister-Schools founded by Charlemagne,
as also to teachers of theology, was afterwards given to all
who occupied themselves with the sciences, and especially with
philosophy. ... Johannes Scotus, or Erigena [ninth century]
is the earliest noteworthy philosopher of the Scholastic
period. He was of Scottish nationality, but was probably born
and brought up in Ireland. At the call of Charles the Bald he
emigrated to France."
F. Ueberweg, History of Philosophy,
volume 1, pages 355-484.
{692}
"Scholasticism, at the last, from the prodigious mental
activity which it kept up, became a tacit universal
insurrection against authority: it was the swelling of the
ocean before the storm. ... It was a sign of a great awakening
of the human mind when theologians thought it both their duty
and their privilege to philosophize. There was a vast waste of
intellectual labor, but still it was intellectual labor, and,
as we shall see, it was not in the end unfruitful."
C. J. Stillé, Studies in Mediæval
History, chapter 13.
"Scholasticism had its hour of glory, its erudite doctors, its
eloquent professors, chief among whom was Abelard (1070-1142).
... At a time when printing did not exist, when manuscript
copies were rare, a teacher who combined knowledge with the
gift of speech was a phenomenon of incomparable interest, and
students flocked from all parts of Europe to take advantage of
his lectures. Abelard is the most brilliant representative of
the scholastic pedagogy, with an original and personal
tendency towards the emancipation of the mind. 'It is
ridiculous,' he said, 'to preach to others what we can neither
make them understand nor understand ourselves.' With more
boldness than Saint Anselm, he applied dialectics to theology,
and attempted to reason out the grounds of his faith. The
seven liberal arts constituted what may be called the
secondary instruction of the Middle Age, such as was given in
the claustral or conventual schools, and later, in the
universities. The liberal arts were distributed into two
courses of study, known as the 'trivium' and the 'quadrivium.'
The 'trivium' comprised grammar (Latin grammar, of course),
dialectics, or logic, and rhetoric; and the 'quadrivium,'
music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. It is important to
note the fact that this programme contains only abstract and
formal studies,--no real and concrete studies. The sciences
which teach us to know man and the world, such as history,
ethics, the physical and natural sciences, were omitted and
unknown, save perhaps in a few convents of the Benedictines.
Nothing which can truly educate man, and develop his faculties
as a whole, enlists the attention of the Middle Age. From a
course of study thus limited there might come skillful
reasoners and men formidable in argument, but never fully
developed men. The methods employed in the ecclesiastical
schools of the Middle Age were in accord with the spirit of
the times, when men were not concerned about liberty and
intellectual freedom; and when they thought more about the
teaching of dogmas than about the training of the
intelligence. The teachers recited or read their lectures, and
the pupils learned by heart. The discipline was harsh. Corrupt
human nature was distrusted. In 1363, pupils were forbidden
the use of benches and chairs, on the pretext that such high
seats were an encouragement to pride. For securing obedience,
corporal chastisements were used and abused. The rod is in
fashion in the fifteenth as it was in the fourteenth century.
'There is no other difference,' says an historian, 'except
that the rods in the fifteenth century are twice as long as
those in the fourteenth.'"
G. Compayré, The History of Pedagogy,
trans. by W. H. Payne, chapter 4.
EDUCATION: Universities, Their Rise.
Abelard.
"Up to the end of the eleventh century the instruction was,
speaking generally, and allowing for transitory periods of
revival, and for a few exceptional schools, a shrunken
survival of the old 'trivium et quadrivium.' The lessons, when
not dictated and learnt by heart from notes, were got up from
bald epitomes. All that was taught, moreover, was taught
solely with a view to 'pious uses.' Criticism did not exist;
the free spirit of speculation could not, of course, exist.
... As we approach the period which saw the birth of those
institutions known as Studia Publica or Generalia, and ere
long to be known as 'universities,' we have to extend our
vision and recognize the circumstances of the time, and those
changes in the social condition of Europe which made great
central schools possible--schools to be frequented not merely
by the young ecclesiastic, but by laymen. Among other causes
which led to the diffusion of a demand for education among the
laity, was, I think, the institution or reorganization of
municipalities. It was about the end of the eleventh century
that the civic Communes (Communia) began to seek and obtain,
from royal and other authorities, charters of incorporation
constituting their internal government and conferring certain
freedoms and privileges as against the encroachment of lay and
ecclesiastical feudal barons. ... About the same time, and
somewhat prior to this, trade guilds had been formed in many
cities for mutual protection, the advancement of commerce, and
the internal regulation of the various crafts. There
immediately followed a desire for schools in the more
important commercial towns. In Italy such schools arose in
Bologna, Milan, Brescia, and Florence; and in Germany they
arose in Lübeck, Hamburg, Breslau, Nordhausen, Stettin,
Leipsic, and Nürnberg. The distinctive characteristic of these
city schools was, that they do not seem to have been under the
direct control of the Church, or to have been always taught by
priests; further, that the native tongue (German or Italian,
as the case might be) was taught. Reading, writing, and a
little arithmetic seem to have formed the staple of the
instruction. The custom of dictating, writing down, and then
learning by heart what was written--universal in the schools
of the preceding centuries--was, of course, still followed in
these burgh schools. This custom was almost inevitable. ...
The increased communication with Africa and the East through
the Crusades had introduced men to a standard of learning
among the Arabs, unknown in Europe. Outside the school, the
order of chivalry had introduced a new and higher ethical
spirit than had been known in the previous centuries. Civic
communities and trade guilds were forming themselves and
seeking charters of incorporation. Above all; the Crusades, by
stimulating the ardour and exciting the intellects of men, had
unsettled old convention by bringing men of all ranks within
the sacred circle of a common enthusiasm, and into contact
with foreign civilizations.
{693}
The desire for a higher education, and the impulse to more
profound investigation, that characterized the beginning and
course of the twelfth century, was thus only a part of a
widespread movement, political and moral. ... While the
Romano-Hellenic schools had long disappeared, there still
existed, in many towns, episcopal schools of a high class,
many of which might be regarded as continuations of the old
imperial provincial institutions. ... In Bologna and Paris,
Rheims and Naples, it was so. The arts curriculum professed in
these centres was, for the time and state of knowledge, good.
These schools, indeed, had never quite lost the fresh impulse
given by Charlemagne and his successors. ... According to my
view of educational history, the great 'studia publica' or
'generalia' arose out of them. They were themselves, in a
narrow sense, already 'studia publica.' ... Looking, first, to
the germ out of which the universities grew, I think we must
say that the universities may be regarded as a natural
development of the cathedral and monastery schools; but if we
seek for an external motive force urging men to undertake the
more profound and independent study of the liberal arts, we
can find it only in the Saracenic schools of Bagdad, Babylon,
Alexandria, and Cordova. ... To fix precisely the date of the
rise of the first specialized schools or universities is
impossible, for the simple reason that they were not founded.
... The simplest account of the new university origins is the
most correct. It would appear that certain active-minded men
of marked eminence began to give instruction in medical
subjects at Salerno, and in law at Bologna, in a spirit and
manner not previously attempted, to youths who had left the
monastery and cathedral schools, and who desired to equip
themselves for professional life. Pupils flocked to them; and
the more able of these students, finding that there was a
public demand for this higher specialized instruction,
remained at headquarters, and themselves became teachers or
doctors. The Church did not found universities any more than
it founded the order of chivalry. They were founded by a
concurrence (not wholly fortuitous) of able men who had
something they wished to teach, and of youths who desired to
learn. None the less were the acquiescence and protection of
Church and State necessary in those days for the fostering of
these infant seminaries. ... Of the three great schools which
we have named, there is sufficient ground for believing that
the first to reach such a development as to entitle it to the
name of a studium generale or university was the 'Schola
Salernitana,' although it never was a university, technically
speaking."
S. S. Laurie, Rise and Early Constitution of
Universities, lectures 6-7.
"Ideas, till this time scattered, or watched over in the
various ecclesiastical schools, began to converge to a common
centre. The great name of University was recognised in the
capital of France, at the moment that the French tongue had
become almost universal. The conquests of the Normans, and the
first crusade, had spread its powerfully philosophic idiom in
every direction, to England, to Sicily, and to Jerusalem. This
circumstance alone invested France, central France, Paris,
with an immense attractive power. By degrees, Parisian French
became a proverb. Feudalism had found its political centre in
the royal city; and this city was about to become the capital
of human thought. The beginner of this revolution was not a
priest, but a handsome young man of brilliant talents, amiable
and of noble family. None wrote love verses, like his, in the
vulgar tongue; he sang them, too. Besides, his erudition was
extraordinary for that day. He alone, of his time, knew both
Greek and Hebrew. May be, he had studied at the Jewish schools
(there were many in the South), or under the rabbins of
Troyes, Vitry, or of Orleans. There were then in Paris two
leading schools: the old Episcopal school of the parvis Notre
Dame, and that of St. Geneviève, on the hill, where shone
William of Champeaux. Abelard joined his pupils, submitted to
him his doubts, puzzled him, laughed at him, and closed his
mouth. He would have served Anselm of Laon the same, had not
the professor, being a bishop, expelled him from his diocese.
In this fashion this knight-errant of logic went on, unhorsing
the most celebrated champions. He himself declared that he had
only renounced tilt and tourney through his passion for
intellectual combats. Henceforward, victorious and without a
rival, he taught at Paris and Melun, the residence of
Louis-le-Gros, and the lords flocked to hear him; anxious to
encourage one of themselves, who had discomfited the priests
on their own ground, and had silenced the ablest clerks.
Abelard's wonderful success is easily explained. All the lore
and learning which had been smothered under the heavy,
dogmatical forms of clerical instruction, and hidden in the
rude Latin of the middle age, suddenly appeared arrayed in the
simple elegance of antiquity, so that men seemed for the first
time to hear and recognise a human voice. The daring youth
simplified and explained everything; presenting philosophy in
a familiar form, and bringing it home to men's bosoms. He
hardly suffered the obscure or supernatural to rest on the
hardest mysteries of faith. It seemed as if till then the
Church had lisped and stammered; while Abelard spoke. All was
made smooth and easy. He treated religion courteously and
handled her gently, but she melted away in his hands. Nothing
embarrassed the fluent speaker: he reduced religion to
philosophy, and morality to humanity. 'Crime,' he said,
'consists not in the act, but in the intention.' It followed,
that there was no such thing as sins of habit or of
ignorance--'They who crucified Jesus, not knowing him to have
been the Saviour, were guilty of no sin.' What is original
sin?--'Less a sin, than a punishment.' But then, wherefore the
redemption and the passion, if there was no sin?--'It was an
act of pure love. God desired to substitute the law of love
for that of fear.'"
J. Michelet, History of France,
volume 1, book 4, chapter 4.
"It is difficult, by a mere perusal of Abelard's works, to
understand the effect he produced upon his hearers by the
force of his argumentation, whether studied or improvised, and
by the ardor and animation of his eloquence, and the grace and
attractiveness of his person. But the testimony of his
contemporaries is unanimous; even his adversaries themselves
render justice to his high oratorical qualities. No one ever
reasoned with more subtlety, or handled the dialectic tool
with more address; and assuredly, something of these qualities
is to be found in the writings he has left us. But the intense
life, the enthusiastic ardor which enlivened his discourses,
the beauty of his face, and the charm of his voice cannot be
imparted by cold manuscripts.
{694}
Héloise, whose name is inseparably linked with that of her
unfortunate husband, and whom Charles de Rémusat does not
hesitate to call 'the first of women'; who, in any case, was a
superior person of her time; Héloise, who loved Abelard with
'an immoderate love,' and who, under the veil of a
'religieuse' and throughout the practice of devotional duties,
remained faithful to him until death; Héloise said to him in
her famous letter of 1136: 'Thou hast two things especially
which could instantly win thee the hearts of all women: the
charm thou knowest how to impart to thy voice in speaking and
singing.' External gifts combined with intellectual qualities
to make of Abelard an incomparable seducer of minds and
hearts. Add to this an astonishing memory, a knowledge as
profound as was compatible with the resources of his time, and
a vast erudition which caused his contemporaries to consider
him a master of universal knowledge. ... How can one be
astonished that with such qualities Abelard gained an
extraordinary ascendency over his age; that, having become the
intellectual ruler and, as it were, the dictator of the
thought of the twelfth century, he should have succeeded in
attracting to his chair and in retaining around it thousands
of young men; the first germ of those assemblages of students
who were to constitute the universities several years later?
... It is not alone by the outward success of his scholastic
apostolate that Abelard merits consideration as the precursor
of the modern spirit and the promoter of the foundation of the
universities; it is also by his doctrine, or at least by his
method. ... No one claims that Abelard was the first who, in
the Middle Ages, had introduced dialectics into theology,
reason into authority. In the ninth century, Scotus Erigena
had already said: 'Authority is derived from reason.'
Scholasticism, which is nothing but logic enlightening
theology, an effort of reason to demonstrate dogma, had begun
before Abelard; but it was he who gave movement and life to
the method by lending it his power and his renown."
G. Compayré, Abelard, part 1, chapter 2-3.
EDUCATION: Latin Language.
"Greek was an unknown tongue: only a very few of the Latin
classics received a perfunctory attention: Boethius was
preferred to Cicero, and the Moral Sentences ascribed to Cato
to either. Rules couched in barbarous Latin verse were
committed to memory. Aristotle was known only in incorrect
Latin translations, which many of the taught, and some of the
teachers probably, supposed to be the originals. Matters were
not mended when the student, having passed through the
preliminary course of arts, advanced to the study of the
sciences. Theology meant an acquaintance with the 'Sentences'
of Peter Lombard, or, in other cases, with the 'Summa' of
Thomas Aquinas; in medicine, Galen was an authority from which
there was no appeal. On every side the student was fenced
round by traditions and prejudices, through which it was
impossible to break. In truth, he had no means of knowing that
there was a wider and fairer world beyond. Till the classical
revival came, every decade made the yoke of prescription
heavier, and each generation of students, therefore, a feebler
copy of the last."
C. Beard, Martin Luther and the Reformation, chapter 3.
"What at first had been everywhere a Greek became in Western
Europe a Latin religion. The discipline of Rome maintained the
body of doctrine which the thought of Greece had defined. A
new Latin version, superseding alike the venerable Greek
translation of the Old Testament and the original words of
Evangelists and Apostles, became the received text of Holy
Scripture. The Latin Fathers acquired an authority scarcely
less binding. The ritual, lessons, and hymns of the Church
were Latin. Ecclesiastics transacted the business of civil
departments requiring education. Libraries were armories of
the Church: grammar was part of her drill. The humblest
scholar was enlisted, in her service: she recruited her ranks
by founding Latin schools. 'Education in the rudiments of
Latin,' says Hallam, 'was imparted to a greater number of
individuals than at present;' and, as they had more use for it
than at present, it was longer retained. If a boy of humble
birth had a taste for letters, or if a boy of high birth had a
distaste for arms, the first step was to learn Latin. His foot

was then on the ladder. He might rise by the good offices of
his family to a bishopric, or to the papacy itself by merit
and the grace of God. Latin enabled a Greek from Tarsus
(Theodore) to become the founder of learning in the English
church; and a Yorkshireman (Alcuin) to organize the schools of
Charlemagne. Without Latin, our English Winfrid (St. Boniface)
could not have been apostle of Germany and reformer of the
Frankish Church; or the German Albert, master at Paris of
Thomas Aquinas; or Nicholas Breakspeare, Pope of Rome. With
it, Western Christendom was one vast field of labor: calls for
self-sacrifice, or offers of promotion, might come from north
or south, from east or west. Thus in the Middle Ages Latin was
made the groundwork of education; not for the beauty of its
classical literature, nor because the study of a dead language
was the best mental gymnastic, or the only means of acquiring
a masterly freedom in the use of living tongues, but because
it was the language of educated men throughout Western Europe,
employed for public business, literature, philosophy, and
science; above all, in God's providence, essential to the
unity, and therefore enforced by the authority of, the Western
Church."
C. S. Parker, Essay on the History of Classical Education
(quoted in Dr. Henry Barnard's "Letters, Essays and
Thoughts on Studies and Conduct," page 467).
EDUCATION: France.
"The countries of western Europe, leavened, all of them, by
the one spirit of the feudal and catholic Middle Age, formed
in some sense one community, and were more associated than
they have been since the feudal and catholic unity of the
Middle Age has disappeared and given place to the divided and
various life of modern Europe. In the mediæval community
France held the first place. It is now well known that to
place in the 15th century the revival of intellectual life and
the re-establishment of civilisation, and to treat the period
between the 5th century, when ancient civilisation was ruined
by the barbarians, and the 15th, when the life and intellect
of this civilisation reappeared and transformed the world, as
one chaos, is a mistake. The chaos ends about the 10th
century; in the 11th there truly comes the first
re-establishment of civilisation, the first revival of
intellectual life; the principal centre of this revival is
France, its chief monuments of literature are in the French
language, its chief monuments of art are the French cathedrals.
{695}
This revival fills the 12th and 13th centuries with its
activity and with its works; all this time France has the
lead; in the 14th century the lead passes to Italy; but now
comes the commencement of a wholly new period, the period of
the Renaissance properly so called, the beginning of modern
European life, the ceasing of the life of the feudal and
catholic Middle Age. The anterior and less glorious
Renaissance, the Renaissance within the limits of the Middle
Age itself, a revival which came to a stop and could not
successfully develop itself, but which has yet left profound
traces in our spirit and our literature,--this revival belongs
chiefly to France. France, then, may well serve as a typical
country wherein to trace the mediæval growth of intellect and
learning; above all she may so stand for us, whose connection
with her in the Middle Age, owing to our Norman kings and the
currency of her language among our cultivated class, was so
peculiarly close; so close that the literary and intellectual
development of the two countries at that time intermingles,
and no important event can happen in that of the one without
straightway affecting and interesting that of the other. ...
With the hostility of the long French Wars of Edward the Third
comes the estrangement, never afterwards diminishing but
always increasing."
M. Arnold, Schools and Universities on the Continent,
chapter 1.
EDUCATION:
University of Paris.
"The name of Abelard recalls the European celebrity and
immense intellectual ferment of this school [of Paris] in the
12th century. But it was in the first year of the following
century, the 13th, that it received a charter from Philip
Augustus, and thenceforth the name of University of Paris
takes the place of that of School of Paris. Forty-nine years
later was founded University College, Oxford, the oldest
college of the oldest English University. Four nations
composed the University of Paris,--the nation of France, the
nation of Picardy, the nation of Normandy, and (signal mark of
the close intercourse which then existed between France and
us!) the nation of England. The four nations united formed the
faculty of arts. The faculty of theology was created in 1257,
that of law in 1271, that of medicine in 1274. Theology, law,
and medicine had each their Dean; arts had four Procurators,
one for each of the four nations composing this faculty. Arts
elected the rector of the University, and had possession of
the University chest and archives. The preeminence of the
Faculty of Arts indicates, as indeed does the very development
of the University, an idea, gradually strengthening itself, of
a lay instruction to be no longer absorbed in theology, but
separable from it. The growth of a lay and modern spirit in
society, the preponderance of the crown over the papacy, of
the civil over the ecclesiastical power, is the great feature
of French history in the 14th century, and to this century
belongs the highest development of the University. ... The
importance of the University in the 13th and 14th centuries
was extraordinary. Men's minds were possessed with a wonderful
zeal for knowledge, or what was then thought knowledge, and
the University of Paris was the great fount from which this
knowledge issued. The University and those depending on it
made at this time, it is said, actually a third of the
population of Paris; when the University went on a solemn
occasion in procession to Saint Denis, the head of the
procession, it is said, had reached St. Denis before the end
of it had left its starting place in Paris. It had immunities
from taxation, it had jurisdiction of its own, and its members
claimed to be exempt from that of the provost of Paris; the
kings of France strongly favoured the University, and leaned
to its side when the municipal and academical authorities were
in conflict; if at any time the University thought itself
seriously aggrieved, it had recourse to a measure which threw
Paris into dismay,--it shut up its schools and suspended its
lectures. In a body of this kind the discipline could not be
strict, and the colleges were created to supply centres of
discipline which the University in itself,--an apparatus
merely of teachers and lecture-rooms,--did not provide. The
14th century is the time when, one after another, with
wonderful rapidity, the French colleges appeared. Navarre,
Montaigu, Harcourt, names so familiar in the school annals of
France, date from the first quarter of the 14th century. The
College of Navarre was founded by the queen of Philip the
Fair, in 1304; the College of Montaigu, where Erasmus,
Rabelais, and Ignatius Loyola were in their time students, was
founded in 1314 by two members of the family of Montaigu, one
of them Archbishop of Rouen. The majority of these colleges
were founded by magnates of the church, and designed to
maintain a certain number of bursars, or scholars, during
their university course. ... Along with the University of
Paris there existed in France, in the 14th century, the
Universities of Orleans, Angers, Toulouse, and Montpellier.
Orleans was the great French school for the study of the civil
law. ... The civil law was studiously kept away from the
University of Paris, for fear it should drive out other
studies, and especially the study of theology; so late as the
year 1679 there was no chair of Roman or even of French law in
the University of Paris. The strength of this University was
concentrated on theology and arts, and its celebrity arose
from the multitude of students which in these branches of
instruction it attracted."
M. Arnold, Schools and Universities on the Continent,
chapter 1.
EDUCATION:
The Sorbonne.
The University of Paris acquired the name of "the Sorbonne"
"from Robert of Sorbon, aulic chaplain of St. Louis, who
established one of the 63 colleges of the University. ... The
name of Sorbonne was first applied to the theological faculty
only; but at length the whole University received this
designation."
J. Alzog, Manual of Universal Church History,
volume 3, page 24, foot-note.
EDUCATION:
The Nations.
"The precise date of the organization at Paris of the four
Nations which maintained themselves there until the latest
days of the university escapes the most minute research.
Neither for the Nations nor for the Faculties was there any
sudden blossoming, but rather a slow evolution, an insensible
preparation for a definite condition. Already at the close of
the twelfth century there is mention in contemporary documents
of the various provinces of the school of Paris. The Nations
are mentioned in the bulls of Gregory IX. (1231) and of
Innocent IV. (1245). In 1245, they already elect their
attendants, the beadles. In 1249, the existence of the four
Nations--France, Picardy, Normandy, and England--is proved by
their quarrels over the election of a rector. ... Until the
definitive constitution of the Faculties, that is, until 1270
or 1280, the four Nations included the totality of students
and masters.
{696}
After the formation of the Faculties, the four Nations
comprised only the members of the Faculty of Arts and those
students of other Faculties who had not yet obtained the grade
of Bachelor of Arts. The three superior Faculties, Theology,
Medicine, and Law, had nothing in common thenceforward with
the Nations. ... At Bologna, as at Paris, the Nations were
constituted in the early years of the thirteenth century, but
under a slightly different form. There the students were
grouped in two distinct associations, the Ultramontanes and
the Citramontanes, the foreigners and the Italians, who formed
two universities, the Transalpine and the Cisalpine, each with
its chiefs, who were not styled procurators but counsellors;
the first was composed of eighteen Nations and the second of
seventeen. At Padua twenty-two Nations were enumerated.
Montpellier had only three in 1339,--the Catalans, the
Burgundians, the Provençals; each sub-divided, however, into
numerous groups. Orleans had ten: France, Germany, Lorraine,
Burgundy, Champagne, Picardy, Normandy, Touraine, Guyanne, and
Scotland; Poitiers had four: France, Aquitaine, Touraine, and
Berry; Prague had four also, in imitation of Paris; Lerida had
twelve, in imitation of Bologna, etc. But whether more or less
numerous, and whatever their special organization, the Nations
in all the universities bore witness to that need of
association which is one of the characteristics of the Middle
Ages. ... One of the consequences of their organization was to
prevent the blending and fusion of races, and to maintain the
distinction of provinces and nationalities among the pupils of
the same university."
G. Compayré, Abelard, part 2, chapter 2.
EDUCATION: Italy
Revived Study of Roman Law.
"It is known that Justinian established in Rome a school of
law, similar to those of Constantinople and Berytus. When Rome
ceased to be subject to Byzantine rule, this law-school seems
to have been transferred to Ravenna, where it continued to keep
alive the knowledge of the Justinian system. That system
continued to be known and used, from century to century, in a
tradition never wholly interrupted, especially in the free
cities of Northern Italy. It seems even to have penetrated
beyond Italy into Southern France. But it was destined to
have, at the beginning of the twelfth century, a very
extraordinary revival. This revival was part of a general
movement of the European mind which makes its appearance at
that epoch. The darkness which settled down on the world, at
the time of the barbarian invasions, had its midnight in the
ninth and tenth centuries. In the eleventh, signs of progress
and improvement begin to show themselves, becoming more
distinct towards its close, when the period of the Crusades
was opening upon Europe. Just at this time we find a famous
school of law established in Bologna, and frequented by
multitudes of pupils, not only from all parts of Italy, but
from Germany, France, and other countries. The basis of all
its instruction was the Corpus Juris Civilis [see CORPUS JURIS
CIVILIS]. Its teachers, who constitute a series of
distinguished jurists extending over a century and a half,
devoted themselves to the work of expounding the text and
elucidating the principles of the Corpus Juris, and especially
the Digest. From the form in which they recorded and handed
down the results of their studies, they have obtained the name
of glossators. On their copies of the Corpus Juris they were
accustomed to write glosses, i. e., brief marginal
explanations and remarks. These glosses came at length to be
an immense literature. ... Here, then, in this school of the
glossators, at Bologna, in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, the awakened mind of Europe was brought to
recognize the value of the Corpus Juris, the almost
inexhaustible treasure of juristic principles, precepts,
conceptions, reasonings, stored up in it."
Jas. Hadley, Introduction to Roman Law, lecture 2.
EDUCATION: Italy
University of Bologna.
"In the twelfth century the law school of the University of
Bologna eclipsed all others in Europe. The two great branches
of legal study in the middle ages, the Roman law and the canon
law, began in the teaching of Irnerius and Gratian at Bologna
in the first half of the twelfth century. At the beginning of
this century the name of university first replaces that of
school; and it is said that the great university degree, that
of doctor, was first instituted at Bologna, and that the
ceremony for conferring it was devised there. From Bologna the
degree and its ceremonial travelled to Paris. A bull of Pope
Honorius, in 1220, says that the study of 'bomæ literæ' had at
that time made the city of Bologna famous throughout the
world. Twelve thousand students from all parts of Europe are
said to have been congregated there at once. The different
nations had their colleges, and of colleges at Bologna there
were fourteen. These were founded and endowed by the
liberality of private persons; the university professors, the
source of attraction to this multitude of students, were paid
by the municipality, who found their reward in the fame,
business, and importance brought to their town by the
university. The municipalities of the great cities of northern
and central Italy were not slow in following the example of
Bologna; in the thirteenth century Padua, Modena, Piacenza,
Parma, Ferrara, had each its university. Frederick II. founded
that of Naples in 1224; in the fourteenth century were added
those of Pavia, Perugia, Pisa, and Turin. Colleges of
examiners, or, as we should say, boards, were created by Papal
bull to examine in theology, and by imperial decree to examine
in law and medicine. It was in these studies of law and
medicine that the Italian universities were chiefly
distinguished."
M. Arnold, Schools and Universities
on the Continent, chapter 9.
"The Bologna School of jurisprudence was several times
threatened with total extinction. In the repeated difficulties
with the city the students would march out of the town, bound
by a solemn oath not to return; and if a compromise was to be
effected, a papal dispensation from that oath must first be
obtained. Generally on such occasions, the privileges of the
university were reaffirmed and often enlarged. In other cases,
a quarrel between the pope and the city, and the ban placed
over the latter, obliged the students to leave; and then the
city often planned and furthered the removal of the
university. King Frederic II., in 1226, during the war against
Bologna, dissolved the school of jurisprudence, which seems to
have been not at all affected thereby, and he formally
recalled that ordinance in the following year. Originally the
only school in Bologna was the school of jurisprudence, and in
connection with it alone a university could be formed. ....
Subsequently eminent teachers of medicine and the liberal arts
appeared, and their pupils, too, sought to form a university
and to choose their own rector.
{697}
As late as 1295 this innovation was disputed by the jurists
and interdicted by the city, so that they had to connect
themselves with the university of jurisprudence. But a few
years later we find them already in possession again of a few
rectors, and in 1316 their right was formally recognized in a
compromise between the university of jurisprudence and the
city. The students called themselves 'philosophi et medici' or
'physici'; also by the common name of 'artistæ.' Finally a
school of theology, founded by pope Innocent VI., was added in
the second half of the 14th century; it was placed under the
bishop, and organized in imitation of the school at Paris, so
that it was a 'universitas magistrorum,' not 'scholarium.' As,
however, by this arrangement the students of theology in the
theological university had no civil privileges of their own,
they were considered individually as belonging to the
'artistæ.' From this time Bologna had four universities, two
of jurisprudence, the one of medicine and philosophy, and the
theological, the first two having no connection with the
others, forming a unit, and therefore frequently designated as
one university."
F. C. Savigny, The Universities of the Middle Ages
(Barnard's American Journal of Education,
volume 22, pages 278-279).
EDUCATION:
Other Universities.
"The oldest and most frequented university in Italy, that of
Bologna, is represented as having flourished in the twelfth
century. Its prosperity in early times depended greatly on the
personal conduct of the principal professors, who, when they
were not satisfied with their entertainment, were in the habit
of seceding with their pupils to other cities. Thus high
schools were opened from time to time in Modena, Reggio, and
elsewhere by teachers who broke the oaths that bound them to
reside in Bologna, and fixed their centre of education in a
rival town. To make such temporary changes was not difficult
in an age when what we have to call an university, consisted
of masters and scholars, without college buildings, without
libraries, without endowments, and without scientific
apparatus. The technical name for such institutions seems to
have been 'studium scholarium,' Italianised into 'studio' or
'studio pubblico.' Among the more permanent results of these
secessions may be mentioned the establishment of the high
school at Vicenza by translation from Bologna in 1204, and the
opening of a school at Arezzo under similar circumstances in
1215; the great University of Padua first saw the light in
consequence of political discords forcing the professors to
quit Bologna for a season. The first half of the thirteenth
century witnessed the foundation of these 'studi' in
considerable numbers. That of Vercelli was opened in 1228, the
municipality providing two certified copyists for the
convenience of students who might wish to purchase textbooks.
In 1224 the Emperor Frederick II., to whom the south of Italy
owed a precocious eminence in literature, established the
University of Naples by an Imperial diploma. With a view to
rendering it the chief seat of learning in his dominions, he
forbade the subjects of the Regno to frequent other schools,
and suppressed the University of Bologna by letters general.
Thereupon Bologna joined the Lombard League, defied the
Emperor, and refused to close the schools, which numbered at
that period about ten thousand students of various
nationalities. In 1227 Frederick revoked his edict, and
Bologna remained thenceforward unmolested. Political and
internal vicissitudes, affecting all the Italian universities
at this period, interrupted the prosperity of that of Naples.
In the middle of the thirteenth century Salerno proved a
dangerous rival. ... An important group of 'studi pubblici'
owed their origin to Papal or Imperial charters in the first
half of the fourteenth century. That of Perugia was founded in
1307 by a Bull of Clement V. That of Rome dated from 1303, in
which year Boniface VIII. gave it a constitution by a special
edict; but the translation of the Papal See to Avignon caused
it to fall into premature decadence. The University of Pisa
had already existed for some years, when it received a charter
in 1343 from Clement VI. That of Florence was first founded in
1321. ... The subjects taught in the high schools were Canon
and Civil Law, Medicine, and Theology. These faculties,
important for the professional education of the public, formed
the staple of the academical curriculum. Chairs of Rhetoric,
Philosophy, and Astronomy were added according to occasion,
the last sometimes including the study of judicial astrology.
If we enquire how the humanists or professors of classic
literature were related to the universities, we find that, at
first at any rate, they always occupied a second rank. The
permanent teaching remained in the hands of jurists, who
enjoyed life engagements at a high rate of pay, while the
Latinists and Grecians could only aspire to the temporary
occupation of the Chair of Rhetoric, with salaries
considerably lower than those of lawyers or physicians."
J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: the Revival of
Learning, chapter 3.
"Few of the Italian universities show themselves in their full
vigour till the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when the
increase of wealth rendered a more systematic care for
education possible. At first there were generally three sorts
of professorships--one for civil law, another for canonical
law, the third for medicine; in course of time professorships
of rhetoric, of philosophy, and of astronomy were added, the
last commonly, though not always, identical with astrology.
The salaries varied greatly in different cases. Sometimes a
capital sum was paid down. With the spread of culture
competition became so active that the different universities
tried to entice away distinguished teachers from one another,
under which circumstances Bologna is said to have sometimes
devoted the half of its public income (20,000 ducats) to the
university. The appointments were as a rule made only for a
certain time, sometimes for only half a year, so that the
teachers were forced to lead a wandering life, like actors.
Appointments for life were, however, not unknown. ... Of the
chairs which have been mentioned, that of rhetoric was
especially sought by the humanist; yet it depended only on his
familiarity with the matter of ancient learning whether or no
he could aspire to those of law, medicine, philosophy, or
astronomy. The inward conditions of the science of the day
were as variable as the outward conditions of the teacher.
Certain jurists and physicians received by far the largest
salaries of all, the former chiefly as consulting lawyers for
the suits and claims of the state which employed them. ...
{698}
Personal intercourse between the teachers and the taught,
public disputations, the constant use of Latin and often of
Greek, the frequent changes of lecturers and the scarcity of
books, gave the studies of that time a colour which we cannot
represent to ourselves without effort. There were Latin
schools in every town of the least importance, not by any
means merely as preparatory to higher education, but because,
next to reading, writing, and arithmetic, the knowledge of
Latin was a necessity; and after Latin came logic. It is to be
noted particularly that these schools did not depend on the
Church, but on the municipality; some of them, too, were
merely private enterprises. This school system, directed by a
few distinguished humanists, not only attained a remarkable
perfection of organisation, but became an instrument of higher
education in the modern sense of the phrase."
J. Burckhardt, The Civilisation of the Period
of the Renaissance in Italy, volume 1, part 3, chapter 5.
EDUCATION: Germany.
Prague and its Offspring.
"The earliest university in Germany was that of Prague. It was
in 1348, under the Emperor Charles IV., when the taste for
letters had revived so signally in Europe, when England may be
said to have possessed her two old universities already for
three centuries, Paris her Sorbonne already for four, that
this university was erected as the first of German
Universities. The idea originated in the mind of the Emperor,
who was educated in Paris, at the university of that town, and
was eagerly taken up by the townspeople of that ancient and
wealthy city, for they foresaw that affluence would shower
upon them if they could induce a numerous crowd of students to
flock together within their walls. But the Pope and the
Emperor took an active part in favouring and authorizing the
institution; they willingly granted to it wide privileges, and
made it entirely independent of Church and State. The teaching
of the professors, and the studies of the students, were
submitted to no control whatever. After the model of the
University of Paris, they divided themselves into different
faculties, and made four such divisions--one for divinity,
another for medical science, a third for law, and a fourth for
philosophy. The last order comprised those who taught and
learned the fine arts and the sciences, which two departments
were separate at Sorbonne. All the German universities have
preserved this outward constitution, and in this, as in many
other circumstances, the precedent of Prague has had a
prevailing influence on her younger sister institutions. The
same thing may be said particularly of the disciplinary tone
of the university. In other countries, universities sprang
from rigid clerical and monastic institutions, or bore a more
or less ecclesiastical character which imposed upon them
certain more retired habits, and a severer kind of discipline.
Prague took from the beginning a course widely different. The
students, who were partly Germans, partly of Slavonian blood,
enjoyed a boundless liberty. They lodged in the houses of the
townspeople, and by their riches, their mental superiority,
and their number (they are recorded to have been as many as
twenty thousand in the year 1409), became the undisputed
masters of the city. The professors and the inhabitants of
Prague, far from checking them, rather protected the
prerogatives of the students, for they found out that all
their prosperity depended on them. ... Not two generations had
passed since the erection of an institution thus constituted,
before Huss and Jerome of Prague began to teach the necessity
of an entire reformation of the Church. The phenomenon is
characteristic of the bold spirit of inquiry that must have
grown up at the new University. However, the political
consequences that attended the promulgation of such doctrines
led almost to the dissolution of the University itself. For,
the German part of the students broke up, in consequence of
repeated and serious quarrels that had taken place with the
Bohemian and Slavonic party, and went to Leipzig, where
straightway a new and purely German University was erected.
While Prague became the seat of a protracted and sanguinary
war, a great number of Universities rose into existence around
it, and attracted the crowds that had formerly flocked to the
Bohemian capital. It appeared as if Germany, though it had
received the impulse from abroad, would leave all other
countries behind itself in the erection and promotion of these
learned institutions, for all the districts of the land vied
with each other in creating universities. Thus arose those of
Rostock, Ingolstadt, Vienna, Heidelberg, Cologne, Erfurt,
Tübingen, Greifswalde, Trèves, Mayence and Bâles-schools which
have partly disappeared again during the political storms of
subsequent ages. The beginning of the sixteenth century added
to them one at Frankfort on the Oder, and another, the most
illustrious of all, Wittenberg. Everyone who is acquainted
with the history and origin of the Reformation, knows what an
important part the latter of these universities took in the
weighty transactions of those times. ... Wittenberg remained
by no means the only champion of Protestantism. At Marburg,
Jena, Königsberg, and Helmstadt, universities of a professedly
Protestant character were erected. These schools became the
cradle and nurseries of the Reformation."
The Universities of Germany
(Dublin University Magazine, volume 46, pages 83-85).
"The German universities of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries were founded in the following order: Prague, 1348;
Vienna, 1388; Erfurt, 1392; Leipsic, 1409; Rostock, 1419;
Greifswald, 1456; Freiburg, 1457; Ingolstadt, 1472; Tübingen,
1477; and Mayence, 1477. Thus, it will be seen that they were
established in quick succession--an unmistakable proof of the
growing scientific interest of the age."
F. V. N. Painter, History of Education,
chapter 3, section 5 (k).
EDUCATION: Netherlands.
"Tradition reports that a school had ... been founded at
Utrecht, by some zealous missionary, in the time of Charles
Martel, at which his son Pepin received his education. However
this may have been, the renown of the Utrecht School of St.
Martin is of very ancient date. ... During the invasion by the
Normans, this school at Utrecht was suppressed, but was
reëstablished in 917, and regained its former renown. The
Emperor, Henry the Fowler, placed here his three sons, Otto,
Henry and Bruno, to be educated, of whom the last became
afterward archbishop of Cologne and archduke of Lottringen,
and was noted for his extraordinary learning and friendship
for the poet Prudentius. At the beginning of the 12th century,
Utrecht possessed no less than five flourishing schools,
several of which had each a 'rector' in addition to the
priests who had the general control. At about the same time,
several convents became distinguished as educational
institutions, especially those of Egmond, Nymwegen,
Middleburg, in Zealand, and Aduwert, near Gröningen.
{699}
In Holland, as in Belgium, in addition to the schools that
were attached to the cathedrals, convents, and chapters, there
were established in the course of the twelfth century, by the
more wealthy communities, public schools especially designed
for the instruction of the citizens and laity. It is also
worthy of notice that the authority to open such schools was
always derived from the counts--by whom it was conferred,
sometimes upon the cities as an especial privilege, and
sometimes upon merely private persons as a mark of particular
favor. The jurisdiction of the feudal lords was the same here
as in Belgium; but while in the latter country, with the
exception perhaps of the elementary schools in some of the
cities, the right of supervision everywhere devolved upon the
chapters, instruction in these public schools of Holland was
wholly withdrawn from the clergy, and they were made
essentially secular in their character. The privilege of thus
establishing schools was conferred upon some of the cities at
the following dates:
Dort, by Count Floris V., A. D. 1290;
the Hague, 1322;
Leyden, 1324;
and Rotterdam in 1328, by William III.;
Delft and Amsterdam, in 1334, by William IV.;
Leyden again, 1357;
Haarlem, 1389;
Alkmar, 1398;
Hoorn, 1358 and 1390;
the Hague, 1393;
Schiedam and Ondewater, 1394;
and Rotterdam, in 1402, by Albert of Bavaria.
These schools, adds Stallaert, on the authority of Buddingh,
were generally styled 'School en Schryfambacht,' 'Schoole en
Kostern,' (school and writing offices, schools and clerks'
houses,) and the 'Schoolmijsters' (school-masters) were looked
upon as professional men or craftsmen--as was the case also in
Belgium, where they formed distinct guilds and fraternities.
These public schools of Holland were divided into 'large' and
'small' schools, (groote en bijschoolen,) Latin being taught
in the first division. The institution at Zwolle, attained
special notoriety in the fourteenth century, under the
direction of the celebrated Johan Cele. According to Thomas à
Kempis and Ten Bussche, its pupils numbered about a thousand,
gathered from Holland, Belgium, and the principal provinces of
Germany."
Public Instruction in Holland
(Barnard's American Journal of Education, volume 14).
EDUCATION: England.
Early Oxford.
"The University of Oxford did not spring into being in any
particular year, or at the bidding of any particular founder:
it was not established by any formal charter of incorporation.
Taking its rise in a small and obscure association of teachers
and learners, it developed spontaneously into a large and
important body, long before its existence was recognised by
prince or by prelate. There were certainly schools at Oxford
in the reign of Henry I., but the previous history of the
place does not throw much light on their origin, or explain
the causes of their popularity. The town seems to have grown
up under the shadow of a nunnery, which is said to have been
founded by St. Frideswyde as far back as the eighth century.
Its authentic annals, however, begin with the year 912, when
it was occupied and annexed by Edward the Elder, King of the
West Saxons. ... Oxford was considered a place of great
strategical importance in the eleventh century. Its position
on the borders of Mercia and Wessex rendered it also,
particularly convenient for parleys between Englishmen and
Danes, and for great national assemblies. ... Retaining for a
while its rank as one of the chief centres of political life
in the south of England, and as a suitable meeting-place for
parliaments and synods, Oxford became thenceforward more and
more distinctively known as a seat of learning and a nursery
of clerks. The schools which existed at Oxford before the
reign of King John, are so seldom and so briefly noticed in
contemporary records, that it would be difficult to show how
they developed into a great university, if it were not for the
analogy of kindred institutions in other countries. There can
be little doubt, however, that the idea of a university, the
systems of degrees and faculties, and the nomenclature of the
chief academical officers, were alike imported into England
from abroad. ... In the earliest and broadest sense of the
term, a university had no necessary connexion with schools or
literature, being merely a community of individuals bound
together by some more or less acknowledged tie. Regarded
collectively in this light, the inhabitants of any particular
town might be said to constitute a university, and in point of
fact the Commonalty of the townsmen of Oxford was sometimes
described as a university in formal documents of the middle
ages. The term was, however, specially applied to the whole
body of persons frequenting the schools of a large studium.
Ultimately it came to be employed in a technical sense as
synonymous with studium, to denote the institution itself.
This last use of the term seems to be of English origin, for
the University of Oxford is mentioned as such in writs and
ordinances of the years 1238, 1240, and 1253, whereas the
greater seat of learning on the banks of the Seine was, until
the year 1263, styled 'the University of the Masters,' or 'the
University of the Scholars,' of Paris. The system of
academical degrees dates from the second half of the twelfth
century."
H. C. M. Lyte, A History of the University
of Oxford, chapter 1.
"In the early Oxford ... of the twelfth and most of the
thirteenth centuries, colleges with their statutes were
unknown. The University was the only corporation of the
learned, and she struggled into existence after hard fights
with the town, the Jews, the Friars, the Papal courts. The
history of the University begins with the thirteenth century.
She may be said to have come into being as soon as she
possessed common funds and rents, as soon as fines were
assigned, or benefactions contributed to the maintenance of
scholars. Now the first recorded fine is the payment of
fifty-two shillings by the townsmen of Oxford as part of the
compensation for the hanging of certain clerks. In the year
1214 the Papal Legate, in a letter to his 'beloved sons in
Christ, the burgesses of Oxford,' bade them excuse the
'scholars studying in Oxford' half the rent of their halls, or
hospitia, for the space of ten years. The burghers were also
to do penance, and to feast the poorer students once a year;
but the important point is, that they had to pay that large
yearly fine 'propter suspendium clericorum'--all for the
hanging of the clerks. Twenty-six years after this decision of
the Legate, Robert Grossteste, the great Bishop of Lincoln,
organized the payment and distribution of the fine, and
founded the first of the chests, the chest of St. Frideswyde.
{700}
These chests were a kind of Mont de Piété, and to found them
was at first the favourite form of benefaction. Money was left
in this or that chest, from which students and masters would
borrow, on the security of pledges, which were generally
books, cups, daggers, and so forth. Now, in this affair of
1214 we have a strange passage of history, which happily
illustrates the growth of the University. The beginning of the
whole affair was the quarrel with the town, which in 1209, had
hanged two clerks, 'in contempt of clerical liberty.' The
matter was taken up by the Legate--in those bad years of King
John, the Pope's viceroy in England--and out of the
humiliation of the town the University gained money,
privileges, and halls at low rental. These were precisely the
things that the University wanted. About these matters there
was a constant strife, in which the Kings as a rule, took part
with the University. ... Thus gradually the University got the
command of the police, obtained privileges which enslaved the
city, and became masters where they had once been despised,
starveling scholars. ... The result, in the long run, was that
the University received from Edward III. 'a most large
charter, containing many liberties, some that they had before,
and others that he had taken away from the town.' Thus Edward
granted to the University 'the custody of the assize of bread,
wine, and ale,' the supervising of measures and weights, the
sole power of clearing the streets of the town and suburbs.
Moreover, the Mayor and the chief Burghers were condemned
yearly to a sort of public penance and humiliation on St.
Scholastica's Day. Thus, by the middle of the fourteenth
century, the strife of Town and Gown had ended in the complete
victory of the latter."
A. Lang, Oxford, chapter 2.
"To mark off the Middle Age from the Modern Period of the
University is certainly very difficult. Indeed the earlier
times do not form a homogeneous whole, but appear perpetually
shifting and preparing for a new state. The main transition
however was undoubtedly about the middle of the fourteenth
century; and the Reformation, a remarkable crisis, did but
confirm what had been in progress for more than a century and
a half: so that the Middle Age of the University contained the
thirteenth century, and barely the former half of the
fourteenth. ... There is no question, that during this Middle
Age the English Universities were distinguished far more than
ever afterwards by energy and variety of intellect. Later
times cannot produce a concentration of men eminent in all the
learning and science of the age, such as Oxford and Cambridge
then poured forth, mightily influencing the intellectual
development of all Western Christendom. Their names indeed may
warn us against an undiscriminating disparagement of the
Monasteries, as 'hotbeds of ignorance and stupidity'; when so
many of those worthies were monks of the Benedictine,
Franciscan, Dominican, Carmelite, or reformed Augustinian
order. But in consequence of this surpassing celebrity, Oxford
became the focus of a prodigious congregation of students, to
which nothing afterwards bore comparison. The same was
probably true of Cambridge in relative proportion. ... A
tolerably well authenticated account, attacked of late by
undue scepticism, fixes [the number of] those of Oxford at
thirty thousand, in the middle of the thirteenth century. The
want indeed of contemporary evidence must make us cautious of
yielding absolute belief to this: in fact we have no document
on this matter even as old as the Reformation. ... Not only
did the Church and the new orders of Monks draw great numbers
thither, but the Universities themselves were vast High
Schools, comprising boys and even children. It is not
extravagant, if Cambridge was not yet in great repute, to
imagine fifteen thousand students of all ages at Oxford, and
as many more attendants. Nor was it at all difficult to
accommodate them in the town, when Oxford contained three
hundred Halls and Inns: and as several students dwelt in one
room, and were not careful for luxury, each building on an
average might easily hold one hundred persons. The style of
Architecture was of the simplest and cheapest kind, and might
have been easily run up on a sudden demand: and a rich flat
country, with abundant water carriage, needed not to want
provisions. That the numbers were vast, is implied by the
highly respectable evidence which we have, that as many as
three thousand migrated from Oxford on the riots of 1209;
although the Chronicler expressly states that not all joined
in the secession. In the reign of Henry III. the reduced
numbers are reckoned at fifteen thousand. After the middle of
the fourteenth century, they were still as many as from three
to four thousand; and after the Reformation they mount again
to five thousand. On the whole therefore the computation of
thirty thousand, as the maximum, may seem, if not positively
true, yet the nearest approximation which we can expect. Of
Cambridge we know no more than that the numbers were much
lower than at Oxford. ... While in the general, there was a
substantial identity between the scholastic learning of Oxford
and of Paris, yet Oxford was more eager in following positive
science:--and this, although such studies were disparaged by
the Church, and therefore by the public. Indeed originally the
Church had been on the opposite side; but the speculative
tendency of the times had carried her over, so that
speculation and theology went hand in hand. In the middle of
the thirteenth century we may name Robert Grosseteste and John
Basingstock, as cultivating physical science, and (more
remarkable still) the Franciscan Roger Bacon: a man whom the
vulgar held to be equal to Merlin and Michael Scott as a
magician, and whom posterity ranks by the noblest spirits of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in all branches of
positive science,--except theology. A biography of Roger Bacon
should surely be written! Unfortunately, we know nothing as to
the influence of these men on their times, nor can we even
learn whether the University itself was at all interested in
their studies. ... We have ... a strange testimony to the
interest which in the beginning of the fourteenth century the
mass of the students took in the speculation of their elders;
for the street rows were carried on under the banners of
Nominalists and Realists. ... The coarse and ferocious manners
prevalent in the Universities of the Middle Ages are every
where in singular contrast to their intellectual pretensions:
but the Universities of the Continent were peaceful, decorous,
dignified,--compared with those of England. The storms which
were elsewhere occasional, were at Oxford the permanent
atmosphere. For nearly two centuries our 'Foster Mother' of
Oxford lived in a din of uninterrupted furious warfare; nation
against nation, school against school, faculty against
faculty. Halls, and finally Colleges, came forward as
combatants; and the University, as a whole, against the Town;
or against the Bishop of Lincoln; or against the Archbishop of
Canterbury. Nor was Cambridge much less pugnacious."
V. A. Huber, The English Universities,
volume 1, chapter 3.
{701}
EDUCATION:
Cambridge.
"Various facts and circumstances ... lend probability to the
belief that, long before the time when we have certain
evidence of the existence of Cambridge as a university, the
work of instruction was there going on. The Camboritum of the
Roman period, the Grantebrycgr of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
the Grentebrige of Domesday, must always have been a place of
some importance. It was the meeting-place of two great Roman
roads,--Akeman Street, running east and west, and the Via
Devana, traversing the north and the south. ... Confined at
first to the rising ground on the left bank of the river, it
numbered at the time of the Norman Conquest as many as four
hundred houses, of which twenty-seven were pulled down to make
way for the castle erected by William the Conqueror. ... Under
the castle walls, with the view, it would seem, of making some
atonement for many a deed of violence and wrong, the Norman
sheriff, Picot by name, founded the Church of St. Giles, and
instituted in connection with it a small body of secular
canons. ... The year 1112 was marked by the occurrence of an
event of considerable importance in connection with the
subsequent history of the university. The canons of St. Giles,
attended by a large concourse of the clergy and laity, crossed
the river, and took up their abode in a new and spacious
priory at Barnwell. ... The priory at Barnwell, which always
ranked among the wealthiest of the Cambridge foundations,
seems from the first to have been closely associated with the
university; and the earliest university exhibitions were those
founded by William de Kilkenny, bishop of Ely from 1254 to
1257, for two students of divinity, who were to receive
annually the sum of two marks from the priory. In the year
1133 was founded the nunnery of St. Rhadegund, which, in the
reign of Henry VII., was converted into Jesus College; and in
1135 a hospital of Augustinian canons, dedicated to St. John
the Evangelist, was founded by Henry Frost, a burgess of the
town. ... It was ... a very important foundation, inasmuch as
it not only became by conversion in the sixteenth century the
College of St. John the Evangelist, but was also ... the
foundation of which Peterhouse, the earliest Cambridge
college, may be said to have been in a certain sense the
offshoot. ... In the year 1229 there broke out at Paris a feud
of more than ordinary gravity between the students and the
citizens. Large numbers of the former migrated to the English
shores; and Cambridge, from its proximity to the eastern
coast, and as the centre where Prince Louis, but a few years
before, had raised the royal standard, seems to have attracted
the great majority. ... The university of Cambridge, like that
of Oxford, was modelled mainly on the university of Paris. Its
constitution was consequently oligarchic rather than
democratic, the government being entirely in the hands of the
teaching body, while the bachelors and undergraduates had no
share in the passing of new laws and regulations."
J. B. Mullinger, A History of the University of
Cambridge, chapter 1-2.
"The earliest existing college at Cambridge is St. Peter's,
generally called Peterhouse, historically founded A. D. 1257,
in the reign of Henry III. The Universities are known merely
by their situation; as Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, St.
Andrews'; but each college has a name, according to the taste
of its founder or first members. These names may be divided
into two classes, those named from the founder, as Pembroke,
Clare, Gonville and Caius (this had two founders, the restorer
being Dr. Kaye, who Latinized his name into Caius, always
pronounced Keys), King's (from King Henry VI.),--Queens' (from
the queens both of Henry VI. and Edward IV.), Sidney Sussex,
and Downing;--and those named for beatified persons and
objects of worship,--St. Peter's, St. John's, St. Catharine's,
St. Mary Magdalene, Corpus Christi, Emmanuel, Jesus Christ's,
Trinity and Trinity Hall. The apparent impiety of these names,
which in one case of an ancient name now changed, was
absolutely revolting, entirely passes off with a few days'
use. St. Catharine's soon becomes Cats, and St. Mary Magdalene
is always called Maudlin. You readily admit the superiority of
Trinity over Corpus ale; go to see a friend who lives on
Christ's piece; and hear with regret, that in the boat races
Emmanuel has been bumped by Jesus; an epithet being probably
prefixed to the last name. These names of course were given in
monkish times,--Trinity by Henry VIII., but all the colleges
except one were founded before the reign of James I. ... The
seventeen colleges ... are distinct corporations. Their
foundations, resources, buildings, governing authorities and
students, are entirely separate from each other. Nor has any
one college the least control in any other. The plan, however,
is much the same in all. The presiding authority is in most
cases called the Master, or speaking more generally, the Head;
while the net proceeds of all the college funds--for the vast
wealth supposed to belong to the University really is in the
hands of the separate colleges--are distributed among certain
of the graduates, called Fellows, who with the Head constitute
the corporation. These corporations give board and lodging on
various terms to such students as choose to enter the college
and comply with its rules, in order to receive its assistance
in obtaining the honors of the University; and each college
offers its own peculiar inducements to students. ... The whole
body of the colleges, taken together, constitutes the
University. All those who after residing seven years at some
college, have taken the degree of Master of Arts, or a higher
one, and keep their name on the college lists by a small
payment, vote at the University elections for members of
Parliament and all other officers, and manage its affairs. ...
The colleges, at certain intervals; present such students as
comply with their conditions to University authorities for
matriculation, for certain examinations, and for the reception
of degrees; and until one receives the degree of Master of
Arts, he must remain a member of some college, not necessarily
one and the same, to hold any University privileges. After
this stage, he may, under certain conditions, break up all his
college connections, and yet remain in the University."
W. Everett, On the Cam., lecture 1.
{702}
EDUCATION:
Spain and Portugal.
"Salamanca was founded in the 13th-century, and received its
statutes in the year 1422, out of which was developed the
following constitution. The rector, with eight 'consiliarii,'
all students, who could appoint their successors, administered
the university. The doctors render the oath of obedience to
the rector. The 'domscholaster' is the proper judge of the
school; but he swears obedience to the rector. A bachelor of
law must have studied six years, and after five years more he
could become licentiate. In filling a paid teachership, the
doctor was chosen next in age of those holding the diploma,
unless a great majority of the scholars objected, in which
case the rector and council decided. This liberal constitution
for the scholars is in harmony with the code of Alphonzo X.,
soon after 1250, in which the liberty of instruction was made
a general principle of law. This constitution continued in
Salamanca into the 17th century, for Retes speaks of a
disputation which the rector held at that time under his
presidency. Alcala university was established by cardinal
Ximenes, in 1510, for the promotion of the study of theology
and philosophy, for which reason it contained a faculty of
canon, but not of civil law. The center of the university was
the college of St. Ildefons, consisting of thirty-three
prebendaries, who could be teachers or scholars, since for
admission were required only poverty, the age of twenty, and
the completion of the course of the preparatory colleges.
These thirty-three members elected annually a rector and three
councilors, who controlled the entire university. Salaried
teachers were elected, not by the rector and council alone,
but by all the students. It had wide reputation. When visited
by Francis I., while a prisoner of Spain, he was welcomed by
11,000 students. The Coimbra university, in Portugal, received
statutes in 1309, from king Dionysius, with a constitution
similar to those just mentioned."
F. C. Savigny, The Universities of the Middle Ages
(Barnard's American Journal of Education, volume 22, page 324).
EDUCATION:
Renaissance.
"Modern education begins with the Renaissance. The educational
methods that we then begin to discern will doubtless not be
developed and perfected till a later period; the new doctrines
will pass into practice only gradually, and with the general
progress of the times. But from the sixteenth century
education is in possession of its essential principles. ...
The men of the sixteenth century having renewed with classical
antiquity an intercourse that had been too long interrupted,
it was natural that they should propose to the young the study
of the Greeks and the Romans. What is called secondary
instruction really dates from the sixteenth century. The crude
works of the Middle Age are succeeded by the elegant
compositions of Athens and Rome, henceforth made accessible to
all through the art of printing; and, with the reading of the
ancient authors, there reappear through the fruitful effect of
imitation, their qualities of correctness in thought, of
literary taste, and of elegance in form. In France, as in
Italy, the national tongues, moulded, and, as it were,
consecrated by writers of genius, become the instruments of an
intellectual propaganda. Artistic taste, revived by the rich
products of a race of incomparable artists, gives an extension
to the horizon of life, and creates a new class of emotions.
Finally, the Protestant Reform develops individual thought and
free inquiry, and at the same time, by its success, it imposes
still greater efforts on the Catholic Church. This is not
saying that everything is faultless in the educational efforts
of the sixteenth century. First, as is natural for innovators,
the thought of the teachers of this period is marked by
enthusiasm rather than by precision. They are more zealous in
pointing out the end to be attained, than exact in determining
the means to be employed. Besides, some of them are content to
emancipate the mind, but forget to give it proper direction.
Finally, others make a wrong use of the ancients; they are too
much preoccupied with the form and the purity of language;
they fall into Ciceromania, and it is not their fault if a new

superstition, that of rhetoric, does not succeed the old
superstition, that of the Syllogism."
G. Compayré, The History of Pedagogy,
chapter 5 (section 92-93).
EDUCATION:
Rabelais' Gargantua.
Rabelais' description of the imaginary education of Gargantua
gives us the educational ideas of a man of genius in the 16th
century: "Gargantua," he writes, "awaked, then, about four
o'clock in the morning. Whilst they were rubbing him, there
was read unto him some chapter of the Holy Scripture aloud and
clearly, with a pronunciation fit for the matter, and hereunto
was appointed a young page born in Basché, named Anagnostes.
According to the purpose and argument of that lesson, he
oftentimes gave himself to revere, adore, pray, and send up
his supplications to that good God whose word did show His
majesty and marvellous judgments. Then his master repeated
what had been read, expounding unto him the most obscure and
difficult points. They then considered the face of the sky, if
it was such as they had observed it the night before, and into
what signs the sun was entering, as also the moon for that
day. This done, he was appareled, combed, curled, trimmed and
perfumed, during which time they repeated to him the lessons
of the day before. He himself said them by heart, and upon
them grounded practical cases concerning the estate of man,
which he would prosecute sometimes two or three hours, but
ordinarily they ceased as soon as he was fully clothed. Then
for three good hours there was reading. This done, they went
forth, still conferring of the substance of the reading, and
disported themselves at ball, tennis, or the 'pile trigone,'
gallantly exercising their bodies, as before they had done
their minds. All their play was but in liberty, for they left
off when they pleased, and that was commonly when they did
sweat, or were otherwise weary. Then were they very well dried
and rubbed, shifted their shirts, and walking soberly, went to
see if dinner was ready. Whilst they stayed for that, they did
clearly and eloquently recite some sentences that they had
retained of the lecture. In the mean time Master Appetite
came, and then very orderly sat they down at table. At the
beginning of the meal there was read some pleasant history of
ancient prowess, until he had taken his wine. Then, if they
thought good, they continued reading, or began to discourse
merrily together; speaking first of the virtue, propriety,
efficacy, and nature of all that was served in at that table;
of bread, of wine, of water, of salt, of flesh, fish, fruits,
herbs, roots, and of their dressing. By means whereof, he
learned in a little time all the passages that on these
subjects are to be found in Pliny, Athenæus, Dioscorides,
Julius, Pollux, Galen, Porphyrius, Oppian, Polybius,
Heliodorus, Aristotle, Œlian, and others.
{703}
Whilst they talked of these things, many times, to be the more
certain, they caused the very books to be brought to the
table, and so well and perfectly did he in his memory retain
the things above said, that in that time there was not a
physician that knew half so much as he did. Afterwards they
conferred of the lessons read in the morning, and ending their
repast with some conserve of quince, he washed his hands and
eyes with fair fresh water, and gave thanks unto God in some
fine canticle, made in praise of the divine bounty and
munificence. This done, they brought in cards, not to play,
but to learn a thousand pretty tricks and new inventions,
which were all grounded upon arithmetic. By this means he fell
in love with that numerical science, and every day after
dinner and supper he passed his time in it as pleasantly as he
was wont to do at cards and dice. ... After this they
recreated themselves with singing musically, in four or five
parts, or upon a set theme, as it best pleased them. In matter
of musical instruments, he learned to play the lute, the
spinet, the harp, the German flute, the flute with nine holes,
the violin, and the sackbut. This hour thus spent, he betook
himself to his principal study for three hours together, or
more, as well to repeat his matutinal lectures as to proceed
in the book wherein he was, as also to write handsomely, to
draw and form the antique and Roman letters. This being done,
they went out of their house, and with them a young gentleman
of Touraine, named Gymnast, who taught the art of riding.
Changing then his clothes, he mounted on any kind of horse,
which he made to bound in the air, to jump the ditch, to leap
the palisade, and to turn short in a ring both to the right
and left hand. ... The time being thus bestowed, and himself
rubbed, cleansed, and refreshed with other clothes, they
returned fair and softly; and passing through certain meadows,
or other grassy places, beheld the trees and plants: comparing
them with what is written of them in the books of the
ancients, such as Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Marinus, Pliny,
Nicander, Macer, and Galen, and carried home to the house
great handfuls of them, whereof a young page called Rhizotomos
had charge--together with hoes, picks, spuds, pruning-knives,
and other instruments requisite for herborising. Being come to
their lodging, whilst supper was making ready, they repeated
certain passages of that which had been read, and then sat
down at table. ... During that repast was continued the lesson
read at dinner as long as they thought good: the rest was
spent in good discourse, learned and profitable. After that
they had given thanks, they set themselves to sing musically,
and play upon harmonious instruments, or at those pretty
sports made with cards, dice or cups,--thus made merry till it
was time to go to bed; and sometimes they would go make visits
unto learned men, or to such as had been travellers in strange
countries. At full night they went into the most open place of
the house to see the face of the sky, and there beheld the
comets, if any were, as likewise the figures, situations,
aspects, oppositions, and conjunctions of the stars. Then with
his master did he briefly recapitulate, after the manner of
the Pythagoreans, that which he had read, seen, learned, done,
and understood in the whole course of that day. Then they
prayed unto God the Creator, falling down before Him, and
strengthening their faith towards Him, and glorifying Him for
His boundless bounty; and, giving thanks unto Him for the time
that was past, they recommended themselves to His divine
clemency for the future. Which being done, they entered upon
their repose."
W. Besant, Readings in Rabelais, pages 20-29.
EDUCATION:
Germany.
"The schools of France and Italy owed little to the great
modern movement of the Renaissance. In both these countries
that movement operated, in both it produced mighty results;
but of the official establishments for instruction it did not
get hold. In Italy the mediæval routine in those
establishments at first opposed a passive resistance to it;
presently came the Catholic reaction, and sedulously shut it
out from them. In France the Renaissance did not become a
power in the State, and the routine of the schools sufficed to
exclude the new influence till it took for itself other
channels than the schools. But in Germany the Renaissance
became a power in the State; allied with the Reformation,
where the Reformation triumphed in German countries the
Renaissance triumphed with it, and entered with it, into the
public schools. Melancthon and Erasmus were not merely enemies
and subverters of the dominion of the Church of Rome, they
were eminent humanists; and with the great but single
exception of Luther, the chief German reformers were all of
them distinguished friends of the new classical learning, as
well as of Protestantism. The Romish party was in German
countries the ignorant party also, the party untouched by the
humanities and by culture. Perhaps one reason why in England
our schools have not had the life and growth of the schools of
Germany and Holland is to be found in the separation, with us,
of the power of the Reformation and the power of the
Renaissance. With us, too, the Reformation triumphed and got
possession of our schools; but our leading reformers were not
at the same time, like those of Germany, the nation's leading
spirits in intellect and culture. In Germany the best spirits
of the nation were then the reformers; in England our best
spirits,--Shakspeare, Bacon, Spenser,--were men of the
Renaissance, not men of the Reformation, and our reformers
were men of the second order. The Reformation, therefore,
getting hold of the schools in England was a very different
force, a force far inferior in light, resources, and
prospects, to the Reformation getting hold of the schools in
Germany. But in Germany, nevertheless, as Protestant orthodoxy
grew petrified like Catholic orthodoxy, and as, in
consequence, Protestantism flagged and lost the powerful
impulse with which it started, the school flagged also, and in
the middle of the last century the classical teaching of
Germany, in spite of a few honourable names like Gesner's,
Ernesti's, and Heyne's, seems to have lost all the spirit and
power of the 16th century humanists, to have been sinking into
a mere church appendage, and fast becoming torpid. A
theological student, making his livelihood by teaching till he
could get appointed to a parish, was the usual school-master.
'The schools will never be better,' said their great
renovator, Friedrich August Wolf, the well-known critic of
Homer, 'so long as the school-masters are theologians by
profession.
{704}
A theological course in a university, with its smattering of
classics, is about as good a preparation for a classical
master as a course of feudal law would be.' Wolf's coming to
Halle in 1783, invited by Von Zedlitz, the minister for public
worship under Frederick the Great, a sovereign whose civil
projects and labours were not less active and remarkable than
his military, marks an era from which the classical schools of
Germany, reviving the dormant spark planted in them by the
Renaissance, awoke to a new life."
M. Arnold, Schools and Universities on
the Continent, chapter 14.
It is surprising to learn "how much was left untaught, in the
sixteenth century, in the schools. Geography and history were
entirely omitted in every scheme of instruction, mathematics
played but a subordinate part, while not a thought was
bestowed either upon natural philosophy or natural history.
Every moment and every effort were given to the classical
languages, chiefly to the Latin. But we should be overhasty,
should we conclude, without further inquiry, that these
branches, thus neglected in the schools, were therefore every
where untaught. Perhaps they were reserved for the university
alone, and there, too, for the professors of the philosophical
faculty, as is the case even at the present day with natural
philosophy and natural history; nay, logic, which was a
regular school study in the sixteenth century, is, in our day,
widely cultivated at the university. We must, therefore, in
order to form a just judgment upon the range of subjects
taught in the sixteenth century, as well as upon the methods
of instruction, first cast a glance at the state of the
universities of that period, especially in the philosophical
faculties. A prominent source of information on this point is
to be found in the statutes of the University of Wittenberg,
revised by Melancthon, in the year 1545. The theological
faculty appears, by these statutes, to have consisted of four
professors, who read lectures on the Old and New
Testaments,--chiefly on the Psalms, Genesis, Isaiah, the
Gospel of John, and the Epistle to the Romans. They also
taught dogmatics, commenting upon the Nicene creed and
Augustine's book, 'De spiritu et litera.' The Wittenberg
lecture schedule for the year 1561, is to the same effect;
only we have here, besides exegesis and dogmatics, catechetics
likewise. According to the statutes, the philosophical faculty
was composed of ten professors. The first was to read upon
logic and rhetoric; the second, upon physics, and the second
book of Pliny's natural history; the third, upon arithmetic
and the 'Sphere' of John de Sacro Busto; the fourth, upon
Euclid, the 'Theoriæ Planetarum' of Burbach, and Ptolemy's'
Almagest'; the fifth and sixth, upon the Latin poets and
Cicero; the seventh, who was the 'Pedagogus,' explained to the
younger class, Latin Grammar, Linacer 'de emendata structura
Latini sermonis,' Terence, and some of Plautus; the eighth,
who was the 'Physicus,' explained Aristotle's 'Physics and
Dioscorides'; the ninth gave instruction in Hebrew; and the
tenth reviewed the Greek Grammar, read lectures on Greek
Classics at intervals, also on one of St. Paul's Epistles,
and, at the same time, on ethics. ... Thus the philosophical
faculty appears to have been the most fully represented at
Wittenberg, as it included ten professors, while the
theological had but four, the medical but three. ... We have a
... criterion by which to judge of the limited nature of the
studies of that period, as compared with the wide field which
they cover at the present day, in the then almost total lack
of academical apparatus and equipments. The only exception was
to be found in the case of libraries; but, how meager and
insufficient all collections of books must have been at that
time, when books were few in number and very costly, will
appear from the fund, for example, which was assigned to the
Wittenberg library; it yielded annually but one hundred
gulden, (about $63,) with which, 'for the profit of the
university and chiefly of the poorer students therein, the
library may be adorned and enriched with books in all the
faculties and in every art, as well in the Hebrew and Greek
tongues.' Of other apparatus, such as collections in natural
history, anatomical museums, botanical gardens, and the like,
we find no mention; and the less, inasmuch as there was no
need of them in elucidation of such lectures as the professors
ordinarily gave. When Paul Eber, the theologian, read lectures
upon anatomy, he made no use of dissection."
K. von Raumer, Universities in the Sixteenth Century (Barnard's
American Journal of Education, volume 5, pages 535-540).
EDUCATION:
Luther and the Schools.
"Luther ... felt that, to strengthen the Reformation, it was
requisite to work on the young, to improve the schools, and to
propagate throughout Christendom the knowledge necessary for a
profound study of the holy Scriptures. This, accordingly, was
one of the objects of his life. He saw it in particular at the
period which we have reached, and wrote to the councillors of
all the cities of Germany, calling upon them to found
Christian schools. 'Dear sirs,' said he, 'we annually expend
so much money on arquebuses, roads, and dikes; why should we
not spend a little to give one or two schoolmasters to our
poor children? God stands at the door, and knocks; blessed are
we if we open to him. Now the word of God abounds. O my dear
Germans, buy, buy, while the market is open before your
houses. ... Busy yourselves with the children,' continues
Luther, still addressing the magistrates; 'for many parents
are like ostriches; they are hardened towards their little
ones, and satisfied with having laid the egg, they care
nothing for it afterwards. The prosperity of a city does not
consist merely in heaping up great treasures, in building
strong walls, in erecting splendid mansions, in possessing
glittering arms. If madmen fall upon it, its ruin will only be
the greater. The true wealth of a city, its safety, and its
strength, is to have many learned, serious, worthy,
well-educated citizens. And whom must we blame because there
are so few at present, except you magistrates, who have
allowed our youth to grow up like trees in a forest?' Luther
particularly insisted on the necessity of studying literature
and languages: 'What use is there, it may be asked, in
learning Latin, Greek, and Hebrew? We can read the Bible very
well in German. Without languages,' replies he, 'we could not
have received the gospel. ... Languages are the scabbard that
contains the sword of the Spirit; they are the casket that
guards the jewels; they are the vessel that holds the wine;
and as the gospel says, they are the baskets in which the
loaves and fishes are kept to feed the multitude. If we
neglect the languages, we shall not only eventually lose the
gospel, but be unable to speak or write in Latin or in German.
{705}
No sooner did men cease to cultivate them than Christendom
declined, even until it fell under the power of the pope. But
now that languages are again honored, they shed such light
that all the world is astonished, and everyone is forced to
acknowledge that our gospel is almost as pure as that of the
apostles themselves. In former times the holy fathers were
frequently mistaken, because they were ignorant of languages.
... If the languages had not made me positive as to the
meaning of the word, I might have been a pious monk, and
quietly preached the truth in the obscurity of the cloister;
but I should have left the pope, the sophists, and their
antichristian empire still unshaken."
J. H. Merle d' Aubigné, History of the Reformation of
the 16th Century, book 10, chapter 0 (volume 3).
Luther, in his appeal to the municipal magistrates of Germany,
calls for the organization of common schools to be supported
at public cost. "Finally, he gives his thought to the means of
recruiting the teaching service. 'Since the greatest evil in
every place is the lack of teachers, we must not wait till
they come forward of themselves; we must take the trouble to
educate them and prepare them.' To this end Luther keeps the
best of the pupils, boys and girls, for a longer time in
school; gives them special instructors, and opens libraries
for their use. In his thought he never distinguishes women
teachers from men teachers; he wants schools for girls as well
as for boys. Only, not to burden parents and divert children
from their daily labor, he requires but little time for school
duties. ... 'My opinion is [he says] that we must send the
boys to school one or two hours a day, and have them learn a
trade at home for the rest of the time. It is desirable that
these two occupations march side by side.' ... Luther gives
the first place to the teaching of religion: 'Is it not
reasonable that every Christian should know the Gospel at the
age of nine or ten?' Then come the languages, not, as might be
hoped, the mother tongue, but the learned languages, Latin,
Greek, and Hebrew. Luther had not yet been sufficiently rid of
the old spirit to comprehend that the language of the people
ought to be the basis of universal instruction. He left to
Comenius the glory of making the final separation of the
primary school from the Latin school. ... Physical exercises
are not forgotten in Luther's pedagogical regulations. But he
attaches an especial importance to singing. 'Unless a
school-master know how to sing, I think him of no account.'
'Music,' he says again, 'is a half discipline which makes men
more indulgent and more mild.' At the same time that he
extends the programme of studies, Luther introduces a new
spirit into methods. He wishes more liberty and more joy in
the school. 'Solomon,' he says, 'is a truly royal
schoolmaster. He does not, like the monks, forbid the young to
go into the world and be happy. Even as Anselm said: "A young
man turned aside from the world is like a young tree made to
grow in a vase." The monks have imprisoned young men like
birds in their cage. It is dangerous to isolate the young.'
... Do not let ourselves imagine, however, that Luther at once
exercised a decisive influence on the current education of his
day. A few schools were founded, called writing schools; but
the Thirty Years' War, and other events, interrupted the
movement of which Luther has the honor of having been the
originator. ... In the first half of the seventeenth century,
Ratich, a German, and Comenius, a Slave, were, with very
different degrees of merit, the heirs of the educational
thought of Luther. With something of the charlatan and the
demagogue, Ratich devoted his life to propagating a novel art
of teaching, which be called didactics, and to which he
attributed marvels. He pretended, by his method of languages,
to teach Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, in six months. But
nevertheless, out of many strange performances and lofty
promises, there issue some thoughts of practical value. The
first merit of Ratich was to give the mother tongue, the
German language, the precedence over the ancient languages."
G. Compayré, The History of Pedagogy,
chapter 6 (section 130-134).
EDUCATION:
Netherlands.
"When learning began to revive after the long sleep of the
Middle Ages, Italy experienced the first impulse. Next came
Germany and the contiguous provinces of the Low Countries. The
force of the movement in these regions is shown by an event of
great importance, not always noticed by historians. In 1400,
there was established at Deventer, in the northeastern
province of the Netherlands, an association or brotherhood,
usually called Brethren of the Life in Common [see BRETHREN OF
THE COMMON LOT]. In their strict lives, partial community of
goods, industry in manual labor, fervent devotion, and
tendency to mysticism, they bore some resemblance to the
modern Moravians. But they were strikingly distinguished from
the members of this sect by their earnest cultivation of
knowledge, which was encouraged among themselves and promoted
among others by schools, both for primary and advanced
education. In 1430, the Brethren had established forty-five
branches, and by 1460 more than thrice that number. They were
scattered through different parts of Germany and the Low
Countries, each with its school subordinate to the head
college at Deventer. It was in these schools, in the middle of
the fifteenth century, that a few Germans and Netherlanders
were, as Hallam says, roused to acquire that extensive
knowledge of the ancient languages which Italy as yet
exclusively possessed. Their names should never be omitted in
any remembrance of the revival of letters; for great was their
influence upon subsequent times. Chief among these men were
Wessels, of Groningen, 'one of those who contributed most
steadily to the purification of religion'; Hegius of Deventer,
under whom Erasmus obtained his early education, and who
probably was the first man to print Greek north of the Alps;
Dringeberg, who founded a good school in Alsace; and Longius,
who presided over one at Munster. Thanks to the influence of
these pioneers in learning, education had made great progress
among the Netherlanders by the middle of the sixteenth
century. ... We have the testimony of the Italian Guicciardini
to the fact that before the outbreak of the war with Spain
even the peasants in Holland could read and write well. As the
war went on, the people showed their determination that in
this matter there should be no retrogression. In the first
Synod of Dort, held in 1574, the clergy expressed their
opinion upon the subject by passing a resolution or ordinance
which, among other things, directed 'the servants of the
Church' to obtain from the magistrates in every locality a
permission for the appointment of schoolmasters, and an order
for their compensation as in the past.
{706}
Before many years had elapsed the civil authorities began to
establish a general school system for the country. In 1582,
the Estates of Friesland decreed that the inhabitants of towns
and villages should, within the space of six weeks, provide
good and able Reformed schoolmasters, and those who neglected
so to do would be compelled to accept the instructors
appointed for them. This seems to have been the beginning of
the supervision of education by the State, a system which soon
spread over the whole republic. In these schools, however,
although they were fostered by the State, the teachers seem,
in the main, to have been paid by their pupils. But as years
went on, a change came about in this part of the system. It
probably was aided by the noteworthy letter which John of
Nassau, the oldest brother of William the Silent, the noble
veteran who lived until 1606, wrote to his son Lewis William,
Stadtholder of Friesland. In this letter, which is worthy of a
place on the walls of every schoolhouse in America, the
gallant young stadt-holder is instructed to urge on the
States-General 'that they, according to the example of the
pope and Jesuits, should establish free schools, where
children of quality as well as of poor families, for a very
small sum, could be well and christianly educated and brought
up. This would be the greatest and most useful work, and the
highest service that you could ever accomplish for God and
Christianity, and especially for the Netherlands themselves.
... In summa, one may jeer at this as popish trickery, and
undervalue it as one will: there still remains in the work an
inexpressible benefit. Soldiers and patriots thus educated,
with a true knowledge of God and a Christian conscience, item,
churches and schools, good libraries, books, and
printing-presses, are better than all armies, arsenals,
armories, munitions, alliances, and treaties that can be had
or imagined in the world.' Such were the words in which the
Patriarch of the Nassaus urged upon his countrymen a
common-school system. In 1609, when the Pilgrim Fathers took
up their residence in Leyden, the school had become the common
property of the people, and was paid for among other municipal
expenses. It was a land of schools supported by the State--a
land, according to Motley, 'where every child went to school,
where almost every individual inhabitant could write and read,
where even the middle classes were proficient in mathematics
and the classics, and could speak two or more modern
languages.' Does any reader now ask whence the settlers of
Plymouth, who came directly from Holland, and the other
settlers of New England whose Puritan brethren were to be
found in thousands throughout the Dutch Republic, derived
their ideas of schools first directed, and then supported by
the State."
EDUCATION:
Leyden University.
To commemorate the deliverance of Leyden from the Spanish
siege in 1574 (see NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1573-1574), "and as a
reward for the heroism of the citizens, the Prince of Orange,
with the consent of the Estates of the province, founded the
University of Leyden. Still, the figment of allegiance
remained; the people were only fighting for their
constitutional rights, and so were doing their duty to the
sovereign. Hence the charter of the university ran in the name
of Philip, who was credited with its foundation, as a reward
to his subjects for their rebellion against his evil
counsellors and servants, 'especially in consideration of the
differences of religion, and the great burdens and hardships
borne by the citizens of our city of Leyden during the war
with such faithfulness.' Motley calls this 'ponderous irony,'
but the Hollanders were able lawyers and intended to build on
a legal basis. This event marks an epoch in the intellectual
history of Holland and of the world. ... The new university
was opened in 1575, and from the outset took the highest rank.
Speaking, a few years ago, of its famous senate chamber,
Niebuhr called it 'the most memorable room of Europe in the
history of learning.' The first curator was John Van der Does,
who had been military commandant of the city during the siege.
He was of a distinguished family, but was still more
distinguished for his learning, his poetical genius, and his
valor. Endowed with ample funds, the university largely owed
its marked pre-eminence to the intelligent foresight and wise
munificence of its curators. They sought out and obtained the
most distinguished scholars of all nations, and to this end
spared neither pains nor expense. Diplomatic negotiation and
even princely mediation were often called in for the
acquisition of a professor. Hence it was said that it
surpassed all the universities of Europe in the number of its
scholars of renown. These scholars were treated with princely
honors. ... The 'mechanicals' of Holland, as Elizabeth called
them, may not have paid the accustomed worship to rank, but to
genius and learning they were always willing to do homage.
Space would fail for even a brief account of the great men,
foreign and native, who illuminated Leyden with their
presence. ... But it was not alone in scholarship and in
scientific research that the University of Leyden gave an
impetus to modern thought. Theological disputes were developed
there at times, little tempests which threatened destruction
to the institution, but they were of short duration. The right
of conscience was always respected, and in the main the right
of full and public discussion. ... When it was settled that
dissenters could not be educated in the English universities,
they flocked to Leyden in great numbers, making that city,
next to Edinburgh, their chief resort. Eleven years after the
opening of the University of Leyden, the Estates of democratic
Friesland, amid the din of war, founded the University of
Franeker, an institution which was to become famous as the
home of Arminius. ... Both of these universities were
perpetually endowed with the proceeds of the ecclesiastical
property which had been confiscated during the progress of the
war."
D. Campbell, The Puritan in Holland, England,
and America, chapter 2, 20, and 3.
EDUCATION:
England.
"In contemplating the events of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, in their influence on English civilisation, we are
reminded once more of the futility of certain modern
aspirations. No amount of University Commissions, nor of
well-meant reforms, will change the nature of Englishmen. It
is impossible, by distributions of University prizes and
professorships, to attract into the career of letters that
proportion of industry and ingenuity which, in Germany for
example, is devoted to the scholastic life.
{707}
Politics, trade, law, sport, religion, will claim their own in
England, just as they did at the Revival of Letters. The
illustrious century which Italy employed in unburying,
appropriating, and enjoying the treasures of Greek literature
and art, our fathers gave, in England, to dynastic and
constitutional squabbles, and to religious broils. The
Renaissance in England, and chiefly in Oxford, was like a
bitter and changeful spring. There was an hour of genial
warmth, there breathed a wind from the south, in the lifetime
of Chaucer; then came frosts and storms; again the brief
sunshine of court favour shone on literature for a while, when
Henry VIII. encouraged study, and Wolsey and Fox founded
Christ Church and Corpus Christi College, once more the bad
days of religious strife returned, and the promise of learning
was destroyed. Thus the chief result of the awakening thought
of the fourteenth century in England was not a lively delight
in literature, but the appearance of the Lollards. The
intensely practical genius of our race turned, not to letters,
but to questions about the soul and its future, about property
and its distribution. The Lollards were put down in Oxford;
'the tares were weeded out' by the House of Lancaster, and in
the process the germs of free thought, of originality, and of
a rational education, were destroyed. 'Wyclevism did domineer
among us,' says Wood; and, in fact, the intellect of the
University was absorbed, like the intellect of France during
the heat of the Jansenist controversy, in defending or
assailing '267 damned conclusions,' drawn from the books of
Wyclife. The University 'lost many of her children through the
profession of Wyclevism.'"
A. Lang, Oxford, chapter 3.
EDUCATION:
Colet and St. Paul's School.
Dr. John Colet, appointed Dean of St. Paul's in 1505,
"resolved, whilst living and in health, to devote his
patrimony to the foundation of a school in St. Paul's
Churchyard, wherein 153 children, without any restriction as
to nation or country, who could already read and write, and
were of 'good parts and capacities,' should receive a sound
Christian education. The 'Latin adulterate, which ignorant
blind fools brought into this world,' poisoning thereby 'the
old Latin speech, and the very Roman tongue used in the time
of Tully and Sallust, and Virgil and Terence, and learned by
St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine,'--all that
'abusion which the later blind world brought in, and which may
rather be called Blotterature than Literature,'--should be
'utterly abanished and excluded' out of this school. The
children should be taught good literature, both Latin and
Greek, 'such authors that have with wisdom joined pure chaste
eloquence'--'specially Christian authors who wrote their
wisdom in clean and chaste Latin, whether in prose or verse;
for,' said Colet, 'my intent is by this school specially to
increase knowledge, and worshipping of God and Our Lord Jesus
Christ, and good Christian life and manners in the children.'
... The building consisted of one large room, divided into an
upper and lower school by a curtain, which could be drawn at
pleasure; and the charge of the two schools devolved upon a
high-master and a sub-master respectively. The forms were
arranged so as each to seat sixteen boys, and were provided
each with a raised desk, at which the head-boy sat as
president. The building also embraced an entrance-porch and a
little chapel for divine service. Dwelling-houses were
erected, adjoining the school, for the residence of the two
masters; and for their support, Colet obtained, in the spring
of 1510, a royal license to transfer to the Wardens and Guild
of Mercers in London, real property to the value of £53 per
annum (equivalent to at least £530 of present money). Of this
the head-master was to receive as his salary £35 (say £350)
and the under-master £18 (say £180) per annum. Three or four
years after, Colet made provision for a chaplain to conduct
divine service in the chapel, and to instruct the children in
the Catechism, the Articles of the faith, and the Ten
Commandments,--in English; and ultimately, before his death,
he appears to have increased the amount of the whole endowment
to £122 (say £1,200) per annum. So that it, may be considered,
roughly, that the whole endowment, including the buildings,
cannot have represented a less sum than £30,000 or £40,000 of
present money. And if Colet thus sacrificed so much of his
private fortune to secure a liberal (and it must be conceded
his was a liberal) provision for the remuneration of the
masters who should educate his 153 boys, he must surely have
had deeply at heart the welfare of the boys themselves. And,
in truth, it was so. Colet was like a father to his
schoolboys. ... It was not to be expected that he should find
the school-books of the old grammarians in any way adapted to
his purpose. So at once he set his learned friends to work to
provide him with new ones. The first thing wanted was a Latin
Grammar for beginners. Linacre undertook to provide this want,
and wrote with great pains and labour, a work in six books,
which afterwards came into general use. But when Colet saw it,
at the risk of displeasing his friend, he put it altogether
aside. It was too long and too learned for his 'little
beginners.' So he condensed within the compass of a few pages
two little treatises, an 'Accidence' and a 'Syntax,' in the
preface to the first of which occur the gentle words quoted
above. These little books, after receiving additions from the
hands of Erasmus, Lilly, and others, finally became generally
adopted and known as Lilly's Grammar. This rejection of his
Grammar seems to have been a sore point with Linacre, but
Erasmus told Colet not to be too much concerned about it. ...
Erasmus, in the same letter in which he spoke of Linacre's
rejected Grammar ... put on paper his notions of what a
schoolmaster ought to be, and the best method of teaching
boys, which he fancied Colet might not altogether approve, as
he was wont somewhat more to despise rhetoric than Erasmus
did. He stated his opinion that--'In order that the teacher
might be thoroughly up to his work, he should not merely be a
master of one particular branch of study. He should himself
have travelled through the whole circle of knowledge. In
philosophy he should have studied Plato and Aristotle,
Theophrastus and Plotinus; in Theology the Sacred Scriptures,
and after them Origen, Chrysostom, and Basil among the Greek
fathers, and Ambrose and Jerome among the Latin fathers; among
the poets, Homer and Ovid; in geography, which is very
important in the study of history, Pomponins Mela, Ptolemy,
Pliny, Strabo. He should know what ancient names of rivers,
mountains, countries, cities, answer to the modern ones; and
the same of trees, animals, instruments, clothes, and, gems,
with regard to which it is incredible how ignorant even
educated men are.
{708}
He should take note of little facts about agriculture,
architecture, military and culinary arts, mentioned by
different authors. He should be able to trace the origin of
words, their gradual corruption in the languages of
Constantinople, Italy, Spain, and France. Nothing should be
beneath his observation which can illustrate history or the
meaning of the poets. But you will say what a load you are
putting on the back of the poor teacher! It is so; but I
burden the one to relieve the many. I want the teacher to have
traversed the whole range of knowledge, that it may spare each
of his scholars doing it. A diligent and thoroughly competent
master might give boys a fair proficiency in both Latin and
Greek, in a shorter time and with less labour than the common
run of pedagogues take to teach their babble.' On receipt of
this ... Colet wrote to Erasmus: ... '"What! I shall not
approve!" So you say! What is there of Erasmus's that I do not
approve?'"
F. Seebohm, The Oxford Reformers, chapter 6.
EDUCATION:
Ascham and "The Scholemaster."
Roger Ascham, the friend of Lady Jane Grey and the tutor of
Queen Elizabeth, was born in 1515, and died in 1568. "It was
partly with the view to the instruction of his own children,
that he commenced the 'Schole-master,' the work by which he is
most and best known, to which he did not live to set the last
hand. He communicated the design and import of the book in a
letter to Sturmius, in which he states, that not being able to
leave his sons a large fortune, he was resolved to provide
them with a preceptor, not one to be hired for a great sum of
money, but marked out at home with a homely pen. In the same
letter he gives his reasons for employing the English
language, the capabilities of which he clearly perceived and
candidly acknowledged, a high virtue for a man of that age,
who perhaps could have written Latin to his own satisfaction
much more easily than his native tongue. But though the
benefit of his own offspring might be his ultimate object, the
immediate occasion of the work was a conversation at Cecil's,
at which Sir Richard Sackville expressed great indignation at
the severities practiced at Eton and other great schools, so
that boys actually ran away for fear of merciless
flagellation. This led to the general subject of school
discipline, and the defects in the then established modes of
tuition. Ascham coinciding with the sentiments of the company,
and proceeding to explain his own views of improvement,
Sackville requested him to commit his opinions to paper and
the 'Schole-master' was the result. It was not published till
1670. ... We ... quote a few passages, which throw light upon
the author's good sense and good nature. To all violent
coercion, and extreme punishment, he was decidedly
opposed:--'I do agree,' says he, 'with all good school-masters
in all these points, to have children brought to good
perfectness in learning, to all honesty in manners; to have
all faults rightly amended, and every vice severely corrected,
but for the order and way that leadeth rightly to these
points, we somewhat differ.' 'Love is better than fear,
gentleness than beating, to bring up a child rightly in
learning.' 'I do assure you there is no such whetstone to
sharpen a good wit, and encourage a will to learning, as is
praise.'... 'The scholar is commonly beat for the making, when
the master were more worthy to be beat for the mending, or
rather marring, of the same; the master many times being as
ignorant as the child what to say properly and fitly to the
matter.' ... This will I say, that even the wisest of your
great beaters do as oft punish nature as they do correct
faults. Yea many times the better nature is the sorer
punished. For if one by quickness of wit take his lesson
readily, another by hardness of wit taketh it not so speedily;
the first is always commended, the other is commonly punished,
when a wise school-master should rather discreetly consider
the right disposition of both their natures, and not so much
weigh what either of them is able to do, as what either of
them is likely to do hereafter. For this I know, not only by
reading of books in my study, but also by experience of life
abroad in the world, that those which be commonly the wisest,
the best learned, and best men also, when they be old, were
never commonly the quickest of wit when they were young. Quick
wits commonly be apt to take, unapt to keep. Some are more
quick to enter speedily than be able to pierce far, even like
unto oversharp tools, whose edges be very soon turned.'"
H. Coleridge, Biographia Borealis, pages 328-330.
EDUCATION:
Jesuit Teaching and Schools.
"The education of youth is set forth in the Formula of
Approval granted by Paul III. in 1540," to the plans of
Ignatius Loyola for the foundation of the Society of Jesus,
"as the first duty embraced by the new Institute. ... Although
the new religious were not at once able to begin the
establishment of colleges, yet the plan of those afterwards
founded, was gradually ripening in the sagacious mind of St.
Ignatius, who looked to these institutions as calculated to
oppose the surest bulwarks against the progress of heresy. The
first regular college of the Society was that established at
Gandia in 1546, through the zeal of St. Francis Borgia, third
General of the Society; and the regulations by which it was
governed, and which were embodied in the constitutions, were
extended to all the Jesuit colleges afterwards founded. The
studies were to include theology, both positive and
scholastic, as well as grammar, poetry, rhetoric, and
philosophy. The course of philosophy was to last three years,
that of theology four; and the Professors of Philosophy were
enjoined to treat their subject in such a way as to dispose
the mind for the study of theology, instead of setting up
faith and reason in opposition to one another. The theology of
St. Thomas, and the philosophy of Aristotle, were to be
followed, except on those points where the teaching of the
latter was opposed to the Catholic faith."
A. T. Drane, Christian Schools and Scholars, page 708.
"As early as the middle of the sixteenth century ... [the
Society of Jesus] had several colleges in France, particularly
those of Billom, Mauriac, Rodez, Tournon, and Pamiers. In 1561
it secured a footing in Paris, notwithstanding the resistance
of the Parliament, of the university, and of the bishops
themselves. A hundred years later it counted nearly fourteen
thousand pupils in the province of Paris alone. The college of
Clermont, in 1651, enrolled more than two thousand young men.
The middle and higher classes assured to the colleges of the
society an ever-increasing membership.
{709}
At the end of the seventeenth century, the Jesuits could
inscribe on the roll of honor of their classes a hundred
illustrious names, among others those of Condé and Luxembourg,
Fléchier and Bossuet, Lamoignon and Séguier, Descartes,
Comeille, and Moliere. In 1710 they controlled six hundred and
twelve colleges and a large number of universities. They were
the real masters of education, and they maintained this
educational supremacy till the end of the eighteenth century.
Voltaire said of these teachers: 'The Fathers taught me
nothing but Latin and nonsense.' But from the seventeenth
century, opinions are divided, and the encomiums of Bacon and
Descartes must be offset by the severe judgment of Leibnitz.
'In the matter of education, says this great philosopher, 'the
Jesuits have remained below mediocrity.' Directly to the
contrary, Bacon had written: 'As to whatever relates to the
instruction of the young, we must consult the schools of the
Jesuits, for there can be nothing that is better done.' ... A
permanent and characteristic feature of the educational policy
of the Jesuits is, that, during the whole course of their
history, they have deliberately neglected and disdained
primary instruction. The earth is covered with their Latin
colleges; and wherever they have been able, they have put
their hands on the institutions for university education; but
in no instance have they founded a primary school. Even in
their establishment for secondary instruction, they entrust
the lower classes to teachers who do not belong to their
order, and reserve to themselves the direction of the higher
classes."
G. Compayré, History of Pedagogy, pages 141-143.
See, also, JESUITS: A. D. 1540-1556.
"The Jesuits owed their success partly to the very narrow task
which they set themselves, little beyond the teaching of Latin
style, and partly to the careful training which they gave
their students, a training which often degenerated into mere
mechanical exercise. But the mainspring of their influence was
the manner in which they worked the dangerous force of
emulation. Those pupils who were most distinguished at the end
of each month received the rank of prætor, censor, and
decurion. The class was divided into two parts, called Romans
and Carthaginians, Greeks and Trojans. The students sat
opposite each other, the master in the middle, the walls were
hung with swords, spears and shields which the contending
parties carried off in triumph as the prize of victory. These
pupils' contests wasted a great deal of time. The Jesuits
established public school festivals, at which the pupils might
be exhibited, and the parents flattered. They made their own
school books, in which the requirements of good teaching were
not so important as the religious objects of the order. They
preferred extracts to whole authors; if they could not prune
the classics to their fancy they would not read them at all.
What judgment are we to pass on the Jesuit teaching as a
whole? It deserves praise on two accounts. First, it
maintained the dignity of literature in an age which was too
liable to be influenced by considerations of practical
utility. It maintained the study of Greek in France at a
higher level than the University, and resisted the assaults of
ignorant parents on the fortress of Hellenism. Secondly, it
seriously set itself to understand the nature and character of
the individual pupil, and to suit the manner of education to
the mind that was to receive it. Whatever may have been the
motives of Jesuits in gaining the affections, and securing the
devotion of the children under their charge; whether their
desire was to develop the individuality which they probed, or
to destroy it in its germ, and plant a new nature in its
place; it must be admitted that the loving care which they
spent upon their charge was a new departure in education, and
has become a part of every reasonable system since their time.
Here our praise must end. ... They amused the mind instead of
strengthening it. They occupied in frivolities such as Latin
verses the years which they feared might otherwise be given to
reasoning and the acquisition of solid knowledge. ...
Celebrated as the Jesuit schools have been, they have owed
much more to the fashion which filled them with promising
scholars, than to their own excellence in dealing with their
material. ... They have never stood the test of modern
criticism. They have no place in a rational system of modern
education."
O. Browning, Introduction to the History
of Educational Theories, chapter 8.
EDUCATION: Modern: European Countries.
Austria.
"The annual appropriations passed by Parliament allow the
minister of public instruction $8,307,774 for all kinds of
public educational institutions, elementary and secondary
schools, universities, technical and art schools, museums, and
philanthropic institutions. Generally, this principle is
adhered to by the state, to subsidize the highest institutions
of learning most liberally, to share the cost of maintaining
secondary schools with church and community, and to leave the
burden of maintaining elementary schools almost entirely to
the local or communal authorities. ... In the Austrian public
schools no distinctions are made with the pupils as regards
their religious confessions. The schools are open to all, and
are therefore common schools in the sense in which that term
is employed with us. In Prussia it is the policy of the
Government to separate the pupils of different religious
confessions in ... elementary, but not to separate them in
secondary schools. In Austria and Hungary, special teachers of
religion for the elementary and secondary schools are
employed; in Prussia this is done only in secondary schools,
while religion is taught by the secular teachers in elementary
schools. This is a very vital difference, and shows how much
nearer the Austrian schools have come to our ideal of a common
school."
United States Commissioner of Education,
Report, 1889-90, pages 465-466.
EDUCATION: Modern: European Countries.
Belgium.
"The treaty of Paris, of March 30, 1814, fixed the boundaries
of the Netherlands, and united Holland and Belgium. In these
new circumstances, the system of public instruction became the
subject of much difficulty between the Calvinists of the
northern provinces and the Catholics of the southern. The
government therefore undertook itself to manage the
organization of the system of instruction in its three grades.
... William I. desired to free the Belgians from French
influence, and with this object adopted the injudicious
measure of attempting to force the Dutch language upon them.
He also endeavored to familiarize them with Protestant ideas,
and to this end determined to get the care of religious
instruction exclusively into the hands of the state. But the
clergy were energetic in asserting their rights; the boldness
of the Belgian deputies to the States-General increased daily;
and the project for a system of public and private instruction
which was laid before the second chamber on the 26th November,
1829, was very unfavorably received by the Catholics. The
government very honorably confessed its error by repealing the
obnoxious ordinances of 1825. But it was too late, and the
Belgian provinces were lost to Holland. On the 12th October,
1830, the provisory government repealed all laws restricting
the freedom of instruction, and the present system, in which
liberty of instruction and governmental aid and supervision
are recognized, commenced."
Public Instruction in Belgium (Barnard's American
Journal of Education, volume 8, pages 582-583).
{710}
EDUCATION: Modern: European Countries.
Denmark.
"Denmark has long been noted for the excellence of her
schools. ... The perfection and extension of the system of
popular instruction date from the beginning of the eighteenth
century, when Bishop Thestrup, of Aalberg, caused 6 parish
schools to be established in Copenhagen and when King
Frederick IV. (1699-1730) had 240 school-houses built. ...
Christian VI. (17301746), ... ordained in 1739 the
establishment of common or parish schools in every town and in
every larger village. The branches of instruction were to be
religion, reading, writing, and arithmetic. No one was to be
allowed to teach unless he had shown himself qualified to the
satisfaction of the clergyman of the parish. .... Many
difficulties, however (especially the objections of the landed
proprietors, who had their own schools on their estates),
hindered the free development of the common school system, and
it was not until 1814 that a new and more favorable era was
inaugurated by the law of July 29 of that year. According to
this law the general control of the schools is in the hands of
a minister of public instruction and subordinate
superintendents for the several departments of the kingdom."
Education in Denmark
(United States Bureau of Education,
Circulars of Information, 1877, no. 2), pages 40-41.
"With a population in 1890 of 2,185,157, the pupils enrolled
in city and rural schools in Denmark numbered 231,940, or
about 10 per cent. of the population receiving the foundation
of an education. In 1881 the illiterates to 100 recruits
numbered 0.36; in Sweden at that date, the per cent. was
0.39."
United States Commissioner of Education,
Report, 1889-90, page 523.
EDUCATION: Modern: European Countries.
England: Oxford and Cambridge.
"Oxford and Cambridge, as establishments for education,
consist of two parts--of the University proper, and of the
Colleges. The former, original and essential, is founded,
controlled, and privileged by public authority, for the
advantage of the nation. The latter, accessory and contingent,
are created, regulated, and endowed by private munificence,
for the interest of certain favored individuals. Time was,
when the Colleges did not exist, and the University was there;
and were the Colleges again abolished, the University would
remain entire. The former, founded solely for education,
exists only as it accomplishes the end of its institution; the
latter, founded principally for aliment and habitation, would
still exist, were all education abandoned within their walls.
The University, as a national establishment, is necessarily
open to the lieges in general; the Colleges, as private
institutions, might universally do, as some have actually
done--close their gates upon all, except their foundation
members. The Universities and Colleges are thus neither
identical, nor vicarious of each other. If the University
ceases to perform its functions, it ceases to exist; and the
privileges accorded by the nation to the system of public
education legally organized in the University, can not,
without the consent of the nation--far less without the
consent of the academical legislature--be lawfully transferred
to the system of private education precariously organized in
the Colleges, and over which neither the State nor the
University have any control. They have, however, been
unlawfully usurped. Through the suspension of the University,
and the usurpation of its functions and privileges by the
Collegial bodies, there has arisen the second of two systems,
diametrically opposite to each other.--The one, in which the
University was paramount, is ancient and statutory; the other,

in which the Colleges have the ascendant, is recent and
illegal.--In the former, all was subservient to public
utility, and the interests of science; in the latter, all is
sacrificed to private monopoly, and to the convenience of the
teacher. ... In the original constitution of Oxford, as in
that of all the older Universities of the Parisian model, the
business of instruction was not confided to a special body of
privileged professors. The University was governed, the
University was taught, by the graduates at large. Professor,
Master, Doctor, were originally synonymous. Every graduate had
an equal right of teaching publicly in the University the
subjects competent to his faculty, and to the rank of his
degree; nay, every graduate incurred the obligation of
teaching publicly, for a certain period, the subjects of his
faculty, for such was the condition involved in the grant of
the degree itself."
Sir William Hamilton, Discussions on Philosophy and
Literature, etc.: Education, chapter 4.
EDUCATION: Modern: European Countries.
England: The "Great Public Schools."
What is a public school in England? "The question is one of
considerable difficulty. To some extent, however, the answer
has been furnished by the Royal Commission appointed in 1861
to inquire into the nature and application of the endowments
and revenues, and into the administration and management of
certain specified colleges and schools commonly known as the
Public Schools Commission. Nine are named in the Queen's
letter of appointment, viz., Eton, Winchester, Westminster,
the Charterhouse, St. Paul's, Merchant Taylors', Harrow,
Rugby, and Shrewsbury. The reasons probably which suggested
this selection were, that the nine named foundations had in
the course of centuries emerged from the mass of endowed
grammar-schools, and had made for themselves a position which
justified their being placed in a distinct category, and
classed as 'public schools.' It will be seen as we proceed
that all these nine have certain features in common,
distinguishing them from the ordinary grammar-schools which
exist in almost every country town in England. Many of these
latter are now waking up to the requirements of the new time
and following the example of their more illustrious sisters.
The most notable examples of this revival are such schools as
those at Sherborne, Giggleswick, and Tunbridge Wells, which,
while remodelling themselves on the lines laid down by the
Public Schools Commissioners, are to some extent providing a
training more adapted to the means and requirements of our
middle classes in the nineteenth century than can be found at
any of the nine public schools.
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But twenty years ago the movement which has since made such
astonishing progress was scarcely felt in quiet country places
like these, and the old endowments were allowed to run to
waste in a fashion which is now scarcely credible. The same
impulse which has put new life into the endowed
grammar-schools throughout England has worked even more
remarkably in another direction. The Victorian age bids fair
to rival the Elizabethan in the number and importance of the
new schools which it has founded and will hand on to the
coming generation. Marlborough, Haileybury, Uppingham,
Rossall, Clifton, Cheltenham, Radley, Malvern, and Wellington
College, are nine schools which have taken their place in the
first rank. ... In order, then, to get clear ideas on the
general question, we must keep these three classes of schools
in mind--the nine old foundations recognized in the first
instance by the Royal Commission of 1861; the old foundations
which have remained local grammar-schools until within the
last few years, but are now enlarging their bounds, conforming
more or less to the public-school system, and becoming
national institutions; and, lastly, the modern foundations
which started from the first as public schools, professing to
adapt themselves to the new circumstances and requirements of
modern English life. The public schools of England fall under
one or other of these categories. ... We may now turn to the
historic side of the question, dealing first, as is due to
their importance, with the nine schools of our first category.
The oldest, and in some respects most famous of these, is
Winchester School, or, as it was named by its founder William
of Wykeham, the College of St. Mary of Winchester, founded in
1382. Its constitution still retains much of the impress left
on it by the great Bishop of the greatest Plantagenet King,
five centuries ago. Toward the end of the fourteenth century
Oxford was already the center of English education, but from
the want of grammar-schools boys went up by hundreds untaught
in the simplest rudiments of learning, and when there lived in
private hostels or lodging-houses, in a vast throng, under no
discipline, and exposed to many hardships and temptations. In
view of this state of things, William of Wykeham founded his
grammar-school at Winchester and his college at Oxford,
binding the two together, so that the school might send up
properly trained scholars to the university, where they would
be received at New College, in a suitable academical home,
which should in its turn furnish governors and masters for the
school. ... Next in date comes the royal foundation of Eton,
or 'The College of the Blessed Mary of Eton, near Windsor.' It
was founded by Henry VI., A. D. 1446, upon the model of
Winchester, with a collegiate establishment of a provost, ten
fellows (reduced to seven in the reign of Edward IV.), seventy
scholars, and ten chaplains (now reduced to two; who are
called 'conducts'), and a head and lower master, ten lay
clerks, and twelve choristers. The provost and fellows are the
governing body, who appoint the head master. ... Around this
center the great school, numbering now a thousand boys, has
gathered, the college, however, still retaining its own
separate organization and traditions. Besides the splendid
buildings and playing-fields at Eton, the college holds real
property of the yearly value of upward of £20,000, and forty'
livings ranging from £100 to £1,200 of yearly value. ... The
school next in date stands out in sharp contrast to Winchester
and Eton. It is St. Paul's School, founded by Dean Colet. ...
Shrewsbury School, which follows next in order of seniority,
claims a royal foundation, but is in reality the true child of
the town's folk. The dissolution of the monasteries destroyed
also the seminaries attached to many of them, to the great
injury of popular education. This was specially the case in
Shropshire, so in 1551 the bailiffs, burgesses, and
inhabitants of Shrewsbury and the neighborhood petitioned
Edward VI. for a grant of some portion of the estates of the
dissolved collegiate churches for the purpose of founding a
free school. The King consented, and granted to the
petitioners the appropriated tithes of several livings and a
charter, but died before the school was organized. It was in
abeyance during Mary's reign, but opened in the fourth year of
Elizabeth, 1562, by Thomas Aston. ... We have now reached the
great group of Elizabethan schools, to which indeed Shrewsbury
may also be said to belong, as it was not opened until the
Queen had been three years on the throne. The two metropolitan
schools of Westminster and Merchant Taylors' were in fact
founded in 1560, two years before the opening of Shrewsbury.
Westminster as a royal foundation must take precedence. It is
a grammar-school attached by the Queen to the collegiate
church of St. Peter, commonly called Westminster Abbey, and
founded for the free education of forty scholars in Latin,
Greek, and Hebrew. The Queen, with characteristic thriftiness,
provided no endowment for her school, leaving the cost of
maintenance as a charge on the general revenues of the dean
and chapter, which indeed were, then as now, fully competent
to sustain the burden. ... Merchant Taylors', the other
metropolitan school founded in 1560, owes its origin to Sir
Thomas White, a member of the Court of Assistants of the
company, and founder of St. John's College, Oxford. It was
probably his promise to connect the school with his college
which induced the Company to undertake the task. ... Sir
Thomas White redeemed his promise by endowing the school with
thirty-seven fellowships at St. John's College. ... Rugby, or
the free school of Lawrence Sheriff, follows next in order,
having been founded in 1567 by Lawrence Sheriff, grocer, and
citizen of London. His 'intent' (as the document expressing
his wishes is called) declares that his lands in Rugby and
Brownsover, and his 'third of a pasture-ground in Gray's Inn
Fields, called Conduit Close,' shall be applied to maintain a
free grammar school for the children of Rugby and Brownsover,
and the places adjoining, and four poor almsmen of the same
parishes. These estates, after providing a fair schoolhouse
and residences for the master and almsmen, at first produced a
rental of only £24 13s. 4d. In due time, however, Conduit
Close became a part of central London, and Rugby School the
owner of eight acres of houses in and about the present Lamb's
Conduit Street. The income of the whole trust property amounts
now to about £6,000, of which £255 is expended on the
maintenance of the twelve almsmen. ... Harrow School was
founded in 1571, four years later than Rugby, by John Lyon, a
yeoman of the parish.
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He was owner of certain small estates in and about Harrow and
Barnet, and of others at Paddington and Kilburn. All these he
devoted to public purposes, but unfortunately gave the former
for the perpetual education of the children and youth of the
parish, and the latter for the maintenance and repair of the
highways from Harrow and Edgeware to London. The present
yearly revenue of the school estates is barely over £1,000,
while that of the highway trust is nearly £4,000. But, though
the poorest in endowments, Harrow, from its nearness to
London, and consequent attractions for the classes who spend a
large portion of their year in the metropolis either in
attendance in Parliament, or for pleasure, has become the
rival of Eton as a fashionable school. ... Last on the list of
the nine schools comes the Charterhouse (the Whitefriars of
Thackeray's novels). It may be fairly classed with the
Elizabethan schools, though actually founded in 1609, after
the accession of James I. In that year a substantial yeoman,
Thomas Sutton by name, purchased from Lord Suffolk the lately
dissolved Charterhouse, by Smithfield, and obtained letters
patent empowering him to found a hospital and school on the
old site."
T. Hughes, The Public Schools of England
(North American Review, April, 1879).
EDUCATION: England
Fagging.
"In rougher days it was found, that in large schools the
stronger and larger boys reduced the smaller and weaker to the
condition of Helots. Here the authorities stepped in, and
despairing of eradicating the evil, took the power which mere
strength had won, and conferred it upon the seniors of the
school--the members, that is, of the highest form or forms. As
in those days, promotion was pretty much a matter of rotation,
everyone who remained his full time at the school, was pretty
sure to reach in time the dominant class, and the humblest fag
looked forward to the day when he would join the ranks of the
ruling aristocracy. Meantime he was no longer at the beck of
any stronger or ruder classfellow. His 'master' was in theory,
and often in practice, his best protector: he imposed upon him
very likely what may be called menial offices--made him carry
home his 'Musæ'--field for him at cricket--brush his coat; if
we are to believe school myths and traditions, black his
shoes, and even take the chill off his sheets. The boy,
how-ever, saw the son of a Howard or a Percy similarly
employed by his side, and in cheerfully submitting to an
ancient custom, he was but following out the tendencies of the
age and class to which he belonged. ... The mere abolition of
the right of fagging, vague and undefined as were the duties
attached to it, would have been a loss rather than a gain to
the oppressed as a class. It would merely have substituted for
the existing law, imperfect and anomalous as that law might
be, the licence of brute force and the dominion of boyish
truculence. ... Such was, more or less, the state of things
when he to whom English education owes so incalculable a debt,
was placed at the head of Rugby School. ... It was hoped that
he who braved the anger of his order by his pamphlet on Church
Reform--at whose bold and uncompromising language bishops
stood aghast and courtly nobles remonstrated in vain--would
make short work of ancient saws and mediæval traditions--that
a revolution in school life was at hand. And they were not
mistaken. ... What he did was to seize on the really valuable
part of the existing system--to inspire it with that new life,
and those loftier purposes, without which mere institutions,
great or small, must, sooner or later, wither away and perish.
His first step was to effect an important change in the actual
machinery of the school--one which, in itself, amounted to a
revolution. The highest form in the school was no longer open
to all whom a routine promotion might raise in course of time
to its level. Industry and talent as tested by careful
examinations (in the additional labour of which he himself
bore the heaviest burden), were the only qualifications
recognised. The new-modelled 'sixth form' were told, that the
privileges and powers which their predecessors had enjoyed for
ages were not to be wrested from them; but that they were to
be held for the common good, as the badges and instruments of
duties and responsibilities, such as anyone with less
confidence in those whom he addressed would have hesitated to
impose. They were told plainly that without their co-operation
there was no hope of keeping in check the evils inherent in a
society of boys. Tyranny, falsehood, drinking, party-spirit,
coarseness, selfishness--the evil spirits that infest
schools--these they heard Sunday after Sunday put in their
true light by a majestic voice and a manly presence, with
words, accents, and manner which would live in their memory
for years; but they were warned that, to exercise such
spirits, something more was needed than the watchfulness of
masters and the energy of their chief. They themselves must
use their large powers, entrusted to them in recognition of
the principle, or rather of the fact, that in a large society
of boys some must of necessity hold sway, to keep down, in
themselves and those about them, principles and practices
which are ever ready, like hideous weeds, to choke the growth
of all that is fair and noble in such institutions. Dr. Arnold
persevered in spite of opposition, obloquy, and
misrepresentation. ... But he firmly established his system,
and his successors, men differing in training and temperament
from himself and from each other, have agreed in cordially
sustaining it. His pupils and theirs, men in very different
walks of life, filling honourable posts at the universities
and public schools, or ruling the millions of India, or
working among the blind and toiling multitudes of our great
towns, feel daily how much of their usefulness and power they
owe to the sense of high trust and high duty which they
imbibed at school."
Our Public Schools--Their Discipline and
Instruction (Fraser's Magazine, volume 1, pages 407--409).
EDUCATION: England: A. D. 1699-1870.
The rise of Elementary Schools.
"The recognition by the English State of its paramount duty in
aiding the work of national education is scarcely more than a
generation old. The recognition of the further and far more
extensive work of supplementing by State aid, or by State
agency, all deficiencies in the supply of schools, dates only
thirteen years back [to 1870]; while the equally pressing duty
of enforcing, by a universal law, the use of the opportunities
of education thus supplied, is a matter almost of yesterday.
The State has only slowly stepped into its proper place; more
slowly in the case of England than in the case of any other of
the leading European nations. ... In 1699 the Society for the
Propagation of Christian Knowledge was founded, and by it
various schools were established throughout the country.
{713}
In 1782 Robert Raikes established his first Sunday school, and
in a few years the Union, of which he was the founder, had
under its control schools scattered all over the country. But
the most extensive efforts made for popular education were
those of Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster towards the close of
the eighteenth century. ... They misconceived and misjudged
the extent of the work that had to be accomplished. They
became slaves to their system--that which was called the
Monitorial system ... and by elevating it to undue importance
they did much to discredit the very work in which they were
engaged. ... Amongst the Nonconformist followers of Lancaster
there arose the British and Foreign School Society; while by
those of Bell there was established, on the side representing
the Church, the National Society. The former became the
recognised agency of the Dissenters, the latter of the Church;
and through one or other of these channels State aid, when it
first began to flow, was obliged to take its course. ... In
1802 the first Sir Robert Peel passed a Bill which restricted
children's labour in factories, and required that reading,
writing, and arithmetic should be taught to them during a part
of each day. This was the beginning of the factory
legislation. ... In 1807 Mr. Whitebread introduced a Bill for
the establishment of parochial schools through the agency of
local vestries, who were empowered to draw on the rates for
the purpose. The House of Commons accepted the Bill, but it
was thrown out in the House of Lords. ... The movement for a
State recognition of education was pressed more vigorously
when the fears and troubles of European war were clearing
away. It was in 1816 that Brougham obtained his Select
Committee for Inquiring into the Education of the Poor in the
Metropolis. ... In 1820 Brougham introduced, on the basis of
his previous inquiries, an Education Bill. ... By this Bill
the issue between the contending parties in the State, which
was henceforward destined to be the chief stumbling-block in
the way of a State education, was placed on a clear and
well-defined basis. ... The Church was alarmed at anything
which seemed to trench upon what she naturally thought to be
her appointed task. The Dissenters dreaded what might add to
the impregnability of the Church's strongholds. ... When the
beginning was actually made it came ... as an almost unnoticed
proposal of the Executive. In 1832 the sum of £20,000 for
public education was placed in the estimates; it was passed by
the Committee of Supply; and the first step was taken on that
course from which the State has never since drawn back. No
legislation was necessary. ... The next great step was taken
in 1839, when the annual vote was increased from £20,000 to
£30,000, and when a special department was created to
supervise the work. Hitherto grants had been administered by
the Treasury to meet a certain amount of local exertion, and
in general reliance upon vague assurances as to maintenance of
the schools by local promoters. ... The conditions which were
soon found to be necessary as securities, either for
continuance or for efficiency, were not yet insisted upon. To
do this it was necessary to have a Department specially
devoted to this work; and the means adopted for creating such
a Department was one which had the advantage of requiring no
Act of Parliament. By an order in Council a Special Committee
of the Privy Council was established, and, in connection with
this Committee, a special staff of officers was engaged. The
same year saw the appointment of the first inspectors of
schools. It was thus that the Education Department was
constituted. The plan which the advisers of the Government in
this new attempt had most at heart was that of a Normal
Training College for teachers. ... But it was surrounded with
so much matter for dispute, gathered during a generation of
contention, that the proposal all but wrecked the Government
of Lord Melbourne. The Church objected to the scheme. ... In
the year 1844, after five years of the new administration, it
was possible to form some estimate, not only of the solid work
accomplished, but of the prospects of the immediate future.
... Between 1839 and 1844, under the action of the Committee
of Council, £170,000 of Imperial funds had been distributed to
meet £430,000 from local resources. In all, therefore, about
one million had been spent in little more than ten years. What
solid good had this accomplished? ... According to a careful
and elaborate report in the year 1845, only about one in six,
even of the children at school, was found able to read the
Scriptures with any ease. Even for these the power of reading
often left them when they tried a secular book. Of reading
with intelligence there was hardly any; and about one-half of
the children who came to school left, it was calculated,
unable to read. Only about one child in four had mastered,
even in the most mechanical way, the art of writing. As
regards arithmetic, not two per cent. of the children had
advanced as far as the rule of three. ... The teaching of the
schools was in the hands of men who had scarcely any training,
and who had often turned to the work because all other work
had turned away from them. Under them it was conducted upon
that monitorial system which was the inheritance from Dr.
Bell, the rival of Lancaster. The pupils were set to teach one
another. ... The inquiries of the Committee of Council thus
gave the death-blow, in public estimation, to the once
highly-vaunted monitorial system. But how was it to be
replaced? The model of a better state of things was found in
the Dutch schools. There a selected number of the older
pupils, who intended to enter upon the profession of teachers,
were apprenticed, when they had reached the age of thirteen,
to the teacher. ... After their apprenticeship they passed to
a Training College. ... Accordingly, a new and important start
was made by the Department on the 25th of August 1846. ... In
1851 twenty-five Training Colleges had been established; and
these had a sure supply of qualified recruits in the 6,000
pupil teachers who were by that time being trained to the
work. ... The ten years between 1842 and 1852 saw the
Parliamentary grant raised from £40,000 to £160,000 a year,
with the certainty of a still further increase as the
augmentation grants to teachers and the stipends to pupil
teachers grew in number. Nearly 3,800 schools had been built
with Parliamentary aid, providing accommodation for no less
than 540,000 children. The State had contributed towards this
more than £400,000; and a total expenditure had been incurred
in providing schools of more than £1,000,000. ... But the
system was as yet only tentative; and a mass of thorny
religious questions had to be faced before a really national
system could be established.
{714}
... All parties became convinced that the first step was to
inquire into the merits and defects of the existing system,
and on the basis of sound information to plan some method of
advance. Under this impression it was that the Commission on
Public Education, of which the Duke of Newcastle was chairman,
was appointed in 1858." The result of the Commission of 1858
was a revision of the educational Code which the Committee of
the Privy Council had formulated. The New Code proved
unsatisfactory in its working, and every year showed more
plainly the necessity of a fully organized system of national
education. "Out of the discussions there arose two societies,
which fairly expressed two different views. ... The first of
these was the Education League, started at Birmingham in 1869.
... Its basis, shortly stated, was that of a compulsory system
of school provision, by local authorities through means of
local rates; the schools so provided to be at once free and
unsectarian. ... In this programme the point which raised most
opposition was the unsectarian teaching. It was chiefly to
counteract this part of the League's objects that there was
formed the Education Union, which urged a universal system
based upon the old lines. ... By common consent the time for a
settlement was now come. Some guarantee must be taken that the
whole edifice should not crumble to pieces; that for local
agencies there should be substituted local authorities; and
that the State should be supplied with some machinery whereby
the gaps in the work might be supplied. It was in this
position of opinion that Mr. Forster, as Vice-President,
introduced his Education Bill in 1870. ... The measure passed
the House of Lords without any material alteration; and
finally became Law on the 9th of August 1870."
R. Craik, The State in its Relation to Education.
The schools to which the provisions of the Act of 1870
extends, and the regulations under which such schools are to
be conducted, are defined in the Act as follows: "Every
elementary school which is conducted in accordance with the
following regulations shall be a public elementary school
within the meaning of this Act; and every public elementary
school shall be conducted in accordance with the following
regulations (a copy of which regulations shall be
conspicuously put up in every such school); namely
(1.) It shall not be required, as a condition of any child
being admitted into or continuing in the school, that he shall
attend or abstain from attending any Sunday school, or any
place of religious worship, or that he shall attend any
religious observance or any instruction in religious subjects
in the school or elsewhere, from which observance or
instruction he may be withdrawn by his parent, or that he
shall, if withdrawn by his parent, attend the school on any
day exclusively set apart for religious observance by the
religious body to which his parent belongs:
(2.) The time or times during which any religious observance
is practised or instruction in religious subjects is given at
any meeting of the school shall be either at the beginning or
at the end or at the beginning and the end of such meeting,
and shall be inserted in a time-table to be approved by the
Education Department, and to be kept permanently and
conspicuously affixed in every school-room; and any scholar
may be withdrawn by his parent from such observance or
instruction without forfeiting any of the other benefits of
the school:
(3.) The school shall be open at all times to the inspection
of any of Her Majesty's inspectors, so, however, that it shall
be no part of the duties of such inspector to inquire into any
instruction in religious subjects given at such school, or to
examine any scholar therein in religious knowledge or in any
religious subject or book:
(4.) The school shall be conducted in accordance with the
conditions required to be fulfilled by an elementary school in
order to obtain an annual parliamentary grant."
J. R. Rigg, National Education, appendix A.
"The new Act retained existing inspected schools, ... it also
did away with all denominational classifications of schools
and with denominational inspection, treating all inspected
schools as equally belonging to a national system of schools
and under national inspection, the distinctions as to
inspectors and their provinces being henceforth purely
geographical. But the new Act no longer required that public
elementary schools established by voluntary agency and under
voluntary management should have in them any religious
character or element whatever, whether as belonging to a
Christian Church or denomination, or as connected with a
Christian philanthropic society, or as providing for the
reading of the Scriptures in the school. It was left open to
any party or any person to establish purely voluntary schools
if they thought fit. But, furthermore, the Act made provision
for an entirely new class of schools, to be established and
(in part) supported out of local rates, to be governed by
locally-elected School Boards, and to have just such and so
much religious instruction given in them as the governing
boards might think proper, at times preceding or following the
prescribed secular school hours, and under the protection of a
time-table Conscience Clause, as in the case of voluntary
schools, with this restriction only, that in these schools no
catechism or denominational religious formulary of any sort
was to be taught. The mode of electing members to the School
Boards was to be by what is called the cumulative vote--that
is, each elector was to have as many votes as there were
candidates, and these votes he could give all to one, or else
distribute among the candidates as he liked; and all
ratepayers were to be electors. ... The new law ... made a
clear separation, in one respect, between voluntary and Board
schools. Both were to stand equally in relation to the
National Education Department, under the Privy Council; but
the voluntary schools were to have nothing to do with local
rates or rate aid, nor Local Boards to have any control over
voluntary schools."
J. H. Rigg, National Education, chapter 10.
"To sum up ... in few words what may be set down as the chief
characteristics of our English system of Elementary Education,
I should say
(1) first, that whilst about 30 per cent. of our school
accommodation is under the control of school boards, the cost
of maintenance being borne in part by local rates as well as
by the Parliamentary grant, fully 70 per cent. is still in the
hands of voluntary school-managers, whose subscriptions take
the place of the rates levied by school boards.
(2) In case a deficiency in school accommodation is reported
in any school district, the Education Department have the
power to require that due provision shall be made for the same
within a limited time; the 'screw' to be applied to wilful
defaulters in a voluntary school district being the threat of
a board, and in a school board district the supercession of
the existing board by a new board, nominated by the
Department, and remunerated out of the local rates.
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(3) Attendance is enforced everywhere by bye-laws, worked
either by the school board or by the School Attendance
Committee: and although these local authorities are often very
remiss in discharging their duties, and the magistrates not
seldom culpably lenient in dealing with cases brought before
them, there are plenty of districts in which regularity of
school attendance has been improved fully 10 per cent. in the
past two or three years. ...
(4) The present provision for teachers, and the means in
existence for keeping up the supply, are eminently
satisfactory. Besides a large but somewhat diminishing body of
apprenticed pupil teachers, there is a very considerable and
rapidly increasing number of duly qualified assistants, and at
their head a large array of certificated teachers, whose ranks
are being replenished, chiefly from the Training Colleges, at
the rate of about 2,000 a year.
(5) The whole of the work done is examined and judged every
year by inspectors and inspectors' assistants organised in
districts each superintended by a senior inspector--the total
cost of this inspection for the present year being estimated
at about £150,000."
Reverend H. Roe, The English System of Elementary
Education (International Health Exhibition, London,
1884: Conference on Education, section A).
"The result of the work of the Education Department is causing
a social revolution in England. If the character of the
teaching is too mechanical, if the chief aim of the teacher is
to earn as much money as possible for his managers, it must be
remembered that this cannot be done without at least giving
the pupil the ability to read and write. Of course the schools
are not nearly so good as the friends of true education wish.
Much remains to be done. ... Free education will shortly be an
accomplished fact; the partial absorption of the voluntary
schools by the School Boards will necessarily follow, and
further facilitate the abolition of what have been the cause
of so much evil--result examinations, and 'grant payments.'
'Write "Grant factory" on three-fourths of our schools,' said
an educator to me. ... The schools are known as
(1) Voluntary Schools, which have been built, and are partly
supported by voluntary subscriptions. These are under
denominational control.
(2) Board Schools: viz., schools built and supported by money
raised by local taxation, and controlled by elected School
Boards.
Out of 4,688,000 pupils in the elementary schools, 2,154,000
are in the schools known as Voluntary, provided by, and under
the control of the Church of England; 1,780,000 are in Board
Schools; 330,000 attend schools under the British School
Society, or other undenominational control; 248,000 are in
Roman Catholic schools; and 174,000 belong to Wesleyan
schools. The schools here spoken of correspond more nearly
than any other in England to the Public School of the United
States and Australia; but are in many respects very different,
chiefly from the fact that they are provided expressly for the
poor, and in many cases are attended by no other class."
W. C. Grasby, Teaching in Three Continents, chapter 2.
EDUCATION: England: A. D. 1891.
Attainment of Free Education.
In 1891, a bill passed Parliament which aims at making the
elementary schools of the country free from the payment of
fees. The bill as explained in the House of Commons, "proposed
to give a grant of 10s. per head to each scholar in average
attendance between five and fourteen years of age, and as
regarded such children schools would either become wholly
free, or would continue to charge a fee reduced by the amount
of the grant, according as the fee at present charged did or
did not exceed 10s. When a school had become free it would
remain free, or when a fee was charged, the fee would remain
unaltered unless a change was required for the educational
benefit of the locality; and under this arrangement he
believed that two-thirds of the elementary schools in England
and Wales would become free. There would be no standard
limitations, but the grant would be restricted to schools
where the compulsory power came in, and as to the younger
children, it was proposed that in no case should the fee
charged exceed 2d." In a speech made at Birmingham on the free
education bill, Mr. Chamberlain discussed the opposition to it
made by those who wished to destroy the denominational
schools, and who objected to their participation in the
proposed extension of public support. "To destroy
denominational schools," he said, "was now an impossibility,
and nothing was more astonishing than the progress they had
made since the Education Act of 1870. He had thought, he said,
they would die out with the establishment of Board schools,
but he had been mistaken, for in the last twenty-three years
they had doubled their accommodation, and more than doubled
their subscription list. At the present time they supplied
accommodation for two-thirds of the children of England and
Wales. That being the case, to destroy voluntary schools--to
supply their places with Board schools, as the Daily News
cheerfully suggested--would be to involve a capital
expenditure of £50,000,000, and £5,000,000 extra yearly in
rates, But whether voluntary or denominational schools were
good or bad, their continued existence had nothing to do with
the question of free education, and ought to be kept quite
distinct from it. To make schools free was not to give one
penny extra to any denominational endowment. At the present
time the fee was a tax, and if the parents did not pay fees
they were brought before the magistrates, and if they still
did not pay they might be sent to gaol. The only thing the
Government proposed to do was not to alter the tax but to
alter the incidence. The same amount would be collected; it
would be paid by the same people, but it would be collected
from the whole nation out of the general taxation." The bill
was passed by the Commons July 8, and by the Lords on the 24th
of the same month. The free education proposals of the
Government are said to have been generally accepted throughout
the country by both Board and Voluntary schools.
Annual Register, 1891, pages 128 and 97, and part 2, page 51.
{716}
EDUCATION: France: A. D. 1565-1802.
The Jesuits.
Port Royal.
The Revolution.
Napoleon.
"The Jesuits invaded the province long ruled by the University
alone. By that adroit management of men for which they have
always been eminent, and by the more liberal spirit of their
methods, they outdid in popularity their superannuated rival.
Their first school at Paris was established in 1565, and in
1762, two years before their dissolution, they had eighty-six
colleges in France. They were followed by the Port Royalists,
the Benedictines, the Oratorians. The Port Royal schools [see
PORT ROYAL], from which perhaps a powerful influence upon
education might have been looked for, restricted this
influence by limiting very closely the number of their pupils.
Meanwhile the main funds and endowments for public education
in France were in the University's hands, and its
administration of these was as ineffective as its teaching.
... The University had originally, as sources of revenue, the
Post Office and the Messageries, or Office of Public
Conveyance; it had long since been obliged to abandon the Post
Office to Government, when in 1719 it gave up to the same
authority the privilege of the Messageries, receiving in
return from the State a yearly revenue of 150,000 livres. For
this payment, moreover, it undertook the obligation of making
the instruction in all its principal colleges gratuitous. Paid
or gratuitous, however, its instruction was quite inadequate
to the wants of the time, and when the Jesuits were expelled
from France in 1764, their establishments closed, and their
services as teachers lost, the void that was left was
strikingly apparent, and public attention began to be drawn to
it. It is well known how Rousseau among writers, and Turgot
among statesmen, busied themselves with schemes of education;
but the interest in the subject must have reached the whole
body of the community, for the instructions of all three
orders of the States General in 1789 are unanimous in
demanding the reform of education, and its establishment on a
proper footing. Then came the Revolution, and the work of
reform soon went swimmingly enough, so far as the abolition of
the old schools was concerned. In 1791 the colleges were all
placed under the control of the administrative authorities; in
1792 the jurisdiction of the University was abolished; in 1793
the property of the colleges was ordered to be sold, the
proceeds to be taken by the State; in September of the same
year the suppression of all the great public schools and of
all the University faculties was pronounced. For the work of
reconstruction Condorcet's memorable plan had in 1792 been
submitted to the Committee of Public Instruction appointed by
the Legislative Assembly. This plan proposed a secondary
school for every 4,000 inhabitants; for each department, a
departmental institute, or higher school; nine lycées, schools
carrying their studies yet higher than the departmental
institute, for the whole of France; and to crown the edifice,
a National Society of Sciences and Arts, corresponding in the
main with the present institute of France. The whole expense
of national instruction was to be borne by the State, and this
expense was estimated at 29,000,000 of francs. But 1792 and
1793 were years of furious agitation, when it was easier to
destroy than to build. Condorcet perished with the Girondists,
and the reconstruction of public education did not begin till
after the fall of Robespierre. The decrees of the Convention
for establishing the Normal School, the Polytechnic, the
School of Mines, and the écoles centrales, and then Daunou's
law in 1795, bore, however, many traces of Condorcet's design.
Daunou's law established primary schools, central schools,
special schools, and at the head of all the Institute of
France, this last a memorable and enduring creation, with
which the old French Academy became incorporated. By Daunou's
law, also, freedom was given to private persons to open
schools. The new legislation had many defects. ... The
country, too, was not yet settled enough for its education to
organise itself successfully. The Normal School speedily broke
down; the central schools were established slowly and with
difficulty; in the course of the four years of the Directory
there were nominally instituted ninety·one of these schools,
but they never really worked. More was accomplished by private
schools, to which full freedom was given by the new
legislation, at the same time that an ample and open field lay
before them. They could not, however, suffice for the work,
and education was one of the matters for which Napoleon, when
he became Consul, had to provide. Foureroy's law, in 1802,
took as the basis of its school-system secondary schools,
whether established by the communes or by private individuals;
the Government undertook to aid these schools by grants for
buildings, for scholarships, and for gratuities to the
masters; it prescribed Latin, French, geography, history, and
mathematics as the instruction to be given in them. They were
placed under the superintendence of the prefects. To continue
and complete the secondary schools were instituted the
lyceums; here the instruction was to be Greek and Latin,
rhetoric, logic, literature, moral philosophy, and the
elements of the mathematical and physical sciences. The pupils
were to be of four kinds: boursiers nationaux, scholars
nominated to scholarships by the State; pupils from the
secondary schools, admitted as free scholars by competition;
paying boarders, and paying day-scholars."
M. Arnold, Schools and Universities on the
Continent, chapter 1.
EDUCATION: France: A. D. 1833-1889.
The present System of Public Instruction.
"The question of the education of youth is one of those in
which the struggle between the Catholic Church and the civil
power has been, and still is, hottest. It is also one of those
in which France, which for a long time had remained far in the
rear, has made most efforts, and achieved most progress in
these latter years. ... Napoleon I. conceived education as a
means of disciplining minds and wills and moulding them into
conformity with the political system which he had put in
force; accordingly he gave the University the monopoly of
public education. Apart from the official system of teaching,
no competition was allowed except that specially authorised,
regulated, and controlled by the State itself. Religious
instruction found a place in the official programmes, and
members of the clergy were even called on to supply it, but
this instruction itself, and these priests themselves, were
under the authority of the State. Hence two results: on the
one hand the speedy impoverishment of University education,
... on the other hand, the incessant agitation of all those
who were prevented by the special organisation given to the
University from expounding their ideas or the faith that was
in them from the professorial chair. This agitation was begun
and carried on by the Catholic Church itself, as soon as it
felt more at liberty to let its ambitions be discerned.
{717}
On this point the Church met with the support of a good number
of Liberals, and it is in a great measure to its initiative
that are due the three important laws of 1833, 1850, and 1875,
which have respectively given to France freedom of primary
education, of secondary education, and finally that of higher
education; which have given, that is to say, the right to
everyone, under certain conditions of capacity and character,
to open private schools in competition with the three orders
of public schools. But the Church did not stop there. Hardly
had it insured liberty to its educational institutions--a
liberty by which all citizens might profit alike, but of which
its own strong organisation and powerful resources enabled it
more easily to take advantage--hardly was this result obtained
than the Church tried to lay hands on the University itself,
and to make its doctrines paramount there. ... Thence arose a
movement hostile to the enterprises of the Church, which has
found expression since 1880 in a series of laws which Excluded
her little by little from the positions she had won, and only
left to her, as to all other citizens, the liberty to teach
apart from, and concurrently with, the State. The right to
confer degrees has been given back to the State alone; the
privilege of the 'letter of obedience' has been abolished;
religious teaching has been excluded from the primary schools;
and after having 'laicized,' as the French phrase is, the
curriculum, the effort was persistently made to 'laicize' the
staff. .... From the University point of view, the territory
of France is divided into seventeen academies, the chief towns
of which are Paris, Douai, Caen, Rennes, Poitiers, Bordeaux,
Toulouse, Montpellier, Aix, Grenoble, Chambéry, Lyons,
Besançon, Nancy, Dijon, Clermont, and Algiers. Each academy
has a rector at its head, who, under the authority of the
Minister of Public Instruction, is charged with the material
administration of higher and secondary education, and with the
methods of primary instruction in his district. The
administration of this last belongs to the prefect of each
department, assisted by an academy-inspector. In each of these
three successive stages--department, academy, and central
administration--is placed a council, possessing administrative
and disciplinary powers. The Departmental Council of Public
Instruction, which comprises six officials ... forms a
disciplinary council for primary education, either public or
free (i. e., State or private). This council sees to the
application of programmes, lays down rules, and appoints one
or more delegates in each canton to superintend primary
schools. The Academic Council ... performs similar functions
with regard to secondary and higher education. The Higher
Council of Public Instruction sits at Paris. It comprises
forty-four elected representatives of the three educational
orders, nine University officials, and four 'free'
schoolmasters appointed by the Minister, and is the
disciplinary court of appeal for the two preceding councils.
... Such is the framework, administrative as well as judicial,
in which education, whether public or free, lives and moves.
... Since 1882 Primary Education has been compulsory for all
children of both sexes, from the age of six to the end of the
thirteenth year, unless before reaching the latter age they
have been able to pass an examination, and to gain the
certificate of primary studies. To satisfy the law, the
child's name must be entered at a public or private school; he
may, however, continue to receive instruction at home, but in
this case, after he has reached the age of eight, he must be
examined every year before a State board. ... At the age of
thirteen the child is set free from further teaching, whatever
may be the results of the education he has received. ... In
public schools the course of instruction does not include, as
we have said, religious teaching; but one day in the week the
school must take a holiday, to allow parents to provide such
teaching for their children, if they wish to do so. The school
building cannot be used for that purpose. In private schools
religious instruction may be given, but this is optional. The
programme of primary education includes: moral and civic
instruction; reading, writing, French, geography and history
(particularly those of France); general notions of law and
science; the elements of drawing, modelling, and music; and
gymnastics. No person of either sex can become a teacher,
either public or private, unless he possesses the 'certificate
of capacity for primary instruction' given by a State board.
For the future--putting aside certain temporary
arrangements--no member of a religious community will be
eligible for the post of master in a public school. ... As a
general rule, every commune is compelled to maintain a public
school, and, if it has more than 500 inhabitants, a second
school for girls only. ... The sum total of the State's
expenses for primary education in 1887 is as high as
eighty-five million francs (£3,400,000), and that without
mentioning grants for school buildings, whereas in 1877 the
sum total was only twelve millions (£480,000). ... From 1877
to 1886, the number of public schools rose from 61,000 to
66,500; that of the pupils from 4,200,000 to 4,500,000, with
96,600 masters and mistresses; that of training schools for
male teachers from 79 to 89, of training schools for female
teachers from 18 to 77, with 5,400 pupils (3,500 of them
women), and 1,200 masters. As to the results a single fact
will suffice. In these ten years, before the generations newly
called to military service have been able to profit fully by
the new state of things, the proportion of illiterate recruits
(which is annually made out directly after the lots are drawn)
has already fallen from 15 to 11 per cent."
A. Lebon and P. Pelet, France as it is, chapter 5.
"In 1872, after the dreadful disaster of the war, Monsieur
Thiers, President of the Gouvernement de la Défense Nationale,
and Monsieur Jules Simon, Minister of Public Instruction, felt
that what was most important for the nation was a new system
of public instruction, and they set themselves the task of
determining the basis on which this new system was to be
established. In September, 1882, Monsieur Jules Simon issued a
memorable circular calling the attention of all the most
distinguished leaders of thought to some proposed plans. He
did not long remain in power, but in his retirement he wrote a
book entitled: 'Réforme de l'Enseignement Secondaire.'
Monsieur Bréal, who was commissioned to visit the schools of
Germany, soon after published another book which aroused new
enthusiasm in France. ... From that day a complete educational
reform was decided on.
{718}
In 1872 we had at the Ministeré de l'Instruction Publique
three distinguished men: Monsieur Dumont for the Enseignement
Supérieur, one from whom we hoped much and whose early death
we had to mourn in 1884; Monsieur Zévort for the Enseignement
Secondaire, who also died ere the good seed which he had sown
had sprung up and borne fruit (1887); and Monsieur Buisson to
whose wisdom, zeal, and energy we owe most of the work of the
Enseignement Primaire. At their side, of maturer years than
they, stood Monsieur Gréard, Recteur de l'Académie de Paris.
... All the educationists of the first French Revolution had
insisted on the solidarity of the three orders of education;
maintaining that it was not possible to separate one from
another, and that there ought to be a close correspondence
between them. This principle lies at the root of the whole
system of French national instruction. Having established this
principle, the four leaders called upon all classes of
teachers to work with them, and professors who had devoted
their life to the promotion of superior instruction brought
their experience and their powers of organization to bear upon
schools for all classes, from the richest to the poorest. ...
But to reform and to reconstruct a system of instruction is
not a small task. It is not easy to change at once the old
methods, to give a new spirit to the masters, to teach those
who think that what had been sufficient for them need not be
altered and is sufficient forever. However, we must say that
as soon as the French teachers heard of the great changes
which were about to take place, they were all anxious to rise
to the demands made on them, and were eager for advice and
help. Lectures on pedagogy and psychology were given to them
by the highest professors of philosophy, and these lessons
were so much appreciated that the attention of the University
of France was called to the necessity for creating at the
Sorbonne a special course of lectures on pedagogy. Eleven
hundred masters and mistresses attended them the first year
that they were inaugurated; from that time till now their
number has always been increasing. Now we have at the Sorbonne
a Chaire Magistrale and Conférences for the training of
masters and professors; and the faculties at Lyons, Bordeaux,
Nancy, and Montpellier have followed the example given at the
Sorbonne, Paris. ... In 1878, the Musée Pedagogique was
founded; in 1882, began the publication of the Revue
Pedagogique and the Revue Internationale de l'Enseignement.
Four large volumes of the Dictionnaire de Pédagogie, each
containing about 3,000 closely printed pages, have also come
out under the editorship of Monsieur Buisson, all the work of
zealous teachers and educationists. In 1879 normal schools
were opened. Then in 1880 primary schools, and in 1882 we may
say that the Ecoles Maternelles and the Ecoles Enfantines were
created, so different are they from the infant schools or the
Salles d'Asile; in 1883 a new examination was established for
the Professorat and the Direction des Ecoles Normales, as well
as for the inspectors of primary instruction; and in July,
1889, the law about public and private teaching was
promulgated, perhaps one of the most important that has ever
been passed by the Republic."
Mme. Th. Armagnac, The Educational
Renaissance of France (Education, September, 1890).
EDUCATION: France: A. D. 1890-1891.
Statistics.
The whole number of pupils registered in the primary,
elementary and superior schools, public and private, of France
and Algiers (excluding the "écoles maternelles") for the
school-year 1890-91, was 5,593,883; of which 4,384,905 were in
public schools (3,760,601, "laïque," and 624,304
"congréganiste"), and 1,208,978 in private schools (151,412
"laïques," and 1,057,566 "congréganiste"). Of 36,484
communes, 35,503 possessed a public school, and 875 were
joined for school purposes with another commune. The male
teachers employed in the elementary and superior public
schools numbered 28,657; female teachers, 24,273; total
52,930.
Ministère de l'Instruction publique, Résumé des
états de situation de l'enseignement primaire pour
l'année scolaire 1890-1891.
EDUCATION:
Ireland.
"The present system of National Education in Ireland was
founded in 1831. In this year grants of public money for the
education of the poor were entrusted to the lord-lieutenant in
order that they might be applied to the education of the
people. This education was to be given to children of every
religious belief, and to be superintended by commissioners
appointed for the purpose. The great principle on which the
system was founded was that of 'united secular and separate
religious instruction.' No child should be required to attend
any religious instruction which should be contrary to the
wishes of his or her parents or guardians. Times were to be

set apart during which children were to have such religious
instruction as their parents might think proper. It was to be
the duty of the Commissioners to see that these principles
were carried out and not infringed on in any way. They had
also power to give or refuse money to those who applied for
aid to build schools. Schools are 'vested' and 'non-vested.'
Vested schools are those built by the Board of National
Education; non-vested schools are the ordinary schools, and
are managed by those who built them. If a committee of persons
build a school, it is looked on by the Board as the 'patron.'
If a landowner or private person builds a school, he is
regarded as the patron if he has no committee. The patron,
whether landlord or committee, has power to appoint or dismiss
a manager, who corresponds with the Board. The manager is also
responsible for the due or thorough observance of the laws and
rules. Teachers are paid by him after he certifies that the
laws have been kept, and gives the attendance for each
quarter. When an individual is patron, he may appoint himself
manager and thus fill both offices. ... The teachers are paid
by salaries and by results fees. The Boards of Guardians have
power to contribute to these results fees. Some unions do so
and are called 'contributory.' School managers in Ireland are
nearly always clerics of some denomination. There are
sometimes, but very rarely, lay managers. ... From the census
returns of 1881 it appears that but fifty-nine per cent. of
the people of Ireland are able to read and write, The greater
number of national schools through Ireland are what are
called 'unmixed,' that is, attended by children of one
denomination only. The rest of the schools are called 'mixed,'
that is, attended by children of different forms of religion.
The percentage of schools that show a 'mixed' attendance tends
to become smaller each year. ... There are also twenty-nine
'model' schools in different parts of Ireland. These schools
are managed directly by the Board of National Education. ...
{719}
According to the report of the Commissioners of National
Education for 1890, the 'percentage of average attendance to
the average number of children on the rolls of the schools was
but 59.0,' and the percentage of school attendance to the
estimated population of school age in Ireland would be less
than 50. Different reasons might be given for this small
percentage of attendance. The chief reasons are, first,
attendance at school not being compulsory, and next, education
not being free. ... The pence paid for school fees in Ireland
may seem, to many people, a small matter. But in a country
like Ireland, where little money circulates, and a number of
the people are very poor, school pence are often not easily
found every week. In 1890, £104,550 4s. and 8d. was paid in
school fees, being an average of 4s. 32¾d. per unit of average
attendance."
The Irish Peasant;
by a Guardian of the Poor, chapter 8.
EDUCATION:
Norway.
"In 1739 the schools throughout the country were regulated by
a royal ordinance, but this paid so little regard to the
economical and physical condition of Norway that it had to be
altered and modified as early as 1741. Compulsory instruction,
however, had thus been adopted, securing to every child in the
country instruction in the Christian doctrine and in reading,
and this coercion was retained in all later laws. ... Many
portions of the country are intersected by high mountains and
deep fiords, so that a small population is scattered over a
surface of several miles. In such localities the law has
established 'ambulatory schools,' whose teachers travel from
one farm to another, living with the different peasants.
Although this kind of instruction has often been most
incomplete and the teachers very mediocre, still educational
coercion has everywhere been in force, and Christian
instruction everywhere provided for the children. These
'ambulatory schools' formerly existed in large numbers, but
with the increase of wealth and population, and the growing
interest taken in education, their number has gradually
diminished, and that of fixed circle-schools augmented in the
same proportion."
G. Gade, Report on the Educational System of Norway
(U. S. Bureau of Education, Circulars of Information,
July, 1871).
"School attendance is compulsory for at least 12 weeks each
year for all children in the country districts from 8 years of
age to confirmation, and from 7 years to confirmation in the
towns. According to the law of 1889, which in a measure only
emphasizes preceding laws, each school is to have the
necessary furnishings and all indispensable school material.
The Norwegians are so intent upon giving instruction to all
children that in case of poverty of the parents the
authorities furnish text-books and the necessary clothing, so
that school privileges may be accorded to all of school age."
U. S. Commissioner of Education,
Report, 1889-90, page 513.
EDUCATION: Prussia: A. D. 1809.
Education and the liberation movement.
"The most important era in the history of public instruction
in Prussia, as well as in other parts of Germany, opens with
the efforts put forth by the king and people, to rescue the
kingdom from the yoke of Napoleon in 1809. In that year the
army was remodeled and every citizen converted into a soldier;
landed property was declared free of feudal service;
restrictions on freedom of trade were abolished, and the whole
state was reorganized. Great reliance was placed on infusing a
German spirit into the people by giving them freer access to
improved institutions of education from the common school to
the university. Under the councils of Hardenberg, Humboldt,
Stein, Altenstein, these reforms and improvements were
projected, carried on, and perfected in less than a single
generation. The movement in behalf of popular schools
commenced by inviting C. A. Zeller, of Wirtemberg, to Prussia.
Zeller was a young theologian, who had studied under
Pestalozzi in Switzerland, and was thoroughly imbued with the
method and spirit of his master. On his return he had convened
the school teachers of Wirtemberg in barns, for want of better
accommodations being allowed him, and inspired them with a
zeal for Pestalozzi's methods, and for a better education of
the whole people. On removing to Prussia he first took charge
of the seminary at Koenigsberg, soon after founded the
seminary at Karalene, and went about into different provinces
meeting with teachers, holding conferences, visiting schools,
and inspiring school officers with the right spirit. The next
step taken was to send a number of young men, mostly
theologians, to Pestalozzi's institution at Ifferten, to
acquire his method, and on their return to place them in new,
or reorganized teachers' seminaries. To these new agents in
school improvement were joined a large body of zealous
teachers, and patriotic and enlightened citizens, who, in ways
and methods of their own, labored incessantly to confirm the
Prussian state, by forming new organs for its internal life,
and new means of protection from foreign foes. They proved
themselves truly educators of the people. Although the
government thus not only encouraged, but directly aided in the
introduction of the methods of Pestalozzi into the public
schools of Prussia, still the school board in the different
provinces sustained and encouraged those who approved and
taught on different systems. ... Music, which was one of
Pestalozzi's great instruments of culture, was made the
vehicle of patriotic songs, and through them the heart of all
Germany was moved to bitter hatred of the conqueror who had
desolated her fields and homes, and humbled the pride of her
monarchy. All these efforts for the improvement of elementary
education, accompanied by expensive modifications in the
establishments of secondary and superior education, were made
when the treasury was impoverished, and taxes the most
exorbitant in amount were levied on every province and commune
of the kingdom."
H. Barnard, National Education in Europe, pages 83-84.
For this notable educational work begun in Prussia in 1809,
and which gave a new character to the nation, "the
Providential man appeared in Humboldt, as great a master of
the science and art of education as Scharnhorst was a master
of the organisation of war. Not only was he himself, as a
scholar and an investigator, on a level with the very first of
his age, not only had he lived with precisely those masters of
literature, Schiller and Goethe, who were most deliberate in
their self-culture, and have therefore left behind most
instruction on the higher parts of education, but he had been
specially intimate with F. A. Wolf. It is not generally known
in England that Wolf was not merely the greatest philologer
but also the greatest teacher and educationist of his time.
... Formed by such teachers, and supported by a more intense
belief in culture than almost any man of his time, Humboldt
began his work in April, 1809.
{720}
In primary education Fichte had already pointed
to Pestalozzi as the best guide. One of that reformer's
disciples, C. A. Zeller, was summoned to Königsberg to found a
normal school, while the reformer himself, in his weekly
educational journal, cheered fallen Prussia by his panegyric,
and wrote enthusiastically to Nicolovius pronouncing him and
his friends the salt and leaven of the earth that would soon
leaven the whole mass. It is related that in the many
difficulties which Zeller not unnaturally had to contend with,
the King's genuine benevolence, interest in practical
improvement, and strong family feeling, were of decisive use.
... The reform of the Gymnasia was also highly successful.
Süvern here was among the most active of those who worked
under Humboldt's direction. In deference to the authority of
Wolf the classics preserved their traditional position of
honour, and particular importance was attached to Greek. ...
But it was on the highest department of education that
Humboldt left his mark most visibly. He founded the University
of Berlin; he gave to Europe a new seat of learning, which has
ever since stood on an equality with the very greatest of
those of which Europe boasted before. We are not indeed to
suppose that the idea of such a University sprang up for the
first time at this moment, or in the brain of Humboldt. Among
all the losses which befell Prussia by the Peace of Tilsit
none was felt more bitterly than the loss of the University of
Halle, where Wolf himself had made his fame. Immediately after
the blow fell, two of the Professors of Halle made their way
to Memel and laid before the King a proposal to establish a
High School at Berlin. This was on August 22nd, 1807. ... On
September 4th came an Order of Cabinet, in which it was
declared to be one of the most important objects to compensate
the loss of Halle. It was added that neither of the two
Universities which remained to Prussia, those of Königsberg
and Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, could be made to supply the place
of Halle, Königsberg being too remote from the seat of
Government and Frankfurt not sufficiently provided with means.
At Berlin a University could best, and at least expense, be
established. Accordingly all funds which had hitherto gone to
Halle were to go for the future to Berlin, and assurances were
to be given to the expelled Professors which might prevent
their talents being lost to the country. A University is not
founded in a day, and accordingly while Stein held office the
design did not pass beyond the stage of discussion. ...
Humboldt sent in his Report on May 12, 1809, and on August
16th followed the Order of Cabinet assigning to the new
University, along with the Academies of Science and Art, an
annual dotation of 150,000 thalers, and the Palace of Prince
Henry as its residence. During the rest of his term of office
Humboldt was occupied in negotiations with eminent men of
science all over Germany, whose services he hoped to procure.
He was certainly not unsuccessful. He secured Fichte for
Philosophy; Schleiermacher, De Wette, and Marheineke for
Theology; Savigny and Schmalz for Jurisprudence; Friedländer,
Kohlrausch, Hufeland, and Reil for Medicine; Wolf, Buttmann,
Böckh, Heindorf, and Spalding for the Study of Antiquity;
Niebuhr and Rühs for History; Tralles for Mathematics (Gauss
refused the invitation). The University was opened at
Michaelmas of 1810, and as the first result of it the first
volume of Niebuhr's Roman History, opening so vast a field of
historical speculation, was published in 1811. ... Altogether
in that period of German history the relations of literature,
or rather culture in general, to politics are remarkable and
exceptional. There had been a most extraordinary intellectual
movement, a great outpouring of genius, and yet this had taken
place not, as according to some current theories it ought to
have done, in the bosom of political liberty, but in a country
where liberty was unknown. And as it was not the effect, so
the new literature did not seem disposed to become the cause,
of liberty. Not only was it careless of internal liberty, but
it was actually indifferent to national independence. The
golden age of German literature is the very period when
Germany was conquered by France. ... So far literature and
culture seemed a doubtful benefit, and might almost be
compared to some pernicious drug, which should have the power
to make men forget their country and their duties. Not
unreasonably did Friedrich Perthes console himself for the
disasters of Germany by reflecting that at least they had
brought to an end 'the paper time,' the fool's paradise of a
life made up of nothing more substantial than literature. In
Humboldt's reform we have the compensation for all this. Here
while on the one hand we see the grand spectacle of a nation
in the last extremity refusing to part with the treasures of
its higher life, on the other hand that higher life is no
longer unnaturally divorced from political life. It is prized
as one of the bulwarks of the State, as a kind of spiritual
weapon by which the enemy may be resisted. And in the new and
public-spirited generation of thinkers, of which Fichte and
Sehleiermacher were the principal representatives, culture
returns to politics the honour that has been done to it. ...
In Humboldt and his great achievements of 1809, 1810, meet and
are reconciled the two views of life which found their most
extreme representatives in Goethe and Stein."
J. R. Seeley, Life and Times of Stein,
part 6, chapter 3 (volume 2).
EDUCATION: Prussia: A. D. 1874.
The Educational Administration.
"There is no organic school-law in Prussia, ... though
sketches and projects of such a law have more than once been
prepared. But at present the public control of the higher
schools is exercised through administrative orders and
instructions, like the minutes of our Committee of Council on
Education. But the administrative authority has in Prussia a
very different basis for its operations from that which it has
in England, and a much firmer one. It has for its basis these
articles of the Allgemeine Landrecht, or common law of
Prussia, which was drawn up in writing in Frederick the
Great's reign, and promulgated in 1794, in the reign of his
successor:--'Schools and universities are State institutions,
having for their object the instruction of youth in useful and
scientific knowledge. Such establishments are to be instituted
only with the State's previous knowledge and consent. All
public schools and public establishments of education are
under the State's supervision, and must at all times submit
themselves to its examinations and inspections.
{721}
Whenever the appointment of teachers is not by virtue of the
foundation or of a special privilege vested in certain persons
or corporations, it belongs to the State. Even where the
immediate supervision of such schools and the appointment of
their teachers is committed to certain private persons or
corporations, new teachers cannot be appointed, and important
changes in the constitution and teaching of the school cannot
be adopted without the previous knowledge or consent of the
provincial school authorities. The teachers in the gymnasiums
and other higher schools have the character of State
functionaries.' ... It would be a mistake to suppose that the
State in Prussia shows a grasping and centralising spirit in
dealing with education; on the contrary, it makes the
administration of it as local as it possibly can; but it takes
care that education shall not be left to the chapter of
accidents. ... Prussia is now divided into eight provinces,
and these eight provinces are again divided into twenty-six
governmental districts, or Regierungen. There is a Provincial
School Board (Provinzial-Schulcollegium) in the chief town of
each of the eight provinces, and a Governmental District Board
in that of each of the twenty-six Regierungen. In general, the
State's relations with the higher class of secondary schools
are exercised through the Provincial Board; its relations with
the lower class of them, and with the primary schools, through
the District Board. In Berlin, the relations with these also
are managed by the Provincial Board. A
Provinzial-Schulcollegium has for its president the High
President of the province; for its director the vice-president
of that governmental district which happens to have for its
centre the provincial capital. The Board has two or three
other members, of whom, in general, one is a Catholic and one
is a Protestant; and one is always a man practically
conversant with school matters. The District Board has in the
provincial capitals the same president and director as the
Provincial Board; in the other centres of Regierungen it has
for its president the President of the Regierung, and three or
four members selected on the same principle as the members of
the Provincial Board. The provincial State authority,
therefore, is, in general, for gymnasiums, the larger
progymnasiums, and Realschulen of the first rank, the
Provincial School Board; for the smaller progymnasiums,
Realschulen of the second rank, the higher Burgher Schools,
and the primary schools of all kinds, the Governmental
District Board. Both boards are in continual communication
with the Educational Minister at Berlin. ... Besides the
central and provincial administration there is a local or
municipal administration for schools that are not Crown
patronage schools. ... In most towns the local authority for
schools of municipal patronage is the town magistracy,
assisted by a Stadtschulrath; sometimes the local authority is
a Curntorium or Schulcommission."
M. Arnold, Higher Schools and Universities
in Germany, chapter 3.
"The secondary school differs from the elementary schools by a
course of instruction going beyond the immediate demands of
every-day life; from the special school, by the more general
character of the courses of instruction; from the university,
by its preparatory character. It has the special aim to give
that sound basis of scientific and literary education which
enables a man to participate in solving the higher problems of
life in church, state, and society, In accordance with their
historical development, two directions can be clearly traced,
viz., the gymnasium and the real-school: the former comprising
gymnasia and pro-gymnasia; and the latter real-schools of the
first class, real-schools of the second class, and higher
burgher-schools."
History of Secondary Instruction in Germany
(U. S. Bureau of Education, Circulars of
Information, 1874, no. 3), page 41.
"The name gymnasium came into use as early as the sixteenth
century. The ministerial decree of the 12th of November, 1812,
ordered that all learned school institutions, such as lyceums,
pedagogiums, collegiums, Latin schools, etc., should bear the
name gymnasium. A gymnasium is and has long been a classical
school."
U. S. Commissioner of Education, Report, 1889-90, page 318.
ALSO IN: V. Cousin, Report on the state of
public instruction in Prussia.
EDUCATION: Prussia: A. D. 1885-1889.
The Elementary School-System.
"The New Yorker, anxious for a high degree of perfection in
the elementary schools of his State, must be struck forcibly
by the following merits of the Elementary School System of
Prussia. ...
1. Compulsory education laws, necessitating a full and regular
attendance of the children of school age.
2. Official courses of study fixing the work to be
accomplished in each of the different grades of schools.
Uniformity is thus secured in the work done in all schools of
the same class.
3. Definite qualifications and experience in teaching for
eligibility to the office of school commissioner.
4. Provisions elevating teaching to the dignity of a
profession and making the tenure of office secure.
5. Trained teachers in rural as well as city districts and a
school year of at least forty weeks.
6. General supervision of instruction for children of school
age in private schools and families, including the
qualifications of instructors. ...
Every Prussian child between the ages of 6 and 14 must, except
in cases of severe illness or other extraordinary cause, be
present at every session of the school he attends. The lists
of the children of school age, in charge of the local police
(in rural districts the Burgermeister), are kept so carefully
that it is impossible to escape the provisions of the
compulsory education laws, as much so as it is to evade the
military service. Dispensations amounting to more than four
weeks in the school year are never given to children under 12
years of age, and to them only when sickness in the family or
other unusual cause make it advisable. ... In order to
understand the qualifications required of school commissioners
(Kreisschulinspektoren) in Prussia, let us review briefly the
requirements of male teachers.
1. Elementary schools. It may be stated at the outset that
almost all the male elementary school teachers are normal
school graduates. To insure similarity in training and a
thorough knowledge of character, few foreigners and few beside
normal school (Schullehrer-Seminar) graduates are admitted to
the male teaching force. From 6 to 14 the would-be teacher has
attended, let us suppose, an elementary school. He must then
absolve the three years' course laid down for the preparatory
schools. ... He is now ready for the normal school. At the
close of a three years' course at the normal school he is
admitted to the first teachers' examination. If successful, he
must next practice as candidate or assistant teacher not less
than two years and not more than five years before his
admission to the final test. ... If a teacher fails to pass
the examination within five years, he is dropped.
{722}
2. Middle schools. For teachers of lower classes the same
requirements with the addition of ability to teach a foreign
tongue, or natural history in its broadest sense, and the
attainment of the mark 'good' in all subjects at the final
examination. ... For higher classes, a special examination
provided for middle school teachers. ... There is really no
gradation between elementary and middle schools. The latter
merely go on somewhat further with elementary school work,
introducing French, Latin and English.
3. High schools (Realschulen, Realgymnasien, Progymnasien and
Gymnasien). All high school teachers, except those engaged in
technical departments, must first absolve the nine years'
gymnasial course, which commences at the close of the third
school year.
Next comes the university course of three or four years. The
candidate is now ready for the State examination. The subjects
for this State examination ... are divided into four classes:
1. The ancient languages and German;
2. Mathematics and natural sciences;
3. History and geography;
4. Religion and Hebrew.
At the close of one year's practice to test teaching capacity
he receives a second certificate and is thereupon engaged
provisionally. ... The school commissioners ... are either
former regular high school teachers, general doctors of
philosophy or more rarely theologians, or former normal school
teachers. All must have had practical experience in teaching.
... The work to be accomplished in each Prussian elementary
school is definitely laid down by law. Each school is not a
law unto itself as to what shall be done and when and how this
is to be done. I have learned by practical experience that the
work in ungraded schools compares most favorably with that of
graded schools."
J. R. Parsons, Jr., Prussian Schools through
American eyes, chapter 1, section 5-10.
Prussian elementary schools are now free. "In this respect
Prussia has passed through three stages. Under the first
elementary schools were entirely self-supporting; under the
second they received State aid, but were still largely
self-supporting; under the third, Laws of 1888 and 1889,
elementary schools were made free and the State pays a larger
proportion of the cost of maintenance. Districts must pay for
repairs, new buildings and cost of heating. If unwilling to
provide proper accommodations for the children of school age,
they can be forced by the government to do so. Poor districts
may receive special government aid to meet such expenses. ...
The direct aim of the laws of June 14, 1888, and March 31,
1889, was to lighten the burden of local taxation for schools
for children of school age. These laws have had a beneficial
effect in increasing slightly the wages of teachers. Teachers'
salaries are still quite small in Prussia, particularly in the
case of females. Allowances are generally made for house-rent
and fuel. Teachers in rural districts are provided with a
house and garden. Their salaries are often not much more than
half those paid city teachers of the same grade, and yet, as
regards professional training and character of work, they are
fully equal to city teachers. ... The average annual salary
received by teachers in Prussia in 1886 was $267.50. The
average for the same year in New York was $409.27. The
Prussian teacher, however, received fuel and dwelling free, in
addition to his regular salary. ... In 1885 the population of
Prussia was 28,318,470, and the total cost of public education
per caput was $1,7717. Drs. Schneider and Petersilie of
Berlin, in 'Preussische Statistik 101,' published in 1889,
reckon the total cost for 1888, excluding army and navy
schools, at $50,192,857. ... In Prussia, elementary
instruction is the first consideration. The resolution adopted
by the national assembly (Landtag) December 22, 1870, is a
good illustration of this. It was at the very crisis of the
Franco-German war, yet the Landtag called on the government to
increase the number of normal schools and the capacity of
those already existing, and 'thus to put an end to the
practice of filling up teachers' vacancies by appointing
unqualified individuals.'"
J. R. Parsons, Jr., Prussian Schools through
American eyes, chapter 1, section 15-17.
"Throughout Prussia there is now one school-room and one
teacher to 446 inhabitants and 78.8 children actually
attending school. This shows that there are far too few
teachers. But the government and the cities have recently
devoted considerable sums to the establishment of new places
for teachers, so that, in the year 1881, there were 10,000
more teachers working in the public schools than in 1873. The
salaries of the teachers were also raised. The average payment
in the country is 954 marks, in the cities 1,430 marks. ...
The expense of maintaining the Prussian national schools
amounts annually to about 102,000,000 of marks, 43,000,000 of
which are paid by the cities. One hundred and ten colleges for
the training of teachers are now engaged in the education of
male and female instructors, with an attendance of 9,892
pupils; that is, there is one pupil to every 2,758
inhabitants. In the case of the female teachers only, a
considerable degree of assistance is rendered by private
institutions. ... The intermediary schools established in
1872, and recently converted into the higher citizen schools,
form a transition from the national schools to the higher
schools. These teach religion, German, French, English,
history and geography, arithmetic and mathematics, natural
history and physics, writing, drawing, singing, and
gymnastics. The course embraces six years without Latin, with
the privilege of one year's service in the army instead of
three. Complementary to the national school is the finishing
school. There are a large number in Prussia, namely, 1,261
with 68,766 pupils: 617 with 10,395 in the country, and 644
with 58,371 in the cities. Of these 644,342 are obligatory by
local statutes, 302 are optional. Since the law of 1878
special care has been devoted to the compulsory education of
orphaned children. ... The preparatory instruction of female
teachers leaves much to be desired."
F. Kirchner, Contemporary Educational Thought
in Prussia (Educational Review, May, 1891).
"About 25 per cent. of all the teachers in public middle
schools are women, hence ... women hold positions in these
schools more frequently than in the lower, the purely
elementary, schools of the kingdom. The greatest ratio of
women teachers in Prussia is found in private middle schools,
where 2,422 of 3,126 (or nearly 80 percent.) are women. ... In
all the public schools of Prussia (elementary, middle, and
secondary) only 10,600 women teachers were employed [1887], or
14¼ per cent. of all the teachers in the kingdom. ... Before
the public schools of the kingdom had the care and close
supervision on the part of the state which they have now, many
more private schools were in existence than at present. During
the last 25 years the private schools have not increased in
numbers, but perceptibly decreased."
U. S. Commissioner of Education, Report,
1889-90, pages 287-289.
{723}
EDUCATION:
Russia.
"After serfdom had been abolished, the Emperor Alexander II.
saw that the indispensable consequence of this great reform
must be a thorough reorganization of public instruction. In
1861 a committee was appointed to draw up the plan of a law.
In 1862 M. Taneef submitted to the Emperor a 'General plan for
the organization of popular education,' which contained some
very excellent points. The result was the General Regulations
of 1864, which are still in force. ... The difficulties which
a complete reorganization of popular education meets in Russia
are enormous. They are principally caused by the manner in
which the inhabitants live, scattered over a large extent of
country, and by their extreme poverty. ... The density of
population is so small that there are only 13.6 inhabitants to
one square kilometer (2.6 square kilometers to 1 square mile),
instead of 69 as in France. Under these circumstances only the
children from the center hamlet and those living-nearest to it
could attend school regularly, especially during the
winter-months. The remainder of the inhabitants would pay
their dues without having any benefit, which would necessarily
foster discontent. As Prince Gagarin says, 'It has, therefore,
not been possible to make education in Russia compulsory, as
in Germany, nor even to enforce the establishment of a school
in each community.' It is doubtless impossible at present to
introduce into Russia the educational systems of the western
countries."
E. de Laveleye, Progress of Education in Russia
(U. S. Bureau of Education, Circulars of
Information, 1875, no. 3), pages 31-32.
EDUCATION:
Scotland.
"The existing system of education in Scotland is an outcome of
causes deeply involved in the political and religious history
of the country. ... This system was preceded by a complicated
variety of educational agencies, of which the chief were
parish schools, founded upon a statute of 1646, which was
revived and made operative in 1696. Parish and burgh schools,
supported by local funds and by tuition fees, made up the
public provision for education. In addition there were schools
partly maintained by parliamentary grants, mission and
sessional schools maintained by the Established Church and the
Free Church, and other parochial and private schools. Parish
and burgh schools carried instruction to the level of the
universities, which were easily accessible to all classes. The
date of the passage of the 'Scotch Education Act' (1872) was
opportune for the organization of these various agencies into
a system maintained by the combined action of the Government
and local authorities. In framing the Scotch act care was
taken, as in framing the English act two years before, to
guard the rights of the Government with respect to funds
appropriated from the public treasury. At the same time equal
care was shown for the preservation of the Scotch ideal. This
was a broad and comprehensive ideal, embracing the different
grades of scholastic work. ... This ideal differentiates the
Scotch act from the English act passed two years before. The
latter related to elementary schools exclusively; the former
has a wider scope, providing the foundations of a system of
graded schools correlated to the universities which lie beyond
its province. With respect to the interests of the Government,
the two acts are substantially the same. ... For the general
direction of the system a Scotch educational department was
created, composed, like the English department, of lords of
the privy council, and having the same president. ... The act
ordered every parent to secure the instruction of his children
between the ages of 5 and 13, or until a certificate of
exemption should be secured. Parents failing in this
obligation are subject to prosecution and penalty by fine or
imprisonment. The compulsory provision extends to blind
children. Parochial or burghal authorities were authorized to
pay the tuition fees of those children whose parents could not
meet the expenditure, a provision rendered unnecessary by the
recent remission of all fees. The Scotch act, by a sweeping
clause, made compulsory attendance universal; the English act
left the matter of compulsion to local managers. A subsequent
act (1878) fixed the standard of exemption in Scotland at the
fifth [grade, or year of study], which pupils should pass at
11 years of age. In 1883, the upper limit of compulsory
attendance in Scotland was raised to 14 years. ... The
universities of Scotland have been more intimately related to
the life of the common people than those of any other country.
In this respect, even more if possible than in their
constitution, they present a marked contrast to the English
universities. To their democratic spirit may be traced many of
the characteristics which differentiate the Scotch people and
policies from those of England. To their widespread influence,
to the ambitions which they awakened, and the opportunities
which they brought within the reach of the whole body of
Scottish youth is due, in large measure, the independent and
honorable part that Scotland has played in the history of the
United Kingdom. This popular character of the universities has
been fostered by the curriculum of the common schools, by the
easy passage from the schools to the higher institutions; by
the inexpensive mode of student life in the university towns,
and by the great number of scholarship funds available for the
poor. These conditions, however, have not been without their
disadvantages. Of these, the chief are the low entrance
standards and the consequent forcing of preparatory
instruction upon the university professors. ... As a result of
long-continued efforts a Scotch universities act was passed in
1889. This act provided for the reorganization of the four
universities; for the elevation of their standards; the
enrichment of their curricula, and the increase of their
resources. ... The Scotch universities have taken part in the
popular movements of the last decade. They maintain local
examinations for secondary schools and students. St. Andrews
has been particularly active in promoting the higher education
of women, having instituted the special degree of L. L. A.
(lady literate in arts). Edinburgh also grants a certificate
in arts to women. Aberdeen has recently appointed a lecturer
on education, following thus the precedent set by Edinburgh
and St. Andrews. The four universities are united in a scheme
of university extension."
U. S. Commissioner of Education, Report, 1889-90,
volume 1, pages 188-207.
{724}
EDUCATION:
Sweden.
"Sweden has two ancient and famous universities--Upsala and
Lund. That of Lund is in the south part of the kingdom, and
when founded was on Danish territory. The income from its
estates is about 176,000 rix-dollars ($46,315) per annum. It
also receives yearly aid from the state. In 1867 it had 75
professors and tutors, and 400 students. Upsala is the larger
university, located at the old town of that name--the ancient
capital of Sweden--an hour and a half by rail north of
Stockholm. It has 100 professors and tutors, and 1,449
students, an increase of 131 over the year 1869. ... This
university had its beginning as an institution of learning as
far back as 1250. In 1438 it had one academic professorship,
and was dedicated as an university in 1477. Its principal
endowment was by Gustavus Adolphus in 1624, when he donated to
it all of the estate in lands that he possessed, amounting in
all to 300 farms."
C. C. Andrews, Report on the Educational System
of Sweden (U. S. Bureau of Education, Circulars
of Information, July, 1871).
EDUCATION:
Switzerland.
"The influence of the Reformation, and, in the following age,
of the Jesuit reaction, gave to Switzerland, as to Germany,
its original and fundamental means and agencies of national
education, and impressed also upon the population a habit of
dutiful regard for schools and learning. It was not, however,
till forty years ago that the modern education of Switzerland
was organized. 'The great development of public education in
Switzerland,' to quote Mr. Kay, 'dates from 1832, after the
overthrow of the old oligarchical forms of cantonal government
and the establishment of the present democratic forms.'
Zürich, Lausanne, and Geneva take the lead in Switzerland as
centres of educational influence. The canton in which the work
of educational reform began was Zürich. ... The instrument of
the reform, rather the revolution, was Scherr, a trained
school-teacher from Würtemberg, a teacher, in particular, of
deaf mutes to speak articulately. This man initiated in Zürich
the new scheme and work of education, and founded the first
Training College. He was looked upon by the oligarchs, partly
feudalists, and partly manufacturers, as a dangerous
revolutionist, and was exiled from Zürich. But now a monument
to his memory adorns the city. The work which he began could
not be suppressed or arrested. Zürich has ever since taken the
lead in education among the cantons of Switzerland. Derived
originally from Germany, the system is substantially identical
with that of Germany. ... The principles and methods are
substantially alike throughout. There are, first, the communal
schools--these of course in largest number--one to every
village, even for every small hamlet, provided and maintained,
wholly or chiefly, by the commune; there are burgher schools
in towns, including elementary, real, and superior schools,
supported by the towns; there are cantonal schools--gymnasia
and industrial or technical schools--supported by the State,
that is, by the canton. There is often a Cantonal University.
There is of course a Cantonal Training School or College, and
there are institutes of various kinds. The Cantonal
Universities, however, are on a small and economical scale; as
yet there is no Federal University. School life in Switzerland
is very long, from six to fourteen or fifteen, and for all who
are to follow a profession, from fifteen to twenty-two."
J. H. Rigg, National Education, chapter 4.
EDUCATION: Modern: Asiatic Countries.
China.
"Every step in the process of teaching is fixed by unalterable
usage. So much is this the case, that in describing one school
I describe all, and in tracing the steps of one student I
point out the course of all; for in China there are no new
methods or short roads. In other countries, a teacher, even in
the primary course, finds room for tact and originality. In
those who dislike study, a love of it is to be inspired by
making 'knowledge pleasant to the taste'; and the dull
apprehension is to be awakened by striking and apt
illustrations. ... In China there is nothing of this. The land
of uniformity, all processes in arts and letters are as much
fixed by universal custom as is the cut of their garments or
the mode of wearing their hair. The pupils all tread the path
trodden by their ancestors of a thousand years ago, nor has it
grown smoother by the attrition of so many feet. The
undergraduate course may be divided into three stages, in each
of which there are two leading studies: In the first the
occupations of the student are committing to memory (not
reading) the canonical books and writing an infinitude of
diversely formed characters, as a manual exercise. In the
second, they are the translation of his text books (i. e.,
reading), and lessons in composition. In the third, they are
belles lettres and the composition of essays. Nothing could be
more dreary than the labors of the first stage. ... Even the
stimulus of companionship in study is usually denied, the
advantages resulting from the formation of classes being as
little appreciated as those of other labor saving machinery.
Each pupil reads and writes alone, the penalty for failure
being so many blows with the ferule or kneeling for so many
minutes on the rough brick pavement which serves for a floor.
At this period fear is the strongest motive addressed to the
mind of the scholar. ... This arctic winter of monotonous toil
once passed, a more auspicious season dawns on the youthful
understanding. The key of the cabala which he has been so long
and so blindly acquiring is put into his hands. He is
initiated in the translation and exposition of those sacred
books which he had previously stored away in his memory. ...
The light however is let in but sparingly, as it were, through
chinks and rifts in the long dark passage. A simple character
here and there is explained, and then, it may be after the
lapse of a year or two, the teacher proceeds to the
explication of entire sentences. Now for the first time the
mind of the student begins to take in the thoughts of those he
has been taught to regard as the oracles of wisdom. ... The
value of this exercise can hardly be overestimated. When
judiciously employed it does for the Chinese what translation
into and out of the dead languages of the west does for us. It
calls into play memory, judgment, taste, and gives him a
command of his own vernacular which, it is safe to assert, he
would never acquire in any other way. ... The first step in
composition is the yoking together of double characters.
{725}
The second is the reduplication of these binary compounds and the
construction of parallels--an idea which runs so completely through
the whole of Chinese literature that the mind of the student
requires to be imbued with it at the very outset. This is the
way he begins: The teacher writes, 'wind blows,' the pupil
adds, 'rain falls'; the teacher writes, 'rivers are long,' the
pupil adds, 'seas are deep,' or 'mountains are high,' &c. From
the simple subject and predicate, which in their rude grammar
they describe as 'dead' and' living' characters, the teacher
conducts his pupil to more complex forms, in which qualifying
words and phrases are introduced. He gives as a model some
such phrase as 'The Emperor's grace is vast as heaven and
earth,' and the lad matches it by 'The Sovereign's favor is
profound as lake and sea.' These couplets often contain two
propositions in each member, accompanied by all the usual
modifying terms; and so exact is the symmetry required by the
rules of the art that not only must noun, verb, adjective, and
particle respond to each other with scrupulous exactness, but
the very tones of the characters are adjusted to each other
with the precision of music. Begun with the first strokes of
his untaught pencil, the student, whatever his proficiency,
never gets beyond the construction of parallels. When he
becomes a member of the institute or a minister of the
imperial cabinet, at classic festivals and social
entertainments, the composition of impromptu couplets, formed
on the old model, constitutes a favorite pastime. Reflecting a
poetic image from every syllable, or concealing the keen point
of a cutting epigram, they afford a fine vehicle for sallies
of wit; and poetical contests such as that of Melibœus and
Menalcas are in China matters of daily occurrence. If a
present is to be given, on the occasion of a marriage, a
birth-day, or any other remarkable occasion, nothing is deemed
so elegant or acceptable as a pair of scrolls inscribed with a
complimentary distich. When the novice is sufficiently
exercised in the 'parallels' for the idea of symmetry to have
become an instinct, he is permitted to advance to other
species of composition which afford freer scope for his
faculties. Such are the 'shotiah,' in which a single thought
is expanded in simple language, the 'lun,' the formal
discussion of a subject more or less extended, and epistles
addressed to imaginary persons and adapted to all conceivable
circumstances. In these last, the forms of the 'complete
letter writer' are copied with too much servility; but in the
other two, substance being deemed of more consequence than
form, the new fledged thought is permitted to essay its powers
and to expatiate with but little restraint. In the third
stage, composition is the leading object, reading being wholly
subsidiary. It takes for the most part the artificial form of
verse, and of a kind of prose called 'wen-chang,' which is, if
possible, still more artificial. The reading required embraces
mainly rhetorical models and sundry anthologies. History is
studied, but only that of China, and that only in compends;
not for its lessons of wisdom, but for the sake of the
allusions with which it enables a writer to embellish classic
essays. The same may be said of other studies; knowledge and
mental discipline are at a discount and style at a premium.
The goal of the long course, the flower and fruit of the whole
system, is the 'wen-chang '; for this alone can insure success
in the pubic examinations for the civil service, in which
students begin to adventure soon after entering on the third
stage of their preparatory course. ... We hear it asserted
that 'education is universal in China; even coolies are taught
to read and write.' In one sense this is true, but not as we
understand the terms 'reading and writing.' In the
alphabetical vernaculars of the west, the ability to read and
write implies the ability to express one's thoughts by the pen
and to grasp the thoughts of others when so expressed. In
Chinese, and especially in the classical or book language, it
implies nothing of the sort. A shopkeeper may be able to write
the numbers and keep accounts without being able to write
anything else; and a lad who has attended school for several
years will pronounce the characters of an ordinary book with
faultless precision, yet not comprehend the meaning of a
single sentence. Of those who can read understandingly (and
nothing else ought to be called reading), the proportion is
greater in towns than in rural districts. But striking an
average, it does not, according to my observation, exceed one
in twenty for the male sex and one in ten thousand for the
female." The literary examinations, "coming down from the
past, with the accretions of many centuries, ... have expanded
into a system whose machinery is as complex as its proportions
are enormous. Its ramifications extend to every district of
the empire; and it commands the services of district
magistrates, prefects, and other civil functionaries up to
governors and viceroys. These are all auxiliary to the regular
officers of the literary corporation. In each district there
are two resident examiners, with the title of professor, whose
duty it is to keep a register of all competing students and to
exercise them from time to time in order to stimulate their
efforts and keep them in preparation for the higher
examinations in which degrees are conferred. In each province
there is one chancellor or superintendent of instruction, who
holds office for three years, and is required to visit every
district and hold the customary examinations within that time,
conferring the first degree on a certain percentage of the
candidates. There are, moreover, two special examiners for
each province, generally members of the Hanlin, deputed from
the capital to conduct the great triennial examination and
confer the second degree. The regular degrees are three:
1st. 'Siu-tsai' or 'Budding talent.'
2d. 'Ku-jin' or 'Deserving of promotion.'
3d. 'Tsin-shi' or 'Fit for office.'
To which may be added, as a fourth degree, the Hanlin, or
member of the 'Forest of Pencils.' ... The first degree only
is conferred by the provincial chancellor, and the happy
recipients, fifteen or twenty in each department, or 1 per
cent. of the candidates, are decorated with the insignia of
rank and admitted to the ground floor of the nine storied
pagoda. The trial for the second degree is held in the capital
of each province, by special commissioners, once in three years.
It consists of three sessions of three days each, making nine
days of almost continuous exertion--a strain to the mental and
physical powers, to which the infirm and aged frequently
succumb. In addition to composition in prose and verse, the
candidate is required to show his acquaintance with history,
(the history of China;) philosophy, criticism, and various
branches of archæology. Again 1 per cent. is decorated; but it
is not until the more fortunate among them succeed in passing
the metropolitan triennial that the meed of civil office is
certainly bestowed.
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They are not, however, assigned to their respective offices
until they have gone through two special examinations within
the palace and in the presence of the emperor. On this
occasion the highest on the list is honored with the title of
'chuang yuen' or 'laureate,' a distinction so great that in
the last reign it was not thought unbefitting the daughter of
a 'chuang yuen' to be raised to the position of consort of
the Son of Heaven. A score of the best are admitted to
membership in the Academy, two or three score are attached to
it as pupils or probationers, and the rest drafted off to
official posts in the capital or in the provinces, the
humblest of which is supposed to compensate the occupant for
a life of penury and toil."
Reverend W. A. P. Martin, Report on the System of Public
Instruction in China (U. S. Bureau of Education,
Circulars of Information, 1877, no. 1).
ALSO IN:
W. A. P. Martin, The Chinese: their Education, &C.
EDUCATION:
Japan.
From the fourth to the eighth centuries of the Christian era,
"after the conquest of Corea by the Japanese emperor Jigo
Kogo, came letters, writing, books, literature, religion,
ethics, politics, medicine, arts, science, agriculture,
manufactures, and the varied appliances of civilization; and
with these entered thousands of immigrants from Corea and
China. Under the intellectual influence of Buddhism--the
powerful and aggressive faith that had already led captive the
half of Asia--of the Confucian ethics and philosophy, and
Chinese literature, the horizon of the Japanese mind was
immensely broadened. ... In the time of the European 'dark
ages' the Japanese were enjoying what, in comparison, was a
high state of civilization. ... Under the old regime of the
Sho-guns, all foreign ideas and influences were systematically
excluded, and the isolation of Japan from the rest of the
world was made the supreme policy of the government. Profound
peace lasted from the beginning of the seventeenth century to
1868. During this time, schools and colleges, literature and
learning, flourished. It was the period of scholastic, not of
creative, intellectual activity. The basis of education was
Chinese. What we consider the means of education, reading and
writing, were to them the ends. Of classified science there
was little or none. Mathematics was considered as fit only for
merchants and shop-keepers. No foreign languages were studied,
and their acquisition was forbidden. ... There was no
department of education, though universities were established
at Kioto and Yedo, large schools in the daimio's capitals, and
innumerable private schools all over the country. Nine-tenths
of the people could read and write. Books were very numerous
and cheap. Circulating libraries existed in every city and
town. Literary clubs and associations for mutual improvement
were common even in country villages. Nevertheless, in
comparison with the ideal systems and practice of the
progressive men of New Japan, the old style was as different
from the present as the training of an English youth in
mediæval times is from that of a London or Oxford student of
the present day. Although an attempt to meet some of the
educational necessities arising from the altered conditions of
the national life were made under the Sho-gun's regime, yet
the first attempt at systematic work in the large cities was
made under the Mikado's government, and the idea of a new
national plan of education is theirs only. In 1871 the Mom Bu
Sho, or department of education, was formed, of which the high
counselor Oki, a man of indomitable vigor and perseverance,
was made head. ... According to the scheme of national
education promulgated in 1872, the empire is divided into
eight Dai Gaku Ku, (Daigakku,) or great educational divisions.
In each of' these there is to be a university, normal school,
schools of foreign languages, high schools, and primary
schools. The total number of schools will number, it is
expected, over 55,000. Only in the higher schools is a foreign
language to be taught. In the lower schools the Japanese
learning and elementary science translated or adopted from
European or American text-books are to be taught. The general
system of instruction, methods, discipline, school-aids,
furniture, architecture, are to be largely adopted from
foreign models, and are now to a great extent in vogue
throughout the country."
W. E. Griffis, Education in Japan (U. S. Bureau of
Education, Circulars of Information, 1875, no. 2).

EDUCATION: Modern: America. A. D. 1619-1819.
Virginia.
College of William and Mary.
"In 1619--one year before the Pilgrim Fathers came to the land
named New England by Captain John Smith--Sir Edwin Sandys,
president of the Virginia Company in old England, moved the
grant of ten thousand acres of land for the establishment of a
university at Henrico. The proposed grant, which was duly
made, included one thousand acres for an Indian college; the
remainder was to be 'the foundation of a seminary of learning
for the English.' The very same year the bishops of England,
at the suggestion of the King, raised the sum of fifteen
hundred pounds for the encouragement of Indian Education. ...
Tenants were sent over to occupy the university lands, and Mr.
George Thorpe, a gentleman of His Majesty's Privy Chamber,
came over to be the superintendent of the university itself.
This first beginning of philanthropy toward the Indians and of
educational foundations for the Indians in America was
suspended by reason of the Indian massacre, in the spring of
1622, when Mr. Thorpe and three hundred and forty settlers,
including tenants of the university, were cut off by an
insurrection of savages. It was only two years after this
terrible catastrophe that the idea of a university in Virginia
was revived. Experience with treacherous Indians suggested
that the institution should be erected upon a secluded
sheltered site--an island in the Susquehanna River. ... The
plan was broken off by the death of its chief advocate and
promoter, Mr. Edward Palmer. But the idea of a university for
Virginia was not lost. ... In 1660, the colonial Assembly of
Virginia took into their own hands the project of founding
educational institutions within their borders. The motive of
the Virginians was precisely the same as that of the great and
general Court of Massachusetts, when it established Harvard
College, and grammar schools to fit youth 'for ye university.'
The Virginians voted 'that for the advance of learning,
education of youth, supply of the ministry, and promotion of
piety, there be land taken upon purchases for a college and
free schoole, and that there be, with as much speede as may be
convenient, housing erected thereon for entertainment of
students and schollers.'
{727}
It was also voted in 1660 that the various commissioners of
county courts take subscriptions on court days for the benefit
of the college, and that the commissioners send orders
throughout their respective counties to the vestrymen of all
the parishes for the purpose of raising money from such
inhabitants as 'have not already subscribed.' It appears from
the record of this legislation in Hening's Statutes of
Virginia that already in 1660, 'His Majestie's Governour,
Council of State, and Burgesses of the present grand Assembly
have severally subscribed severall considerable sumes of money
and quantityes of tobacco,' to be paid upon demand after a
place had been provided and built upon for educational
purposes. A petition was also recommended to Sir William
Berkeley, then governor of Virginia, that the King be
petitioned for letters patent authorizing collections from
'well disposed people in England for the erecting of colledges
and schooles in this countrye.' This action of the Virginians
in 1660 ought to be taken as much better evidence of an early
regard for education in that colony than the well-known saying
of Governor Berkeley would seem to indicate. In reply to an
inquiry by the lords commissioners of trades and plantations
respecting the progress of learning in the colony of Virginia,
Berkeley said, 'I thank God there are no free schools nor
printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years.'
This answer by a crusty old governor has been quoted perhaps
too often as an index of the real sentiments of colonial
Virginia toward the cause of education. Not only is the tone
of popular legislation entirely opposed to the current view,
but Berkeley's own acts should modify our judgment of his
words. He actually subscribed, with other gentlemen of the
colony, for 'a Colledge of students of the liberal arts and
sciences.' Undoubtedly Sir William did not believe in popular
education as it is now understood. If he had done so, he would
have been much in advance of his time. ... Some writers would
have us believe that the college was actually planted as early
as 1661, but this is highly improbable. Early educational
enactments in Virginia were like many of those early towns--on
paper only. And yet the Virginians really meant to have both
towns and a college. In 1688-'89, twenty-five hundred pounds
were subscribed by a few wealthy gentlemen in the colony and
by their merchant friends in England toward the endowment of
the higher education. In 1691 the colonial Assembly sent the
Reverend James Blair, the commissary or representative of the
Bishop of London, back to England to secure a charter for the
proposed college. Virginia's agent went straight to Queen Mary
and explained the educational ambition of her colony in
America. The Queen favored the idea of a college, and William
wisely concurred. The royal pair agreed to allow two thousand
pounds out of the quit-rents of Virginia toward building the
college. ... The English Government concluded to give not only
£2,000 in money, but also 20,000 acres of land, with a tax of
one penny on every pound of tobacco exported from Maryland and
Virginia, together with all fees and profits arising from the
office of surveyor-general, which were to be controlled by the
president and faculty of the college. They were authorized to
appoint special surveyors for the counties whenever the
governor and his council thought it necessary. These
privileges, granted by charter in 1693, were of great
significance in the economic history of Virginia. They brought
the entire land system of the colony into the hands of a
collegiate land office. Even after the Revolution, one-sixth
of the fees to all public surveyors continued to be paid into
the college treasury down to the year 1819, when this custom
was abolished."
H. B. Adams, The College of William and Mary
(Circulars of Information of the Bureau of Education,
1887, no. 1).
EDUCATION: Modern: America: A. D. 1635.
Massachusetts.
Boston Latin School.
"The Public Latin School of Boston enjoys the distinction of
being the oldest existing school within the bounds of the
United States. It was founded in the spring of 1635, thus
ante-dating Harvard College, and has been in continuous
existence ever since, with the interruption of a few months,
during the siege of Boston, 1775-1776." The two hundred and
fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the school was
celebrated April 23, 1885, on which occasion the Reverend Phillips
Brooks, D. D., delivered an address from which the following
passages are taken: "The colony under Winthrop arrived in the
Arabella and founded Boston in 1630. On the 4th of September,
1633, the Griffin brought John Cotton from the Lincolnshire
Boston, full of pious spirit and wise plans for the new colony
with which he had cast in his lot. It has been suggested that
possibly we owe to John Cotton the first suggestion of the
first town-school. ... However this may be, here is the town
record of the 13th of the second month, 1635. It is forever
memorable, for it is the first chapter of our Book of Genesis,
the very cradle of all our race: 'At a general meeting upon
publique notice ... it was then generally agreed upon that our
brother Philemon Pormort shall be entreated to become
scholemaster, for the teaching and nourtering of children
among us.' It was two hundred and fifty years ago to-day
[April 23, 1885] just nineteen years after the day when
William Shakespeare died, just seventy-one years after the day
when he was born. How simple that short record is, and how
unconscious that short view is of the future which is wrapped
up in it! Fifty-nine thousand children who crowd the Boston
public schools to-day--and who can count what thousands yet
unborn?--are to be heard crying out for life in the dry,
quaint words of that old vote. By it the first educational
institution, which was to have continuous existence in
America, and in it the public school system of the land, came
into being. Philemon Pormort, the first teacher of the Latin
School, is hardly more than a mere shadow of a name. It is not
even clear that he ever actually taught the school at all. A
few years later, with Mr. Wheelwright, after the Hutchinson
excitement, he disappears into the northern woods, and is one
of the founders of Exeter, in New Hampshire. There are rumors
that he came back to Boston and died here, but it is all very
uncertain. ... The name 'free school' in those days seems to
have been used to characterize an institution which should not
be restricted to any class of children, and which should not
be dependent on the fluctuating attendance of scholars for its
support. It looked forward to ultimate endowment, like the
schools of England. The town set apart the rent of Deer
Island, and some of the other islands in the harbor, for its help.
{728}
All the great citizens, Governor Winthrop, Governor Vane, Mr.
Bellingham, and the rest, made generous contributions to it.
But it called, also, for support from those who sent their
children to it, and who were able to pay something; and it was
only of the Indian children that it was distinctly provided
that they should be 'taught gratis.' It was older than any of
the schools which, in a few years, grew up thick around it.
The same power which made it spring out of the soil was in all
the rich ground on which these colonists, unlike any other
colonists which the world has ever seen, had set their feet.
Roxbury had its school under the Apostle Eliot in 1645.
Cambridge was already provided before 1643. Charlestown did
not wait later than 1636. Salem and Ipswich were, both of
them, ready in 1637. Plymouth did not begin its system of
public instruction till 1663. It was in 1647 that the General
Court enacted that resolve which is the great charter of free
education in our Commonwealth, in whose preamble and ordinance
stand the immortal words: 'That learning may not be buried in
the grave of our fathers, in church and Commonwealth, the Lord
assisting our endeavors, it is therefore ordered that every
township in this jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased
them to the number of fifty householders, shall then forthwith
appoint one within their town to teach all such children as
shall resort to him to write and read.' There can be no doubt,
then, of our priority. But mere priority is no great thing.
The real interest of the beginning of the school is the large
idea and scale on which it started. It taught the children,
little Indians and all, to read and write. But there seems
every reason to suppose that it taught also the Latin tongue,
and all that then was deemed the higher knowledge. It was the
town's only school till 1682."
The Oldest School in America, pages 5-24.
EDUCATION: A. D. 1636.
Massachusetts.
Harvard College.
"The first settlers in New England, recognizing the importance
of a higher education than could be given in the common
schools, began at once the founding of a university. The
avowed object of this university was the training of young men
for the ministry. Nothing could show clearer the spirit of
these early colonists. Though less than four thousand in
number, and scattered along the shores of Massachusetts Bay in
sixteen hamlets, they were, nevertheless, able to engage in
such an enterprise before adequate provision had been made for
food, raiment, shelter, a civil government, or divine worship;
at a time when soil and climate had disappointed them, and
their affairs were in a most critical condition; for, not only
were they called to face famine, disease, and death, but the
mother country and the surrounding savage tribes were
threatening them with war. ... It was near the close of 1636,
a little more than six years after the landing of the
Puritans, when this first step was taken by the General Court
of the Massachusetts Colony. At this assembly, presided over
by Sir Henry Vane, governor of the colony, the General Court
agreed to give £400 (a munificent sum for the time) towards
the founding of a school or college, but left the question of
its location and building to be determined by the Court that
was to sit in September of the following year. This, it is
said, was the first assembly 'in which the people by their
representatives ever gave their own money to found a place of
education.' At the next Court it was decided to locate the
college at Newtown, or 'the New Towne,' and twelve of the
principal magistrates and ministers were chosen to carry out
this design. A few months later, they changed the name of the
town to Cambridge, not only to tell their posterity whence
they came, but also, as Quincy aptly says, to indicate 'the
high destiny to which they intended the institution should
aspire.' Another year, however, passed before the College was
organized. The impulse given to it then was due to aid which
came from so unexpected a quarter that it must have seemed to
the devout men of New England as a clear indication of the
divine favor. The Reverend John Harvard, a Non-conformist
minister, was graduated, in 1635, from the Puritan college of
Emmanuel, at Cambridge, England, and came, two years later, to
America and settled in Charlestown, where he immediately took
a prominent part in town affairs. His contemporaries gave him
the title of reverend, and he is said to have officiated
occasionally in Charlestown as 'minister of God's word.' One
has recently said of him that he was 'beloved and honored, a
well-trained and accomplished scholar of the type then
esteemed,' and that in the brief period of his life in America
--scarcely more than a year--he cemented more closely
friendships that had been begun in earlier years. The project
of a college was then engrossing the thought of these early
friends and doubtless he also became greatly interested in it.
Thus it happened that, when his health failed, through his own
love of learning and through sympathy with the project of his
daily associates, he determined to bequeath one-half of his
estate, probably about £800, besides his excellent library of
three hundred and twenty volumes, towards the endowment of the
college. This bequest rendered possible the immediate
organization of the college, which went into operation 'on the
footing of the ancient institutions of Europe,' and, out of
gratitude to Harvard, the General Court voted that the new
institution should bear his name."
G. G. Bush, Harvard, pages 12-15.
ALSO IN:
J. Quincy, History of Harvard University.
S. A. Eliot, Sketch of the History of Harvard College.
EDUCATION: A. D. 1642-1732.
New England and New York.
Early Common Schools.
"New England early adopted, and has, with a single exception,
constantly maintained the principle that the public should
provide for the instruction of all the youth. That which
elsewhere, as will be found, was left to local provision, as
in New York; or to charity, as in Pennsylvania; or to parental
interest, as in Virginia, was in most parts of New England
early secured by law. ... The act of 1642 in Massachusetts,
whose provisions were adopted in most of the adjacent
colonies, was admirable as a first legislative school law. It
was watchful of the neglect of parents, and looked well after
the ignorant and the indigent. But it neither made schooling
free, nor imposed a penalty for its neglect. ... Schools were
largely maintained by rates, were free only to the
necessitous, and in not a few of the less populous districts
closed altogether or never opened. This led, five years later,
to more stringent legislation. ... As suggesting the general
scope and tenor of the law, the following extract is made. ...
{729}
'It is therefore ordered by this Court and authority thereof
that every township within this jurisdiction, after the Lord
hath increased them to the number of fifty householders, shall
then forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such
children as shall resort to him, to write and read; whose
wages shall be paid, either by the parents or masters of such
children, or by the inhabitants in general, by way of supply,
as the major part of those who order the prudentials of the
town shall appoint; provided that those who send their
children be not oppressed by paying much more than they can
have them taught for in the adjoining towns. And it is further
ordered that where any town shall increase to the number of
one hundred families or house-holders, they shall set up a
grammar-school, the master thereof being able to instruct
youths so far as they may be fitted for the university; and if
any town neglect the performance hereof, above one year, then
every such town shall pay five pounds per annum to the next
such school, till they shall perform this order.' ... Three
years after the law just cited Connecticut passed a very
similar one. ... In Rhode Island there was no attempt at a
school system prior to the efforts of John Howland about 1790.
There were schools in both Providence and Newport; but the
colony was small (with a population of less than ten thousand
in 1700), broken into feeble settlements, and offering little
opportunity for organization. ... It is claimed that, at the
surrender of the Dutch in New York (1664), so general was the
educational spirit, almost every town in the colony had its
regular school and more or less permanent teachers. After the
occupation of the province by the English, little attention
was given to education. ... Thirteen years after the
surrender, a Latin school was opened in the city; but the
first serious attempt to provide regular schooling was in the
work of the 'Society for the Propagation of the Gospel' (1704)
in the founding of Trinity School. The society kept up an
efficient organization, for many years, and at the opening of
the Revolution had established and chiefly supported more than
twenty schools in the colony. About 1732, also, there was
established in New York city a school after the plan of the
Boston Latin School, free as that was free, and which became,
according to eminent authority, the germ of the later King's
(now Columbia) College."
R. G. Boone, Education in the United States, chapter 3.
EDUCATION: A. D. 1683-1779. Pennsylvania.
Origin of the University of Pennsylvania.
"Education had not been over-looked in the policy of Penn. In
his Frame of Government we read: 'The governor and provincial
council shall erect and order all public schools, and
encourage and reward the authors of useful sciences and
laudable inventions, in the said province. ... And ... a
committee of manners, education and arts, that all wicked and
scandalous living may be prevented, and that youth may be
successively trained up in virtue and useful knowledge and
arts.' The first movement to establish an educational
institution of a high grade was in the action of the Executive
Council which proposed, November 17, 1683, 'That Care be Taken
about the Learning and Instruction of Youth, to wit: A School
of Arts and Sciences.' It was not until 1689, however, that
the 'Public Grammar School' was set up in Philadelphia. This
institution, founded upon the English idea of a 'free'
school,' was formally chartered in 1697 as the 'William Penn
Charter School.' It was intended as the head of a system of
schools for all, rather than a single school for a select few,
an idea which the founders of the Charitable School, fifty
years later, had also in mind--an idea which was never carried
out in the history of either institution. The failure of
Penn's scheme of government, and the turmoil during the early
part of the eighteenth century arising from the conflicts
between different political parties, for a time influenced
very decidedly educational zeal in the province. The
government, which at the outset had taken such high ground on
the subject, ceased to exert itself in behalf of education,
and the several religious denominations and the people
themselves in neighborhood organizations took up the burden
and planted schools as best they could throughout the growing
colony. ... Feeling the importance for some provision to
supplement the education then given in the established
schools, Benjamin Franklin as early as 1743 drew up a proposal
for establishing an academy. ... He secured the assistance of
a number of friends, many of them members of the famous Junto,
and then published his pamphlet entitled 'Proposals Relating
to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania.' ... On all sides
the paper met with great favor and generous support. The
result was the organization of a board of trustees, consisting
of 24 of those who had subscribed to the scheme of the
Academy, with Franklin as president. This body immediately set
about to realize the object of the pamphlet, and nourished by
subscriptions, lotteries, and gifts the Academy was placed in
a flourishing condition. ... The Academy comprised three
schools, the Latin, the English, and the mathematical, over
each of which was placed a master, one of whom was the rector
of the institution. ... The English School was neglected. The
other schools were favored, especially the Latin School. In
the eyes of Franklin and many of the supporters of the
Academy, the English School was the one of chief importance.
What we would call a 'starving out' process was begun by which
the English School was kept in a weak condition, most of the
funds going to the Latin School. ... The success of the
Academy was so gratifying to all interested in it that it was
determined to apply for a charter. This was granted to the
trustees by Thomas and Richard Penn, the proprietors, on July
13, 1753. Desirous at the same time of enlarging the course of
instruction, the trustees elected Mr. William Smith teacher of
logic, rhetoric, natural and moral philosophy. Mr. Smith
accepted the position and entered upon his duties at the
Academy in May, 1754. The history of the institution from this
date, whether known as the Academy or the College, to 1779 is
the history of the life of William Smith."
J. L. Stewart, Historical Sketch of the University of
Pennsylvania (U. S. Bureau of Education,
Circular of Information, 1892, no. 2:
Benjamin Franklin and the University., chapter 4).
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EDUCATION: A. D. 1701-1717.
Connecticut.
Yale College.
"For sixty years the only school for higher education in New
England had been Harvard College, at Cambridge. The people,
and especially the clergy, of Connecticut naturally desired
the benefit of a similar establishment nearer home. The three
ministers of New Haven, Milford, and Branford first moved in
the enterprise. Ten ministers, nine of them being graduates of
Harvard College, met at Branford [1701] and made a
contribution from their libraries of about forty volumes in
folio 'for the founding of a college.' Other donations
presently came in. An Act of Incorporation was granted by the
General Court. It created a body of trustees, not to be more
than eleven in number nor fewer than seven, all to be
clergymen and at least forty years of age. The Court endowed
the College with an annual grant, subject to be discontinued
at pleasure, of one hundred and twenty pounds in 'country
pay,'--equivalent to sixty pounds sterling. The College might
hold property 'not exceeding the value of five hundred pounds
per annum'; its students were exempted from the payment of
taxes and from military service; and the Governor and his
Council gave a formal approval of its application to the
citizens for pecuniary id. ... The first President was Abraham
Pierson, minister of Killingworth, at which place he continued
to reside, though the designated seat of the College was at
Saybrook. Eight students were admitted, and arranged in
classes. At each of the first two annual commencements one
person, at the third three persons, received the degree of
Bachelor of Arts. President Pierson was succeeded, at his
death, by Mr. Andrew, minister at Milford, to which place the
elder pupils were accordingly transferred, while the rest went
to Saybrook, where two tutors had been provided to assist
their studies. ... For nearly twenty years the College of
Connecticut ... continued to be an unsatisfactory experiment.
While the rector taught some youth at Milford, and two tutors
had other pupils at Saybrook, and the few scores of books
which had been obtained for a library were divided between the
two places, there was small prospect of the results for which
institutions of learning are created. Notwithstanding the
general agreement that whatever facilities for the higher
education could be commanded should be brought together and
combined, the choice of the place was embarrassed by various
considerations. ... Saybrook, Wethersfield, Hartford, and New
Haven competed with each other for the preference, offering
such contributions as they were able towards the erection of a
college building. The offer from New Haven, larger than that
of any other town, was seven hundred pounds sterling. The plan
of fixing the College there, promoted by the great influence
of Governor Saltonstall, was adopted by the trustees; and with
money obtained by private gifts, and two hundred and fifty
pounds accruing from a sale of land given by the General
Assembly, a building was begun [1717], which finally cost a
thousand pounds sterling. ... The Assembly gave the College a
hundred pounds. Jeremiah Dummer sent from England a
substantial present of books. Governor Saltonstall contributed
fifty pounds sterling, and the same sum was presented by
Jahleel Brenton, of Newport, in Rhode Island. But the chief
patronage came from Elihu Yale,--a native of New Haven, but
long resident in the East Indies, where he had been Governor
of Fort St. George. He was now a citizen of London, and
Governor of the East India Company. His contributions,
continued through seven years, amounted to some four hundred
pounds sterling; and he was understood to have made
arrangements for a further bounty of five hundred pounds,
which, however, through unfortunate accidents, never came to
its destination. The province made a grant of forty pounds
annually for seven years."
J. G. Palfrey, History of New England,
book 4, chapter 11, and book 5, chapter 4 (volume 4).
EDUCATION: A. D. 1746-1787.
New York.
King's College, now Columbia College.
"The establishment of a college in the city of New York was
many years in agitation before the design was carried into
effect. At length, under an act of Assembly passed in
December, 1746, and other similar acts which followed, moneys
were raised by public lottery 'for the encouragement of
learning and towards the founding a college' within the
colony. These moneys were, in November, 1751, vested in
trustees. ... The trustees, in November, 1753, invited Dr.
Samuel Johnson, of Connecticut, to be President of the
intended college. Dr. Johnson consequently removed to New York
in the month of April following, and in July, 1754, commenced
the instruction of a class of students in a room of the
school-house belonging to Trinity Church; but he would not
absolutely accept the presidency until after the passing of
the charter. This took place on the 31st of October in the
same year, 1754; from which period the existence of the
college is properly to be dated. The Governors of the college,
named in the charter, are the Archbishop of Canterbury, and
the first Lord Commissioner for Trade and Plantations, both
empowered to act by proxies; the Lieutenant-governor of the
province, and several other public officers; together with the
rector of Trinity Church, the senior minister of the Reformed
Protestant Dutch Church, the ministers of the German Lutheran
Church, of the French Church, of the Presbyterian
Congregation, and the President of the college, all ex
officio, and twenty-four of the principal gentlemen of the
city. The college was to be known by the name of King's
College. Previously to the passing of the charter, a parcel of
ground to the westward of Broadway, bounded by Barclay,
Church, and Murray streets and the Hudson River, had been
destined by the vestry of Trinity Church as a site for the
college edifice; and, accordingly, after the charter was
granted, a grant of the land was made on the 13th of May,
1755. ... The part of the land thus granted by Trinity Church,
not occupied for college purposes, was leased, and became a
very valuable endowment to the college. The sources whence the
funds of the institution were derived, besides the proceeds of
the lotteries above mentioned, were the voluntary
contributions of private individuals in this country, and sums
obtained by agents who were subsequently sent to England and
France. In May, 1760, the college buildings began to be
occupied. In 1763 a grammar school was established. In March,
1763, Dr. Johnson resigned the presidency, and the Reverend Dr.
Myles Cooper, of Oxford, who had previously been appointed
Professor of Moral Philosophy and assistant to the President,
was elected in his place. ... In consequence of the dispute
between this and the parent country, Dr. Cooper returned to
England, and the Reverend Benjamin Moore was appointed praeses pro
tempore during the absence of Dr. Cooper, who, however, did
not return. On the breaking out of the Revolutionary War the
business of the college was almost entirely broken up, and it
was not until after the return of peace that its affairs were
again regularly attended to.
{731}
In May, 1784, the college, upon its own application, was
erected into a university; its corporate title was changed
from King's College to Columbia College, and it was placed
under the control of a board termed Regents of the University.
... The college continued under that government until April,
1787, when the Legislature of the State restored it to its
original position under the present name of Columbia College.
... At the same time a new body was created, called by the
same name, 'The Regents of the University,' under which all
the seminaries of learning mentioned in the act creating it
were placed by the legislature. This body still exists under
its original name."
Columbia College Handbook, pages 5-9.
EDUCATION: A. D. 1776-1880.
New England and New York.
State School Systems.
"It was not until over thirty years after the close of the war
of 1776 that a regular system of schools at the public expense
was established. New England boasted with pride of being the
first in education, as she had been in war. Her example was
closely followed by the other States. In New York, in 1805,
many gentlemen of prominence associated for the purpose of
establishing a free school in New York City for the education
of the children of persons in indigent circumstances, and who
did not belong to, or were not provided for by, any religious
society. These public-spirited gentlemen presented a memorial
to the Legislature, setting forth the benefits that would
result to society from educating such children, and that it
would enable them more effectually to accomplish the objects
of their institution if the schools were incorporated. The
bill of incorporation was passed April 9, 1805. This was the
nucleus from which the present system of public schools
started into existence. Later on, in the year 1808, we find
from annual printed reports that two free schools were opened
and were in working order. ... It was the intention of the
founders of these schools--among whom the names of De Witt
Clinton, Ferdinand de Peyster, John Murray, and Leonard
Bleecker stand prominent as officers--to avoid the teachings
of any religious society; but there were among the people many
who thought that sufficient care was not being bestowed upon
religious instruction: to please these malcontents the
literary studies of the pupils were suspended one afternoon in
every week, and an association of fifty ladies of
'distinguished consideration ·in society' met on this day and
examined the children in their respective catechisms. ... To
read, write, and know arithmetic in its first branches
correctly, was the extent of the educational advantages which
the founders of the free-school system deemed necessary for
the accomplishment of their purposes."
A. H. Rhine, The Early Free Schools of
America. (Popular Science Monthly, March, 1880).
EDUCATION: A. D. 1785-1880.
The United States.-
Land-grants for Schools.
"The question of the endowment of educational institutions by
the Government in aid of the cause of education seems to have
met no serious opposition in the Congress of the
Confederation, and no member raised his voice against this
vital and essential provision relating to it in the ordinance
of May 20, 1785, 'for ascertaining the mode of disposing of
lands in the Western Territory.' This provided: 'There shall
be reserved the lot No. 16 of every township for the
maintenance of public schools within said township.' This was
an endowment of 640 acres of land (one section of land, one
mile square) in a township 6 miles square, for the support and
maintenance of public schools' within said township.' The
manner of establishment of public schools thereunder, or by
whom, was not mentioned. It was a reservation by the United
States, and advanced and established a principle which finally
dedicated one thirty-sixth part of all public lands of the
United States, with certain exceptions as to mineral, &c., to
the cause of education by public schools. ... In the
Continental Congress, July 13, 1787, according to order, the
ordinance for the government of the 'Territory of the United
States northwest of the river Ohio' came on, was read a third
time, and passed [see NORTHWEST TERRITORY: A. D.1787]. It
contained the following: 'Art. 3. Religion, morality, and
knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness
of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever
be encouraged.' The provision of the ordinance of May 20,
1785, relating to the reservation of the sixteenth section in
every township of public land, was the inception of the
present rule of reservation of certain sections of land for
school purposes. The endowment was the subject of much
legislation in the years following. The question was raised
that there was no reason why the United States should not
organize, control, and manage these public schools so endowed.
The reservations of lands were made by surveyors and duly
returned. This policy at once met with enthusiastic approval
from the public, and was tacitly incorporated into the
American system as one of its fundamental organic ideas.
Whether the public schools thus endowed by the United States
were to be under national or State control remained a
question, and the lands were held in reservation merely until
after the admission of the State of Ohio in 1802. ... To each
organized Territory, after 1803, was and now is reserved the
sixteenth section (until after the Oregon Territory act
reserved the thirty-sixth as well) for school purposes, which
reservation is carried into grant and confirmation by the
terms of the act of admission of the Territory or State into
the Union; the State then becoming a trustee for school
purposes. These grants of land were made from the public
domain, and to States only which were known as public-land
States. Twelve States, from March 3, 1803, known as
public-land States, received the allowance of the sixteenth
section to August 14, 1848. ... Congress, June 13, 1812, and
May 26, 1824, by the acts ordering the survey of certain towns
and villages in Missouri, reserved for the support of schools
in the towns and villages named, provided that the whole
amount reserved should not exceed one-twentieth part of the
whole lands included in the general survey of such town or
village. These lots were reserved and sold for the benefit of
the schools. Saint Louis received a large fund from this
source. ... In the act for the organization of the Territory
of Oregon, August 14, 1848, Senator Stephen A. Douglas
inserted an additional grant for school purposes of the
thirty-sixth section in each township, with indemnity for all
public-land States thereafter to be admitted, making the
reservation for school purposes the sixteenth and thirty-sixth
sections, or 1,280 acres in each township of six miles square
reserved in public-land States and Territories, and confirmed
by grant in terms in the act of admission of such State or
Territory into the Union. From March 13, 1853, to June 30,
1880, seven States have been admitted into the Union having a
grant of the sixteenth and thirty-sixth sections, and the
same area has been reserved in eight Territories."
T. Donaldson, The Public Domain, chapter 13.
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EDUCATION: A. D. 1789.
The United States.
"The Constitution of the United States makes no provision for
the education of the people; and in the Convention that framed
it, I believe the subject was not even mentioned. A motion to
insert a clause providing for the establishment of a national
university was voted down. I believe it is also the fact, that
the Constitutions of only three of the thirteen original
States made the obligation to maintain a system of Free
Schools a part of their fundamental law."
H. Mann, Lectures and Annual Reports on
Education, lecture 5.
EDUCATION: A. D. 1793.-Massachusetts.
Williams College.
"Williams College, at Williamstown, Berkshire County, Mass.,
was chartered in 1793. The town and the college were named in
honor of Colonel Ephraim Williams, who had command of the forts
in the Hoosac Valley, and was killed in a battle with the
French and Indians, September 8, 1755. By his will he
established a free school in the township which was to bear
his name. The most advanced students of this free school
became the first college class, numbering 4, and received the
regular degree of bachelor of arts in the autumn of 1795. The
small amount left by the will of Colonel Williams was
carefully managed for 30 years by the executors, and they then
obtained permission from the State legislature to carry out
the benevolent purposes of the testator. The fund for building
was increased by individual subscriptions, and by the avails
of a lottery, which the general court granted for that
purpose. The building which is now known as West College was
then erected for the use of the free school and was finished
in 1790. ... The free school was opened in 1791, with Reverend
Ebenezer Fitch, a graduate of Yale College, as preceptor, and
Mr. John Lester as assistant. ... The success of the school
was so great that the next year the trustees asked the
legislature to incorporate the school into a college. This was
done, and a grant of $4,000 was made from the State treasury
for the purchase of books and philosophical apparatus. The
college was put under the care of 12 trustees, who elected
Preceptor Fitch the first president of the college."
E. B. Parsons (U. S. Bureau of Education,
Circular of Information, 1891, no. 6:
History of Higher Education in Massachusetts, chapter 9).
EDUCATION: A. D. 1795-1867.
The United States.
State School Funds.
"Connecticut took the lead in the creation of a permanent fund
for the support of schools. The district known as the Western
Reserve, in Northern Ohio, had been secured to her in the
adjustment of her claims to lands confirmed to her by the
charter of King Charles II. The Legislature of the State, in
1795, passed an act directing the sale of all the land
embraced in the Reserve, and setting apart the avails as a
perpetual fund for the maintenance of common schools. The
amount realized was about $1,120,000. ... New York was the
next State to establish a common school fund for the aid and
maintenance of schools in the several school districts of the
State. The other Northern States except New Hampshire,
Vermont, Pennsylvania, and one or two others, have established
similar funds. ... In all the new States, the 500,000 acres,
given by act of Congress, on their admission into the Union,
for the support of schools, have been sacredly set apart for
that purpose, and generally other lands belonging to the
States have been added to the fund. ... Prior to the war the
Slave States had made attempts to establish plans for popular
education, but with results of an unsatisfactory character. In
Virginia a school system was in force for the education of the
children of indigent white persons. In North Carolina a large
school fund, exceeding two millions of dollars, had been set
apart for the maintenance of schools. In all of these States
common schools had been introduced, but they did not flourish
as in the North and West. ... There was not the same
population of small and independent farmers, whose families
could be united into a school district. ... A more serious
obstacle was the slave population, constituting one-third of
the whole, and in some of the States more than half, whom it
was thought dangerous to educate."
V. M. Rice, Special Report on the Present State of
Education, 1867, pages 19-23.
EDUCATION: A. D. 1804-1837.
Michigan.
The University.
"In 1804, when Michigan was organized as a Territory, Congress
granted a township of land for a seminary of learning, and the
university to be established in 1817 was to be in accordance
with this grant. The Territorial government committed the
interests of higher education to the care of the Governor and
the Judges, and it is supposed that through the exertions of
Honorable A. B. Woodward, then presiding Judge of the Supreme Court
of the Territory of Michigan, that the act establishing a
university was framed. A portion of this most curious document
of the early History of Michigan will be given. It is entitled
'An act to establish the Catholepistemiad or University
Michigania.' 'Be it enacted by the Governor and Judges of the
Territory of Michigan, That there shall be in the said
Territory a catholepistemiad or university denominated the
Catholepistemiad or University Michigania. The
Catholepistemiad or University of Michigania shall be composed
of thirteen didaxum or professorships; first, a didaxia or
professorship catholepistemia, or universal science, the
dictator or professor of which shall be president of the
institution; second, a didaxia or professorship of
anthropoglassica, or literature embracing all of the
episternum or sciences relative to language; third, a didaxia
or professorship of mathematica or mathematics; fourth, a
didaxia or professorship of physiognostica or natural history,
etc.' The act thus continues through the whole range of the
'thirteen didaxum'; the remaining nine are as follows: Natural
philosophy, astronomy, chemistry, medical sciences, economical
sciences, ethical sciences, military sciences, historical
sciences, and intellectual. The university was to be under the
control of the professors and president, who were to be
appointed by the Governor, while the institution was to be the
center and controlling power of the educational system of the
State.
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It was to be supported by taxation by an increase of the
amount of taxes already levied, by 15 per cent. Also power was
given to raise money for the support of the university by
means of lotteries. This remarkable document was not without
its influence in shaping the public school policy of Michigan,
but it was many years before the State approximated its
learned provisions. Impracticable as this educational plan
appears for a handful of people in the woods of Michigan, it
served as a foundation upon which to build. The officers and
president were duly appointed, and the work of the new
university began at once. At first the university appeared as
a school board, to establish and maintain primary schools
which they held under their charge. Then followed a course of
study for classical academies, and finally, in October, 1817,
an act was passed establishing a college in the city of
Detroit called 'The First College of Michigania.' ... The
people contributed liberally to these early schools, the sum
of three thousand dollars being subscribed at the beginning.
... An act was passed on the 30th of April, 1821, by the
Governor and Judges establishing a university in Detroit to
take the place of the catholepistemiad and to be called the
'University of Michigan.' In its charter nearly all the powers
of the former institution were substantially confirmed, except
the provision for taxes and lotteries. ... The second
corporation, known as the 'University of Michigan,' carried on
the work of education already begun from 1821 to the third
organization, in 1837. The education was very limited,
consisting in one classical academy at Detroit, and part of
the time a Lancasterian school. The boards of education kept
up and transmitted the university idea to such an extent that
it may be said truly and legally that there was one University
of Michigan, which passed through three successive stages of
development marked by the dates 1817, 1821, and 1837," at
which time it was removed to Ann Arbor.
F. W. Blackmar, Federal and State Aid to Higher
Education (U: S. Bureau of Education. Circular of
Information, 1890, no. 1), pages 239-241.
ALSO IN:
E. M. Farrand, History of the University of Michigan.
A. Ten Brook, American State Universities.
EDUCATION: A. D. 1818-1821.
Massachusetts.
Amherst College.
"Amherst College originated in a strong desire on the part of
the people of Massachusetts to have a college near the central
part of the State, where the students should be free from the
temptations of a large city, where the expenses of an
education should not be beyond the means of those who had but
little money, and where the moral and religious influences
should be of a decidedly Christian character. ... The
ministers of Franklin County, at a meeting held in Shelburne
May 18, 1815, expressed it as their opinion that a literary
institution of high order ought to be established in Hampshire
County, and that the town of Amherst appeared to them to be
the most eligible place for it. Their early efforts for a
literary institution in Hampshire County resulted in the first
place in the establishment of an academy in Amherst, which was
incorporated in the year 1816. ... In the year 1818 a
constitution was adopted by the trustees of Amherst Academy,
for the raising and management of a fund of at least $50,000,
for the classical education of indigent young men of piety and
talents for the Christian ministry. ... This charity fund may
be said to be the basis of Amherst College, for though it was
raised by the trustees of Amherst Academy it was really
intended to be the foundation of a college, and has always
been a part of the permanent funds of Amherst College, kept
sacredly from all other funds for the specific object for
which it was given. ... This was for many years the only
permanent fund of Amherst College, and without this it would
have seemed impossible at one time to preserve the very
existence of the college. So Amherst College grew out of
Amherst Academy, and was built permanently on the charity fund
raised by the trustees of that academy. ... Although the
charity fund of $50,000 had been received in 1818, it was not
till 1820 that the recipient felt justified in going forward
to erect buildings for a college in Amherst. Efforts were made
for the removal of Williams College from Williamstown to
Hampshire County, and to have the charity fund used in
connection with that college; and, if that were done, it was
not certain that Amherst could be regarded as the best
location for the college. But the legislature of Massachusetts
decided that Williams College could not be removed from
Williamstown, and nothing remained but for the friends of the
new institution to go on with their plans for locating it at
Amherst. ... This first college edifice was ready for
occupation and dedicated on the 18th of September, 1821. In
the month of May, 1821, Reverend Zephaniah Swift Moore, D. D., was
unanimously elected by the trustees of Amherst Academy
president of the new institution."
T. P. Field (U. S. Bureau of Education, Circular' of
Information, 1891, no. 6: History of Higher Education
in Massachusetts), chapter 11.
EDUCATION: A. D. 1837.
Massachusetts.
Horace Mann and the State System.
"When Massachusetts, in 1837, created a Board of Education,
then were first united into a somewhat related whole the more
or less excellent but varied and independent organizations,
and a beginning made for a State system. It was this massing
of forces, and the hearty co-operation he initiated, in which
the work of Horace Mann showed its matchless greatness.
'Rarely,' it has been said, 'have great ability, unselfish
devotion, and brilliant success, been so united in the course
of a single life.' A successful lawyer, a member of the State
Legislature, and with but limited experience as a teacher, he
has left his impress upon the educational sentiments of, not
only New England, but the United States."
R. G. Boone, Education in the U. S., page 103.
EDUCATION: A. D. 1840-1886.
The United States.
Proportion of College Students.
"It is estimated that in 1840 the proportion of college
students to the entire population in the United States was 1
to 1,540; in 1860, 1 to 2,012; in 1870,1 to 2,546; in 1880, 1
to 1,840; and in 1886, 1 to about 1,400, Estimating all our
combined efforts in favor of higher education, we fall far
short of some of the countries of the Old World."
F. W. Blackmar, Federal and State Aid to Higher
Education in the U. S. (U. S. Bureau of Education,
Circulars of Information, 1890, no. 1), page 36.
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EDUCATION: A. D. 1844-1876.
Canada.
Ontario School System.
"From the earliest settlement of Ontario, schools were
established as the wants of the inhabitants required. The
Legislature soon recognized the needs of the country, and made
grants of land and money in aid of elementary, secondary, and
superior education. Statutes were passed from time to time for
the purpose of opening schools to meet the demands of the
people. The sparsely settled condition of the Province delayed
for a while the organization of the system. It was not until
1844 that the elementary schools were put on a comprehensive
basis. In that year the Reverend Egerton Ryerson, LL. D., was
appointed Chief Superintendent of Education, and the report
which he presented to the House of Assembly sketched in an
able manner the main features of the system of which he was
the distinguished founder, and of which he continued for
thirty-three years to be the efficient administrator. In 1876
the office of chief superintendent was abolished, and the
schools of the Province placed under the control of a member
of the Government with the title of Minister of Education. ...
The system of education in Ontario may be said to combine the
best features of the systems of several countries. To the Old
World it is indebted for a large measure of its stability,
uniformity and centralization; to the older settled parts of
the New World for its popular nature, its flexibility and its
democratic principles which have given, wherever desirable,
local control and individual responsibility. From the State of
New York we have borrowed the machinery of our school; from
Massachusetts the principle of local taxation; from Ireland
our first series of text books; from Scotland the co-operation
of parents with the teacher, in upholding his authority; from
Germany the system of Normal Schools and the Kindergarten; and
from the United States generally the non-denominational
character of elementary, secondary, and university education.
Ontario may claim to have some features of her system that are
largely her own. Among them may be mentioned a division of
state and municipal authority on a judicious basis; clear
lines separating the function of the University from that of
the High Schools, and the function of the High Schools from
that of the Public or elementary schools; a uniform course of
study; all High and Public Schools in the hands of
professionally trained teachers; no person eligible to the
position of inspector who does not hold the highest grade of a
teacher's certificate, and who has not had years of experience
as a teacher; inspectors removable if inefficient, but not
subject to removal by popular vote; the examinations of
teachers under Provincial instead of local control; the
acceptance of a common matriculation examination for admission
to the Universities and to the learned professions; a uniform
series of text books for the whole Province; the almost entire
absence of party politics in the manner in which school
boards, inspectors and teachers discharge their duties; the
system national instead of sectarian, but affording under
constitutional guarantees and limitations protection to Roman
Catholic and Protestant Separate Schools and denominational
Universities."
J. Millar, Educational System of the Province of Ontario.
EDUCATION: A. D. 1862.
The United States.
Land-grant for industrial Colleges.
"Next to the Ordinance of 1787, the Congressional grant of
1862 is the most important educational enactment in America.
... By this gift forty-eight colleges and universities have
received aid, at least to the extent of the Congressional
grant; thirty-three of these, at least, have been called into
existence by means of this act. In thirteen States the
proceeds of the land scrip were devoted to institutions
already in existence. The amount received from the sales of
land scrip from twenty-four of these States aggregates the sum
of $13,930,456, with land remaining unsold estimated at nearly
two millions of dollars. These same institutions have received
State endowments amounting to over eight million dollars. The
origin of this gift must be sought in local communities. In
this country all ideas of national education have arisen from
those States that have felt the need of local institutions for
the education of youth. In certain sections of the Union,
particularly the North and West, where agriculture was one of
the chief industries, it was felt that the old classical
schools were not broad enough to cover all the wants of
education represented by growing industries. There was
consequently a revulsion from these schools toward the
industrial and practical side of education. Evidences of this
movement are seen in the attempts in different States to found
agricultural, technical, and industrial schools. These ideas
found their way into Congress, and a bill was introduced in
1858, which provided for the endowment of colleges for the

teaching of agriculture and the mechanical arts. The bill was
introduced by Honorable Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont; it was
passed by a small majority, and was vetoed by President
Buchanan. In 1862 the bill was again presented with slight
changes, passed and signed, and became a law July 2, 1862. ...
It stipulated to grant to each State thirty thousand acres of
land for each Senator and Representative in Congress to which
the States were respectively entitled by the census of 1860,
for the purpose of endowing 'at least one college where the
leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific
and classical studies, and including military tactics, to
teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture
and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the Legislatures of
the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the
liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in
the several pursuits and professions of life.' ... From this
proposition all sorts of schools sprang up, according to the
local conception of the law and local demands. It was thought
by some that boys were to be taught agriculture by working on
a farm, and purely agricultural schools were founded with the
mechanical arts attached. In other States classical schools of
the stereotyped order were established, with more or less
science; and, again, the endowment in others was devoted to
scientific departments. The instruction of the farm and the
teaching of pure agriculture have not succeeded in general,
while the schools that have made prominent those studies
relating to agriculture and the mechanic arts, upon the whole,
have succeeded best. ... In several instances the managers of
the land scrip have understood that by this provision the
State could not locate the land within the borders of another
State, but its assignees could thus locate lands, not more
than one million acres in any one State. By considering this
question, the New York land scrip was bought by Ezra Cornell,
and located by him for the college in valuable lands in the
State of Wisconsin, and thus the fund was augmented. However,
the majority of the States sold their land at a sacrifice,
frequently for less than half its value. There was a lull in
the land market during the Civil War, and this cause, together
with the lack of attention in many States, sacrificed the gift
of the Federal Government. The sales ranged all the way from
fifty cents to seven dollars per acre, as the average price
for each State."
F. W. Blackmar, Federal and State Aid to Higher
Education (U. S. Bureau of Education,
Circulars of Information, 1890, no. 1), pages 47-49.
{735}
EDUCATION: A. D. 1862-1886.
New York.
Cornell University.
"On the second of July, 1862, ... [President Lincoln] signed
the act of congress, donating public lands for the
establishment of colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts.
This act had been introduced into congress by the Honorable Justin
S. Morrill. ... The Morrill act provided for a donation of
public land to the several states, each state to receive
thirty thousand acres for each senator and representative it
sent to congress. States not containing within their own
borders public land subject to sale at private entry received
land scrip instead. But this land scrip the recipient states
were not allowed to locate within the limits of any other
state or of any territory of the United States. The act
laconically directed 'said scrip to be sold by said states.'
The proceeds of the sale, whether of land or scrip, in each
state were to form a perpetual fund. ... In the execution of
this trust the State of New York was hampered by great and
almost insuperable obstacles. For its distributive share it
received land scrip to the amount of nine hundred and ninety
thousand acres. The munificence of the endowment awakened the
cupidity of a multitude of clamorous and strangely unexpected
claimants. ... If the princely domain granted to the State of
New York by congress was not divided and frittered away, we
owe it in great measure to the foresight, the energy, and the
splendid courage of a few generous spirits in the legislature
of whom none commanded greater respect or exercised more
influence than Senator Andrew Dickson White, the gentleman who
afterwards became first president of Cornell University. ...
But the all-compelling force which prevented the dispersion
and dissipation of the bounty of congress was the generous
heart of Ezra Cornell. While rival institutions clamored for a
division of the 'spoils,' and political tricksters played
their base and desperate game, this man thought only of the
highest good of the State of New York, which he loved with the
ardor of a patriot and was yet to serve with the heroism of a
martyr. ... When the legislature of the State of New York was
called upon to make some disposition of the congressional
grant, Ezra Cornell sat in the senate. ... Of his minor
legislative achievements I shall not speak. One act, however,
has made his name as immortal as the state it glorified. By a
gift of half a million dollars (a vast sum in 1865, the last
year of the war!) he rescued for the higher education of New
York the undivided grant of congress; and with the united
endowments he induced the legislature to establish, not merely
a college of applied science but a great modern
university--'an institution,' according to his own admirable
definition, 'where any person can find instruction in any
study.' It was a high and daring aspiration to crown the
educational system of our imperial state with an organ of
universal knowledge, a nursery of every science and of all
scholarship, an instrument of liberal culture and of practical
utility to all classes of our people. This was, however, the
end; and to secure it Ezra Cornell added to his original gift
new donations of land, of buildings, and of money. ... But one
danger threatened this latest birth of time. The act of
congress donating land scrip required the states to sell it.
The markets were immediately glutted. Prices fell. New York
was selling at an average price of fifty cents an acre. Her
princely domain would bring at this rate less than half a
million dollars! Was the splendid donation to issue in such
disaster? If it could be held till the war was over, till
immigration opened up the Northwest, it would be worth five
times five hundred thousand dollars! So at least thought one
far-seeing man in the State of New York. And this man of
foresight had the heart to conceive, the wisdom to devise, and
the courage to execute--he alone in all the states--a plan for
saving to his state the future value of the lands donated by
congress. Ezra Cornell made that wonderful and dramatic
contract with the State of New York! He bound himself to
purchase at the rate of sixty cents per acre the entire right
of the commonwealth to the scrip, still unsold; and with the
scrip, thus purchased by him as an individual he agreed to
select and locate the lands it represented, to pay the taxes,
to guard against trespasses and defend from fires, to the end
that within twenty years when values had appreciated he might
sell the land and turn into the treasury of the State of New
York for the support of Cornell University the entire net
proceeds of the enterprise. Within a few years Ezra Cornell
had located over half a million acres of superior pine land in
the Northwestern states, principally in Wisconsin. Under bonds
to the State of New York to do the state's work he had spent
about $600,000 of his own cash to carry out the trust
committed to him by the state, when, alas, in the crisis of
1874, fortune and credit sank exhausted and death came to free
the martyr-patriot from his bonds. The seven years that
followed were the darkest in our history. ... Ezra Cornell was
our founder; Henry W. Sage followed him as wise masterbuilder.
The edifices, chairs and libraries which bear the name of
'Sage' witness to [his] later gifts: but though these now
aggregate the princely sum of $1,250,000, [his] management of
the university lands has been [his] greatest achievement. From
these lands, with which the generosity and foresight of Ezra
Cornell endowed the university, there have been netted under
[Mr. Sage's] administration, not far short of $4,000,000, with
over 100,000 acres still to sell. Ezra Cornell's contract with
the state was for twenty years. It expired August 4, 1886,
when a ten years' extension was granted by the state. The
trust will be closed in 1896."
J. G. Schurman, Address at Inauguration to the
Presidency of Cornell University, November 11, 1892.
EDUCATION: A. D. 1866-1869.
The United States.
Bureau of Education.
"Educators, political economists, and statesmen felt the need
of some central agency by which the general educational
statistics of the country could be collected, preserved,
condensed, and properly arranged for distribution. This need
found expression finally in the action taken at a convention
of the superintendence department of the National Educational
Association, held at Washington February, 1866, when it was
resolved to petition Congress in favor of a National Bureau of
Education. ...
{736}
The memorial was presented in the House of Representatives by
General Garfield, February 14, 1866, with a bill for the
establishment of a National Bureau on essentially the basis
the school superintendents had proposed. Both bill and
memorial were referred to a committee of seven members. ...
The bill was reported back from the committee, with an
amendment in the nature of a substitute, providing for the
creation of a department of education instead of the bureau
originally proposed. Thus altered, it was passed by a vote of
nearly two to one. In the Senate it was referred to the
Committee on the Judiciary ... who the following winter
reported it without amendment and with a recommendation that
it pass, which it did on the 1st of March, 1867, receiving on
the next day the approval of the President. By the act of July
28, 1868, which took effect June 30, 1869, the Department of
Education was abolished, and an Office of Education in the
Department of the Interior was established, with the same
objects and duties. ... The act of March 2, 1867, ...
established an agency 'for the purpose of collecting such
statistics and facts as shall show the condition and progress
of education in the several States and Territories, and of
diffusing such information respecting the organization and
management of school systems and methods of teaching as shall
aid the people of the United States in the establishment and
maintenance of efficient school systems and otherwise promote
the cause of education.' It will be perceived that the chief
duty of the office under the law is to act as an educational
exchange. Exercising and seeking to exercise no control
whatever over its thousands of correspondents, the office
occupies a position as the recipient of voluntary information
which is unique."
C. Warren, Answers to Inquiries about the
U. S. Bureau of Education, chapters 2-3.
EDUCATION: A. D. 1867.
New York.
Public Schools made entirely free.
The public schools of the State of New York were not entirely
free until 1867. In his report to the Legislature made in
February of that year, the State Superintendent of Public
Instruction, Honorable Victor M. Rice, said: "The greatest defect
in our school system is, as I have urged in previous reports,
the continuance of the rate bill system. Our common schools
can never reach their highest degree of usefulness until they
shall have been made entirely free. ... To meet this public
demand, to confer upon the children of the State the blessings
of free education, a bill has already been introduced into
your honorable body. ... The main features of the bill are the
provisions to raise, by State tax, a sum about equal to that
raised in the districts by rate bills, and to abolish the rate
bill system; to facilitate the erection and repair of school
houses." The bill referred to was passed at the same session
of the Legislature, and in his next succeeding report,
Superintendent Rice gave the following account of the law and
its immediate effects: "While the general structure of the
school law was not disturbed, a material modification was made
by the Act (chap. 406, Laws of 1867), which took effect on the
first day of October of the same year, and which, among other
things, provided for the abolishment of rate-bills, and for
increased local and State taxation for school purposes. This
was primarily a change in the manner of raising the requisite
funds; not an absolute increase of the aggregate amount to be
raised. It involved and encouraged such increase, so far as
the inhabitants in the several school districts should
authorize it, by substituting taxation exclusively on
property, for a mixed assessment which, in part, was a tax on
attendance. Thus relieved of an old impediment, and supplied
with additional power and larger resources, the cause of
public instruction, during the last fiscal year, has wrought
results unequaled in all the past. ... The effect of this
amendment has not been confined to the financial policy
thereby inaugurated. It is distinctly traceable in lengthened
terms of school, in a larger and more uniform attendance, and
in more liberal expenditures for school buildings and
appliances."
Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State
of New York, Annual Report, 1869, pages 5-6.
EDUCATION: A. D. 1867.
Maryland.
Johns Hopkins University.
"By the will of Johns Hopkins, a merchant of Baltimore, the
sum of $7,000,000 was devoted to the endowment of a university
[chartered in 1867] and a hospital, $3,500,000 being
appropriated to each. ... To the bequest no burdensome
conditions were attached. ... Just what this new university
was to be proved a very serious question to the trustees. The
conditions of Mr. Hopkins's bequest left the determination of
this matter open. ... A careful investigation led the trustees
to believe that there was a growing demand for opportunities
to study beyond the ordinary courses of a college or a
scientific school, particularly in those branches of learning
not included in the schools of law, medicine and theology.
Strong evidence of this demand was afforded by the increasing
attendance of American students upon the lectures of the
German universities, as well as by the number of students who
were enrolling themselves at Harvard and Yale for the
post-graduate courses. It was therefore determined that the
Johns Hopkins should be primarily a university, with advanced
courses of lectures and fully equipped laboratories; that the
courses should be voluntary, and the teaching not limited to
class instruction. The foundation is both old and new. In so
far as each feature is borrowed from some older university,
where it has been fairly tried and tested, it is old, but at
the same time this particular combination of separate features
has here been made for the first time. ... In the ordinary
college course, if a young man happens to be deficient in
mathematics, for example, he is either forced to lose any
advantage he may possess in Greek or Latin, or else is obliged
to take a position in mathematics for which he is unprepared.
In the college department of the Johns Hopkins, this
disadvantage does not exist; the classifying is specific for
each study. The student has also the privilege of pushing
forward in any one study as rapidly as he can with advantage;
or, on the other hand, in case of illness or of unavoidable
interruption, of prolonging the time devoted to the course, so
that no part of it shall be omitted. As the studies are
elective, it is possible to follow the usual college course if
one desires. Seven different courses of study are indicated,
any of which leads to the Baccalaureate degree, thus enabling
the student to direct and specialize his work. The same
standard of matriculation and the same severity of
examinations are maintained in all these courses.
{737}
A student has the privilege of extending his study beyond the
regular class work, and he will be credited with all such
private and outside study, if his examiners are satisfied of
his thoroughness and accuracy."
S. B. Herrick, The Johns Hopkins University
(Scribner's Monthly, December 1879).
EDUCATION: A. D. 1867-1891.
The United States.
The Peabody Education Fund.
"The letter announcing and creating the Peabody endowment was
dated February 7, 1867. In that letter, after referring to the
ravages of he late war, the founder of the Trust said: 'I feel
most deeply that it is the duty and privilege of the more
favoured and wealthy portions of our nation to assist those
who are less fortunate.' He then added: 'I give one million of
dollars for the encouragement and promotion of intellectual,
moral, and industrial education among the young of the more
destitute portions of the Southern and Southwestern States of
the Union.' On the day following, ten of the Trustees selected
by him held a preliminary meeting in Washington. Their first
business meeting was held in the city of New York, the 19th of
March following, at which a general plan was adopted and an
agent appointed. Mr. Peabody returned to his native country
again in 1869, and on the 1st day of July, at a special
meeting of the Trustees held at Newport, added a second
million to the cash capital of the fund. ... According to the
donor's directions, the principal must remain intact for
thirty years. The Trustees are not authorized to expend any
part of it, nor yet to add to it any part of the accruing
interest. The manner of using the interest, as well as the
final distribution of the principal, was left entirely to the
discretion of a self-perpetuating body of Trustees. Those
first appointed had, however, the rare advantage of full
consultation with the founder of the Trust while he still
lived, and their plans received his cordial and emphatic
approbation. ... The pressing need of the present seemed to be
in the department of primary education for the masses, and so
they determined to make appropriations only for the assistance
of public free schools. The money is not given as a charity to
the poor. It would be entirely inadequate to furnish any
effectual relief if distributed equally among all those who
need it, and would, moreover, if thus widely dissipated,
produce no permanent results. But the establishment of good
public schools provides for the education of all children,
whether rich or poor, and initiates a system which no State
has ever abandoned after a fair trial. So it seemed to the
donor as well as to his Trustees, that the greatest good of
the greatest number would be more effectually and more
certainly attained by this mode of distribution than by any
other. No effort is made to distribute according to
population. It was Mr. Peabody's wish that those States which
had suffered most from the ravages of war should be assisted
first."
American Educational Cyclopædia, 1875, pages 224-225.
The report made by the treasurer of the Fund in 1890, showed a
principal sum invested to the amount of $2,075,175.22,
yielding an income that year of $97,818. In the annual report
of the U. S. Commissioner of Education made February 1, 1891, he
says: "It would appear to the student of education in the
Southern States that the practical wisdom in the
administration of the Peabody Fund and the fruitful results
that have followed it could not be surpassed in the history of
endowments."
Proceedings of the Trustees of the Peabody
Education Fund, 1887-1892.
EDUCATION: A. D. 1884-1891.
California.
Leland Stanford Junior University.
"The founding at Palo Alto of 'a university for both sexes,
with the colleges, schools, seminaries of learning, mechanical
institutes, museums, galleries of art, and all other things
necessary and appropriate to a university of high degree,' was
determined upon by the Honorable Leland Stanford and Jane Lathrop
Stanford in 1884. In March of the year following the
Legislature of California passed an Act providing for the
administration of trust funds in connection with institutions
of learning. November 14, 1885, the Grant of Endowment was
publicly made, in accordance with this Act, and on the same
day the Board of Trustees held its first meeting in San
Francisco. The work of construction was at once begun, and the
cornerstone laid May 14, 1887. The University was formally
opened to students October 1, 1891. The idea of the
university, in the words of its founders, 'came directly and
largely from our son and only child, Leland, and in the belief
that had he been spared to advise as to the disposition of our
estate, he would have desired the devotion of a large portion
thereof to this purpose, we will that for all time to come the
institution hereby founded shall bear his name, and shall be
known as The Leland Stanford Junior University.' The object of
the University, as stated in its Charter, is 'to qualify
students for personal success and direct usefulness in life';
and its purposes, 'to promote the public welfare by exercising
an influence in behalf of humanity and civilization, teaching
the blessings of liberty regulated by law, and inculcating
love and reverence for the great principles of government as
derived from the inalienable rights of man to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.' The University is located on
the Palo Alto estate in the Santa Clara valley, thirty-three
miles southeast of San Francisco, on the Coast Division of the
Southern Pacific Railway. The estate consists of over eight
thousand acres, partly lowland and partly rising into the
foothills of the Santa Cruz range. On the grounds is the
residence of the Founders, and an extensive and beautiful
arboretum containing a very great variety of shrubs and trees.
The property conveyed to the University, in addition to the
Palo Alto estate, consists of the Vina estate, in Tehama
County, of fifty-five thousand acres, of which about four
thousand acres are planted in vines, and the Gridley estate,
in Butte County, of twenty-two thousand acres, devoted mainly
to the raising of wheat. ... The founders of the Leland
Stanford Junior University say: 'As a further assurance that
the endowment will be ample to establish and maintain a
university of the highest grade, we have, by last will and
testament, devised to you and your successors additional
property. We have done this as a security against the
uncertainty of life and in the hope that during our lives the
full endowment may go to you. The aggregate of the domain
thus dedicated to the founding of the University, is over
eighty-five thousand acres, or more than one hundred and
thirty-three square miles, among the best improved and most
valuable lands in the State."
Leland Stanford Junior University,
Circulars of Information, numbers 6 and 1-2.
{738}
EDUCATION: A. D. 1887-1889.
Massachusetts.
Clark University.
"Clark University was founded [at Worcester] by ... a native
of Worcester County, Massachusetts. It was 'not the outcome of
a freak of impulse, or of a sudden wave of generosity, or of
the natural desire to perpetuate in a worthy way one's
ancestral name. To comprehend the genesis of the enterprise we
must go back along the track of Mr. Clark's personal history
20 years at least. For as long ago as that, the idea came home
with force to his mind that all civilized communities are in
the hands of experts. ... Looking around at the facilities
obtainable in this country for the prosecution of original
research, he was struck with the meagerness and the
inadequacy. Colleges and professional schools we have in
abundance, but there appeared to be no one grand inclusive
institution, unsaddled by an academic department, where
students might pursue as far as possible their investigation
of any and every branch of science. ... Mr. Clark went abroad
and spent eight years visiting the institutions of learning in
almost every country of Europe. He studied into their history
and observed their present working.' ... It is his strong and
expressed desire that the highest possible academic standards
be here forever maintained; that special opportunities and
inducements be offered to research; that to this end the
instructors be not overburdened with teaching or examinations.
... A charter was granted early in 1887. Land and other
property that had been before secured by the founder was
transferred to the board, and the erection of a central
building was begun. In the spring of 1888 G. Stanley Hall,
then a professor at the Johns Hopkins University, was invited
to the presidency. ... The plans of the university had so far
progressed that work was begun in October, 1889, in
mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and psychology."
G. G. Bush, History of Higher Education in
Massachusetts (U. S. Bureau of Education,
Circular of Information, 1891, no. 6), chapter 18.
EDUCATION: A. D. 1889-1892.
Illinois.
Chicago University.
"At its Annual Meeting in May, 1889, the Board of the American
Baptist Education Society resolved to take immediate steps
toward the founding of a well-equipped college in the city of
Chicago. At the same time John D. Rockefeller made a
subscription of $600,000 and this sum was increased during the
succeeding year by about $600,000 more in subscriptions
representing more than two thousand persons. Three months
after the completion of this subscription, Mr. Rockefeller
made an additional proffer of $1,000,000. The site of the
University consists of three blocks of ground--about two
thousand feet long and three hundred and sixty-two feet wide,
lying between the two South Parks of Chicago, and fronting on
the Midway Plaisance, which is itself a park connecting the
other two. One-half of this site is a gift of Marshall Field
of Chicago, and the other half has been purchased at a cost of
$132,500. At the first meeting of the Board after it had
become an incorporated body, Professor William R. Harper, of
Yale University, was unanimously elected President of the
University. ... It has been decided that the University will
begin the work of instruction on the first day of October,
1892. ... The work of the University shall be arranged under
three general divisions, viz., The University Proper, The
University-Extension Work, The University Publication Work."
University of Chicago,
Official Bulletin no. 1, January, 1891.
EDUCATION: A. D. 1890.
United States.
Census Statistics.
The following statistics of education in the United States are
from the returns gathered for the Eleventh Census, 1890. In
these statistics the states and territories are classed in
five great geographical divisions, defined as follows: North
Atlantic Division, embracing the New England States, New York,
New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; South Atlantic Division,
embracing the States of the eastern coast, from Delaware to
Florida, together with the District of Columbia; North Central
Division, embracing Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan,
Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North and South Dakota,
Nebraska, and Kansas; South Central Division, embracing
Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas,
Arkansas, and Oklahoma; Western Division, embracing all the
remaining States and Territories. The total taxation for
public schools in the United States, as reported by this
census, was $102,164,796; of which $37,619,786 was raised in
the North Atlantic Division, $5,678,474 in the South Atlantic
Division, $47,033,142 in the North Central Division,
$5,698.562 in the South Central Division, and $6,134,832 in
the Western Division. From funds and rents there were raised
for school purposes a total of $25,694,449 in the United
States at large, of which $8,273,147 was raised in the North
Atlantic Division, $2,307,051 in the South Atlantic Division,
$8,432,593 in the North Central Division, $3,720,158 in the
South Central Division, and $2,961,500 in the Western
Division. The total of all "ordinary" receipts for school
support in the United States, was $139,619,440, of which
$49,201,216 were in the North Atlantic Division, $8,685,223 in
the South Atlantic Division. $61,108,263 in the North Central
Division, $10,294,621 in the South Central Division, and
$10,330,117 in the Western Division. The total "ordinary
expenditures" were $138,786,393 in the whole United States;
being $47,625,548 in the North Atlantic Division, $8,630,711
in the South Atlantic Division, $62,815.531 in the North
Central Division, $9,860,050 in the South Central Division,
and $9,854,544 in the Western Division. For teachers' wages
there was a total expenditure of $88,705,992, $28,067,821
being in the North Atlantic Division, $6,400,063 in the South
Atlantic Division, $39,866,831 in the North Central Division,
$8,209,509 in the South Central Division, and $6,161,768 in
the Western Division. The total expenditure for Libraries and
Apparatus was $1,667,787, three-fourths of which was in the
North Atlantic and North Central Divisions. The expenditure
reported for construction and care of buildings, was
$24,224,793, of which $10,687,114 was in the North Atlantic
Division, $884,277 was in the South Atlantic Division,
$9,869,489 in the North Central Division, $770,257 in the
South Central Division, and $2,013,656 in the Western
Division. Reported estimates of the value of buildings and
other school property are incomplete, but $27,892,831 are
given for Massachusetts, $41,626,735 for New York, $35,435,412
for Pennsylvania, $32,631,549 for Ohio, $26,814,480 for
Illinois, and these are the States that stand highest in the
column.
{739}
The apparent enrollment in Public Schools for the
census year, reported to July, 1891, was as follows:
North Atlantic Division, 3,124,417;
South Atlantic Division, 1,758,285;
North Central Division, 5,032,182;
South Central Division, 2,334,694;
Western Division, 520,286;
Total for the United States, 12,769,864
being 20.39 per cent. of the population, against 19.84 per
cent. in 1880. The reported enrollment in Private Schools at
the same time was:
North Atlantic Division, 196,173;
South Atlantic Division, 165,253;
North Central Division, 187,827;
South Central Division, 200,202;
Western Division, 54,749;
Total for the United States, 804,204.
The reported enrollment in Parochial Schools was:
North Atlantic Division, 311,684;
South Atlantic Division, 30,869;
North Central Division, 398,585;
South Central Division, 41,115;
Western Division, 17,349;
Total for the United States, 799,602.
Of this total, 626,496 were enrolled in Catholic and 151,651
in Lutheran Parochial Schools; leaving only 21,455 in the
schools of all other denominations. Total enrollment reported
in all schools 14,373,670. The colored public school
enrollment in the Southern States was 1,288,229 in 1890,
against 797,286 in 1880,--an increase of more than 61 per
cent. The enrollment of whites was 3,358,527, against
2,301,804,--an increase of nearly 46 per cent. The approximate
number of Public School-houses in the United States, for the
census year 1890 is given at 219,992, being 42,949 in the
North Atlantic Division, 32,142 in the South Atlantic
Division, 97,166 in the North Central Division, 38,962 in the
South Central Division, 8,773 in the Western Division. The
largest number reported is 14,214 in Pennsylvania. Of 6,408
school-houses in Virginia 4,568 are for white, and 1,840 for
colored children; in North Carolina, 3,973 white and 1,820
colored. The above statistics are taken in part from the
Compendium of the Eleventh Census, published in 1894, and
partly from tables courteously furnished from the Census
Bureau in advance of their publication.
EDUCATION: Modern: Reforms and Movements.
EDUCATION: A. D. 1638-1671.
Comenius.
"To know Comenius [born in Moravia, 1592] and the part he
played in the seventeenth century, to appreciate this grand
educational character, it would be necessary to begin by
relating his life; his misfortunes; his journeys to England
[1638], where Parliament invoked his aid; to Sweden [1642],
where the Chancellor Oxenstiern employed him to write manuals
of instruction; especially his relentless industry, his
courage through exile, and the long persecutions he suffered
as a member of the sect of dissenters, the Moravian Brethren;
and the schools he founded at Fulneck, in Bohemia, at Lissa
and at Patak, in Poland."
G. Compayré, The History of Pedagogy, chapter 6 (section 137).
"Comenius's inspiring motive, like that of all leading
educationalists, was social regeneration. He believed that
this could be accomplished through the school. He lived under
the hallucination that by a proper arrangement of the
subject-matter of instruction, and by a sound method, a
certain community of thought and interests would be
established among the young, which would result in social
harmony and political settlement. He believed that men could
be manufactured. ... The educational spirit of the Reformers,
the conviction that all--even the humblest--must be taught to
know God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent, was inherited by
Comenius in its completeness. In this way, and in this way
only, could the ills of Europe be remedied, and the progress
of humanity assured. While, therefore, he sums up the
educational aim under the threefold heads of Knowledge,
Virtue, and Piety or Godliness, he in truth has mainly in view
the last two. Knowledge is of value only in so far as it forms
the only sound basis, in the eyes of a Protestant theologian,
of virtue and godliness. We have to train for a hereafter. ...
By knowledge Comenius meant knowledge of nature and of man's
relation to nature. It is this important characteristic of
Comenius's educational system that reveals the direct
influence of Bacon and his school. ... It is in the department
of Method, however, that we recognise the chief contribution
of Comenius to education. The mere attempt to systematise was
a great advance. In seeking, however, for foundations on which
to erect a coherent system, he had to content himself with
first principles which were vague and unscientific. ... In the
department of knowledge, that is to say, knowledge of the
outer world, Comenius rested his method on the scholastic
maxim, 'Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in
sensu.' This maxim he enriched with the Baconian induction,
comprehended by him only in a general way. ... From the simple
to the complex, from the particular to the general, the concrete
before the abstract, and all, step by step, and even by
insensible degrees,--these were among his leading principles
of method. But the most important of all his principles was
derived from the scholastic maxim quoted above. As all is from
sense, let the thing to be known be itself presented to the
senses, and let every sense be engaged in the perception of
it. When it is impossible, from the nature of the case, to
present the object itself, place a vivid picture of it before
the pupil. The mere enumeration of these few principles, even
if we drop out of view all his other contributions to method
and school-management, will satisfy any man familiar with all
the more recent treatises on Education, that Comenius, even
after giving his precursors their due, is to be regarded as
the true founder of modern Method, and that he anticipates
Pestalozzi and all of the same school. ... Finally, Comenius's
views as to the inner organisation of a school were original,
and have proved themselves in all essential respects correct.
The same may be said of his scheme for the organisation of a
State-system--a scheme which is substantially, mutatis
mutandis, at this moment embodied in the highly-developed
system of Germany. When we consider, then, that Comenius first
formally and fully developed educational method, that he
introduced important reforms into the teaching of languages,
that he introduced into schools the study of Nature, that he
advocated with intelligence, and not on purely sentimental
grounds, a milder discipline, we are justified in assigning to
him a high, if not the highest, place among modern educational
writers."
S. S. Laurie, John Amos Comenius, pages 217-226.
{740}
EDUCATION: A. D. 1681-1878.
The Christian Brothers.
"Any description of popular education in Europe would be
incomplete, which should not give prominence to the Institute
of the Christian Brothers--or the Brothers of the Christian
Doctrine--including in that term the earliest professional
school for the training of teachers in Europe; one of the most
remarkable body of teachers devoted exclusively and without
pay to the education of the children of the poor that the
world has ever seen. ... The Institute was established as a
professional school in 1681, and to Abbe John Baptist de la
Salle, belongs the high honor not only of founding it, but of
so infusing into its early organization his own profound
conviction of the Christ-like character of its mission among
the poor, that it has retained for nearly two centuries the
form and spirit of its origin. This devoted Christian teacher
was born at Rheims on the 30th of April, 1651. ... He was
early distinguished for his scholarly attainments and maturity
of character; and at the age of seventeen, before he had
completed his full course of theological study, he was
appointed Canon in the Cathedral church of Rheims. From the
first, he became interested in the education of the young, and
especially of the poor, as the most direct way of leading them
to a Christian life;--and with this view before he was
twenty-one years old, he assumed the direction of two
charities, devoted to female education. From watching the
operation of these schools, conducted by teachers without
professional training, without plan and without mutual
sympathy and aid, he conceived the design of bringing the
teachers of this class of schools from the neighboring
parishes into a community for their moral and professional
improvement. For this purpose, he invited them first to meet,
and then to lodge at his house, and afterwards, about the year
1681, he purchased a house for their special accommodation.
Here, out of school hours and during their holy days, they
spent their time in the practice of religious duties, and in
mutual conferences on the work in which they were engaged.
About this period, a large number of free schools for the poor
were established in the neighboring towns; and applications
were constantly made to the Abbe for teachers formed under his
training, care, and influence. To meet this demand, and make
himself more directly useful in the field of Christian
education, he resigned his benefice, that he might give his
whole attention to the work. To close the distance between
himself, having a high social position and competence from his
father's estate, and the poor schoolmasters to whom he was
constantly preaching an unreserved consecration of themselves
to their vocation--he not only resigned his canonry, with its
social and pecuniary advantages, but distributed his
patrimony, in a period of scarcity, in relieving the
necessities of the poor, and in providing for the education of
their children. He thus placed himself on a footing of
equality--as to occupation, manner of life, and entire
dependence on the charity of others--with the schoolmasters of
the poor. The annals of education or religion show but few
such examples of practical self-denial, and entire
consecration to a sense of duty. ... Having completed his act
of resignation and self-imposed poverty, he assembled his
teachers, announced to them what he had done, and sung with
them a Te Deum. After a retreat--a period set apart to prayer
and fasting-continued for seventeen days, they devoted
themselves to the consideration of the best course to give
unity, efficiency, and permanence to their plans of Christian
education for the poor. They assumed the name of 'The Brothers
of the Christian Doctrine,' as expressive of their
vocation--which by usage came to be abbreviated into
'Christian Brothers.' They took on themselves vows of poverty,
celibacy, and obedience for three years. They prescribed to
themselves the most frugal fare, to be provided in turns by
each other, They adopted at that time some rules of behavior,
which have since been incorporated into the fundamental rules
of the order. ... In 1702 the first step was taken to
establish an Institute at Rome, under the mission of one of
the brothers, Gabriel Drolin, who after years of poverty, was
made conductor of one of the charitable schools founded by
Pope Clement XI. This school became afterwards the foundation
of the house which the brothers have had in Rome since the
pontificate of Benedict XIII., who conferred on the institute
the constitution of a religious order. In 1703, under the
pecuniary aid of M. Chateau Blanc, and the countenance of the
archbishop, M. de Gontery, a school was opened at Avignon. ...
In 1789, the National Assembly prohibited vows to be made in
communities; and in 1790, suppressed all religious societies;
and in 1791, the institute was dispersed. At that date there
were one hundred and twenty houses, and over one thousand
brothers, actively engaged in the duties of the school room.
The continuity of the society was secured by the houses
established in Italy, to which many of the brothers fled. ...
In 1801, on the conclusion of a Concordat between the Pope and
the government, the society was revived in France by the
opening of a school at Lyons; and in 1815, they resumed their
habit, and opened a novitiate, the members of which were
exempt from military service. At the organization of the
university in 1808, the institute was legally reorganized, and
from that time has increased in numbers and usefulness. ... In
1842, there were 390 houses (of which 326 were in France),
with 3,030 brothers, and 585 novices. There were 642 schools
with 163,700 children, besides evening schools with 7,800
adults in attendance, and three reformatory schools with 2,000
convicts under instruction."
Henry Barnard, National Education in Europe, pages 435-441.
"In 1878 their numbers had increased to 11,640; they had 1,249
establishments, and the number of their scholars was 390,607."
Mrs. R. F. Wilson, The Christian Brothers,
their Origin and Work, chapter 21.
EDUCATION: A. D. 1762.
Rousseau.
"Rousseau, who had educated himself, and very badly at that,
was impressed with the dangers of the education of his day. A
mother having asked his advice, he took up the pen to write
it; and, little by little, his counsels grew into a book, a
large work, a pedagogic romance ['Emile']. This romance, when
it appeared in 1762, created a great noise and a great
scandal. The Archbishop of Paris, Christophe de Beaumont, saw
in it a dangerous, mischievous work, and gave himself the
trouble of writing a long encyclical letter in order to point
out the book to the reprobation of the faithful. This document
of twenty-seven chapters is a formal refutation of the
theories advanced in 'Emile.' ... In those days, such a
condemnation was a serious matter; its consequences to an
author might be terrible. Rousseau had barely time to flee.
His arrest was decreed by the parliament of Paris, and his
book was burned by the executioner. ... As a fugitive,
Rousseau did not find a safe retreat even in his own country.
{741}
He was obliged to leave Geneva, where his book was also
condemned, and Berne, where he had sought refuge, but whence
he was driven by intolerance. He owed it to the protection of
Lord Keith, governor of Neufchâtel, a principality belonging
to the King of Prussia, that he lived for some time in peace
in the little town of Motiers in the Val de Travers. ... The
renown of the book, condemned by so high an authority, was
immense. Scandal, by attracting public attention to it, did it
good service. What was most serious and most suggestive in it
was not, perhaps, seized upon; but the 'craze' of which it was
the object had, notwithstanding, good results. Mothers were
won over, and resolved to nurse their own infants; great lords
began to learn handicrafts, like Rousseau's imaginary pupil;
physical exercises came into fashion; the spirit of innovation
was forcing itself a way. ... Three men above all the rest are
noted for having popularized the pedagogic method of Rousseau,
and for having been inspired in their labors by 'Emile.' These
were Basedow, Pestalozzi, and Froebel. Basedow, a German
theologian, had devoted himself entirely to dogmatic
controversy, until the reading of 'Emile' had the effect of
enlarging his mental horizon, and of revealing to him his true
vocation. ... Pestalozzi of Zurich, one of the foremost
educators of modern times, also found his whole life
transformed by the reading of 'Emile,' which awoke in him the
genius of a reformer. ... The most distinguished among his
disciples and continuators is Froebel, the founder of those
primary schools ... known by the name of 'kindergartens,' and
the author of highly esteemed pedagogic works. These various
attempts, these new and ingenious processes which, step by
step, have made their way among us, and are beginning to make
their workings felt, even in institutions most stoutly opposed
to progress, are all traceable to Rousseau's 'Emile.' ... It
is true that 'Emile' contains pages that have outlived their
day, many odd precepts, many false ideas, many disputable and
destructive theories; but at the same time we find in it so
many sagacious observations, such upright counsels, suitable
even to modern times, so lofty an ideal, that, in spite of
everything, we cannot read and study it without profit. ...
There is absolutely nothing practicable in his [Rousseau's]
system. It consists in isolating a child from the rest of the
world; in creating expressly for him a tutor, who is a phœnix
among his kind; in depriving him of father, mother, brothers,
and sisters, his companions in study; in surrounding him with
a perpetual charlatanism, under the pretext of following
nature; and in showing him only through the veil of a
factitious atmosphere the society in which he is to live. And,
nevertheless, at each step it is sound reason by which we are
met; by an astonishing paradox, this whimsicality is full of
good sense; this dream overflows with realities; this
improbable and chimerical romance contains the substance and
the marrow of a rational and truly modern treatise on
pedagogy. Sometimes we must read between the lines, add what
experience has taught us since that day, transpose into an
atmosphere of open democracy those pages, written under the
old order of things, but even then quivering with the new
world which they were bringing to light, and for which they
prepared the way. Reading 'Emile' in the light of modern
prejudices, we can see in it more than the author wittingly
put into it; but not more than logic and the instinct of
genius set down there. To unfold the powers of children in due
proportion to their age; not to transcend their ability; to
arouse in them the sense of the observer and of the pioneer;
to make them discoverers rather than imitators: to teach them
accountability to themselves and not slavish dependence upon
the words of others; to address ourselves more to the will
than to custom, to the reason rather than to the memory; to
substitute for verbal recitations lessons about things; to
lead to theory by way of art; to assign to physical movements
and exercises a prominent place, from the earliest hours of
life up to perfect maturity; such are the principles scattered
broadcast in this book, and forming a happy counterpoise to
the oddities of which Rousseau was perhaps most proud."
J. Steeg, Introduction to Rousseau's 'Emile.'
EDUCATION: A. D. 1798-1827.
Pestalozzi.
In Switzerland, up to the end of the eighteenth century, the
state of primary instruction was very bad. "The teachers were
gathered up at hazard; their pay was wretched; in general they
had no lodgings of their own, and they were obliged to hire
themselves out for domestic service among the well-off
inhabitants of the villages, in order to find food and lodging
among them. A mean spirit of caste still dominated
instruction, and the poor remained sunk in ignorance. It was
in the very midst of this wretched and unpropitious state of
affairs that there appeared, towards the end of the eighteenth
century, the most celebrated of modern educators. ... Born at
Zurich in 1746, Pestalozzi died at Brugg in Argovia in 1827.
This unfortunate great man always felt the effects of the
sentimental and unpractical education given him by his mother,
who was left a widow with three children in 1751. He early
formed the habit of feeling and of being touched with emotion,
rather than of reasoning and of reflecting. The laughing-stock
of his companions, who made sport of his awkwardness, the
little scholar of Zurich accustomed himself to live alone and
to become a dreamer. Later, towards 1760, the student of the
academy distinguished himself by his political enthusiasm and
his revolutionary daring. At that early period he had
conceived a profound feeling for the miseries and the needs of
the people, and he already proposed as the purpose of his life
the healing of the diseases of society. At the same time there
was developed in him an irresistible taste for a simple,
frugal, and almost ascetic life. To restrain his desires had
become the essential rule of his conduct, and, to put it in
practice, he forced himself to sleep on a plank, and to
subsist on bread and vegetables."
G. Compayré, The History of Pedagogy, chapter 18.
"In spite ... of Pestalozzi's patent disqualifications in many
respects for the task he undertook; in spite of his ignorance
of even common subjects (for he spoke, read, wrote, and
cyphered badly, and knew next to nothing of classics or
science); in spite of his want of worldly wisdom, of any
comprehensive and exact knowledge of men and of things; in
spite of his being merely an elementary teacher,--through the
force of his all-conquering love, the nobility of his heart,
the resistless energy of his enthusiasm, his firm grasp of a
few first principles, his eloquent exposition of them in
words, his resolute manifestation of them in deeds,--he stands
forth among educational reformers as the man whose influence
on education is wider, deeper, more penetrating, than that of
all the rest--the prophet and the sovereign of the domain in
which he lived and laboured. ...
{742}
It was late in life--he was fifty-two years of age--before
Pestalozzi became a practical school-master. He had even begun
to despair of ever finding the career in which he might
attempt to realize the theories over which his loving heart
and teeming brain had been brooding from his earliest youth.
... At fifty-two years of age, then, we find Pestalozzi
utterly unacquainted with the science and the art of
education, and very scantily furnished even with elementary
knowledge, undertaking at Stanz, in the canton of Unterwalden,
the charge of eighty children, whom the events of war had
rendered homeless and destitute. ... The house in which the
eighty children were assembled to be boarded, lodged, and
taught, was an old tumble-down Ursuline convent, scarcely
habitable, and destitute of all the conveniences of life. The
only apartment suitable for a schoolroom was about twenty-four
feet square, furnished with a few desks and forms; and into
this were crowded the wretched children, noisy, dirty,
diseased, and ignorant, with the manners and habits of
barbarians. Pestalozzi's only helper in the management of the
institution was an old woman, who cooked the food and swept
the rooms; so that he was, as he tells us himself, not only
the teacher, but the paymaster, man-servant, and almost the
housemaid of the children. ... 'My wishes [he writes] were now
accomplished. I felt convinced that my heart would change the
condition of my children as speedily as the springtide sun
reanimates the earth frozen by the winter. Nor,' he adds, 'was
I mistaken. Before the springtide sun melted away the snow
from our mountains, you could no longer recognise the same
children.' ... 'I was obliged,' he says, 'unceasingly to be
everything to my children. I was alone with them from morning
to night. It was from my hand they received whatever could be
of service both to their bodies and minds. All succour, all
consolation, all instruction came to them immediately from
myself. Their hands were in my hand; my eyes were fixed on
theirs, my tears mingled with theirs, my smiles encountered
theirs, my soup was their soup, my drink was their drink. I
had around me neither family, friends, nor servants; I had
only them. I was with them when they were in health, by their
side when they were ill. I slept in their midst. I was the
last to go to bed, the first to rise in the morning. When we
were in bed I used to pray with them and talk to them till
they went to sleep. They wished me to do so.' ... 'I knew,' he
says, 'no system, no method, no art but that which rested on
the simple consequences of the firm belief of the children in
my love towards them. I wished to know no other.' ...
Gradually ... Pestalozzi advanced to the main principles of
his system of moral education. ... He says:--'Nature develops
all the human faculties by practice, and their growth depends
on their exercise.' 'The circle of knowledge commences close
around a man, and thence extends concentrically.' 'Force not
the faculties of children into the remote paths of knowledge,
until they have gained strength by exercise on things that are
near them.' 'There is in Nature an order and march of
development. If you disturb or interfere with it, you mar the
peace and harmony of the mind. And this you do, if, before you
have formed the mind by the progressive knowledge of the
realities of life, you fling it into the labyrinth of words,
and make them the basis of development.' 'The artificial march
of the ordinary school, anticipating the order of Nature,
which proceeds without anxiety and without haste, inverts this
order by placing words first, and thus secures a deceitful
appearance of success at the expense of natural and safe
development.' In these few sentences we recognise all that is
most characteristic in the educational principles of
Pestalozzi. ... To set the intellectual machinery in
motion--to make it work, and keep it working; that was the
sole object at which he aimed; of all the rest he took little
account. ... He relied upon a principle which must be insisted
on as cardinal and essential in education. He secured the
thorough interest of his pupils in the lesson, and mainly
through their own direct share in it. ... Observation, ...

according to Pestalozzi (and Bacon had said the same thing
before him), is the absolute basis of all knowledge, and is
therefore the prime agent in elementary education. It is
around this theory, as a centre of gravity, that Pestalozzi's
system revolves."
J. Payne, Lectures on the History of Education,
lecture. 9.
"During the short period, not more than a year, which
Pestalozzi spent among the children at Stanz, he settled the
main features of the Pestalozzian system. Sickness broke out
among the children, and the wear and tear was too great even
for Pestalozzi. He would probably have sunk under his efforts
if the French, pressed by the Austrians, had not entered
Stanz, in January, 1799, and taken part of the Ursuline
Convent for a military hospital. Pestalozzi was, therefore,
obliged to break up the school, and he himself went to a
medicinal spring on the Gurnigel in the Canton Bern. ... He
came down from the Gurnigel, and began to teach in the primary
schools (i. e., schools for children from four to eight years
old) of Burgdorf, the second town in the Canton. Here the
director was jealous of him, and he met with much opposition.
... In less than a year Pestalozzi left this school in bad
health, and joined Krüsi in opening a new school in Burgdorf
Castle, for which he afterward (1802) obtained Government aid.
Here he was assisted in carrying out his system by Krüsi,
Tobler, and Bluss. He now embodied the results of his
experience in a work which has obtained great celebrity--'How
Gertrude Teaches her Children' [also published in England
under the title of 'Leonard and Gertrude]. In 1802 Pestalozzi,
for once in his life a successful and popular man, was elected
a member of a deputation sent by the Swiss people to Paris. On
the restoration of the Cantons in 1804. the Castle of Burgdorf
was again occupied by one of the chief magistrates, and
Pestalozzi and his establishment were moved to the Monastery
of Buchsee. Here the teachers gave the principal direction to
another, the since celebrated Fellenburg, 'not without my
consent,' says Pestalozzi, 'but to my profound mortification.'
He therefore soon accepted an invitation from the inhabitants
of Yverdun to open an institution there, and within a
twelvemonth he was followed by his old assistants, who had
found government by Fellenburg less to their taste than
no-government by Pestalozzi.
{743}
The Yverdun Institute had soon a world-wide reputation.
Pestalozzian teachers went from it to Madrid, to Naples, to
St. Petersburg. Kings and philosophers joined in doing it
honor. But, as Pestalozzi himself has testified, these praises
were but as a laurel-wreath encircling a skull. The life of
the Pestalozzian institutions had been the love which the old
man had infused into all the members, teachers as well as
children; but this life was wanting at Yverdun. The
establishment was much too large to be carried on successfully
without more method and discipline than Pestalozzi,
remarkable, as he himself says, for his 'unrivalled incapacity
to govern,' was master of. The assistants began each to take
his own line, and even the outward show of unity was soon at
an end. ... Thus the sun went down in clouds, and the old man,
when he died at the age of eighty, in 1827, had seen the
apparent failure of all his toils. He had not, however, failed
in reality. It has been said of him that his true fortune was
to educate ideas, not children, and when twenty years later
the centenary of his birth was celebrated by school-masters,
not only in his native country, but throughout Germany, it was
found that Pestalozzian ideas had been sown, and were bearing
fruit, over the greater part of central Europe."
R. H. Quick, Essays on Educational Reformers, chapter 8.
EDUCATION: A. D. 1804-1891.
Co-education and the Higher Education of
Women in the United States.
"When to a few daring minds the conviction came that education
was a right of personality rather than of sex, and when there
was added to this growing sentiment the pressing demand for
educated women as teachers and as leaders in philanthropy, the
simplest means of equipping women with the needful preparation
was found in the existing schools and colleges. ... In nearly
every State west of the Alleghanies, 'Universities' had been
founded by the voluntary tax of the whole population.
Connected with all the more powerful religious denominations
were schools and colleges which called upon their adherents
for gifts and students. These democratic institutions had the
vigor of youth, and were ambitious and struggling. 'Why,'
asked the practical men of affairs who controlled them,
'should not our daughters go on with our sons from the public
schools to the university which we are sacrificing to equip
and maintain?' It is not strange that with this and much more
practical reasoning of a similar kind, co-education was
established in some colleges at their beginning, in others
after debate, and by a radical change in policy. When once the
chivalrous desire was aroused to give girls as good an
education as their brothers, Western men carried out the
principle unflinchingly. From the kindergarten to the
preparation for the doctorate of philosophy, educational
opportunities are now practically alike for men and women. The
total number of colleges of arts and sciences empowered by law
to give degrees, reporting to Washington in 1888, was three
hundred and eighty-nine. Of these, two hundred and
thirty-seven, or nearly two-thirds, were co-educational. Among
them are nearly all the State universities, and nearly all the
colleges under the patronage of the Protestant sects. Hitherto
I have spoken as if co-education were a Western movement; and
in the West it certainly has had greater currency than
elsewhere. But it originated, at least so far as concerns
superior secondary training, in Massachusetts. Bradford
Academy, chartered in 1804, is the oldest incorporated
institution in the country to which boys and girls were from
the first admitted; but it closed its department for boys in
1836, three years after the foundation of co-educational
Oberlin, and in the very year when Mount Holyoke was opened by
Mary Lyon, in the large hope of doing for young women what
Harvard had been founded to do for young men just two hundred
years before. Ipswich and Abbot Academies in Massachusetts had
already been chartered to educate girls alone. It has been the
dominant sentiment in the East that boys and girls should be
educated separately. The older, more generously endowed, more
conservative seats of learning, inheriting the complications
of the dormitory system, have remained closed to women. ... In
the short period of the twenty years after the war the four
women's colleges which are the richest in endowments and
students of any in the world were founded and set in motion.
These colleges--Vassar, opened in 1865, Wellesley and Smith in
1875, and Bryn Mawr in 1885--have received in gifts of every
kind about $6,000,000, and are educating nearly two thousand
students. For the whole country the Commissioner of Education
reports two hundred and seven institutions for the superior
instruction of women, with more than twenty-five, thousand
students. But these resources proved inadequate. There came an
increasing demand, especially from teachers, for education of
all sorts. ... In an attempt to meet a demand of this sort the
Harvard Annex began twelve years ago [in 1879] to provide a
few women with instruction from members of the Harvard
faculty. ... Barnard College in New York is an annex of
Columbia only in a sense, for not all her instruction is given
by Columbia's teaching force, though Columbia will confer
degrees upon her graduates. The new woman's college at
Cleveland sustains temporarily the same relations to, Adelbert
College, though to a still greater extent she provides
independent instruction."
A. F. Palmer, Review of the Higher Education of Women
(Woman and the Higher Education, pages 105-127).
"The Cleveland College for Women, Cleveland, Ohio, was first
opened for instruction in 1888 as a department of Western
Reserve University. At the same time the trustees of the
university decided to receive no more women into Adelbert
College. That the success of the new school might be assured,
the faculty of Adelbert College generously offered their
services for a term of years as instructors. During the first
year twenty-three young women were admitted, but two of whom
were in the regular courses. During 1889-90 the number of
students increased to thirty-eight. ... In 1887 Evelyn
College, an institution for women, was opened at Princeton, N.
J. Its location at this place gives the institution very great
advantages, inasmuch as the use of the libraries and museums
of the College of New Jersey, popularly known as Princeton
College, are granted to the students."
U. S. Commissioner of Education, Report,
1889-90, volume 2, page 744.
{744}
"The latest report of the United States Commissioner of
Education contains over two hundred institutions for the
superior education of women. The list includes colleges and
seminaries entitled to confer degrees, and a few seminaries,
whose work is of equal merit, which do not give degrees. Of
these more than two hundred institutions for the education of
women exclusively, only 47 are situated within [western
states]. ... Of these 47, but 30 are chartered with authority
to confer degrees. ... The extent to which the higher
education of women is in the West identified with
co-education, can be seen by comparing the two statements
above given. Of the total 212 higher institutions receiving
women, and of the total 195 such institutions which confer the
regular degrees in arts, science, and letters, upon their
graduates, 165 are co-educational. ... Among colleges
characterized from birth by a liberal and progressive spirit
may be mentioned 'The Cincinnati Wesleyan Woman's College.'
This institution was chartered in 1842, and claims to be 'the
first liberal collegiate institution in the world for the
exclusive education of women.' ... The West is committed to
co-education, excepting only the Roman Catholic, the Lutheran,
and the Protestant Episcopal sects,--which are not yet, as
sects, committed to the collegiate education of women at
all,--and the Presbyterian sect, whose support, in the West,
of 14 co-educational colleges against 4 for the separate
education of young men, almost commits it to the
co-educational idea. ... In 1853, Antioch College was opened
at Yellow Springs, Ohio. It was the first endeavor in the West
to found a college under Christian but non-sectarian auspices.
Its president, Horace Mann, wrote of it: 'Antioch is now the
only first-class college in all the West that is really an
unsectarian institution.' ... Antioch was from the first
avowedly co-educational."
M. W. Sewall, Education of Women in the Western
States (Woman's Work in America, pages 61-70).
"Most people would probably be ready to say that except for
the newly founded Woman's College in Baltimore and Tulane
University [State university of Louisiana], the collegiate
education of women does not exist in the South. But as matter
of fact, there are no less than one hundred and fifty
institutions in the South which are authorized by the
Legislatures of their respective States to confer the regular
college degrees upon women. Of these, forty-one are
co-educational, eighty-eight are for women alone, and
twenty-one are for colored persons of both sexes. The bureau
of education makes no attempt to go behind the verdict of the
State Legislatures, but on looking over the catalogues of all
these institutions it is, as might have been expected, easy to
see that the great majority of them are not in any degree
colleges, in the ordinary sense of the word. Not a single one
of the so-called female colleges presents a real college
course, and many of the co-educational colleges are colleges
only in name."
C. L. Franklin, Education of Women in the Southern
States (Woman's Work in America, pages 93-94).
EDUCATION: A. D. 1816-1892,
Froebel and the Kindergarten.
"Frœbel (Friedrich Wilhelm August) was born April 21, 1782, at
Oberweissbach, in the principality of Schwanburg-Rudolstadt.
His mother died when he was so young that he never even
remembered her; and he was left to the care of an ignorant
maid-of-all-work, who simply provided for his bodily wants.
... Not until he was ten years of age did he receive the
slightest regular instruction. He was then sent to school, to
an uncle who lived in the neighborhood, ... He pronounced the
boy to be idle (which, from his point of view, was quite true)
and lazy (which certainly was not true)--a boy, in short, that
you could do nothing with. ... It was necessary for him to
earn his bread, and we next find him a sort of apprentice to a
woodsman in the great Thuringian forest. Here, as he afterward
tells us, he lived some years in cordial intercourse with
nature and mathematics, learning even then, though
unconsciously, from the teaching he received, how to teach
others. ... In 1801 he went to the University of Jena, where
he attended lectures on natural history, physics, and
mathematics; but, as he tells us, gained little from them. ...
This ... was put an end to by the failure of means to stay at
the University. For the next few years he tried various
occupations. ... While engaged in an architect's office at
Frankfort, he formed an acquaintance with the Rector of the
Model School, a man named Gruner. Gruner saw the capabilities
of Frœbel, and detected also his entire want of interest in
the work that he was doing; and one day suddenly said to him:
'Give up your architect's business; you will do nothing at it.
Be a teacher. We want one now in the school; you shall have
the place.' This was the turning point in Frœbel's life. He
accepted the engagement, began work at once, and tells us that
the first time he found himself in the midst of a class of 30
or 40 boys, he felt that he was in the element that he had
missed so long--'the fish was in the water.' He was
inexpressibly happy. ... In a calmer mood he severely
questioned himself as to the means by which he was to satisfy
the demands of his new position. About this time he met with
some of Pestalozzi's writings, which so deeply impressed him
that he determined to go to Yverdun and study Pestalozzi on
the spot. He accomplished his purpose, and lived and worked
for two years with Pestalozzi. His experience at Yverdun
impressed him with the conviction that the science of
education had still to draw out from Pestalozzi's system those
fundamental principles which Pestalozzi himself did not
comprehend. 'And therefore,' says Schmidt, 'this genial
disciple of Pestalozzi supplemented his system by advancing
from the point which Pestalozzi had reached through pressure
from without, to the innermost conception of man, and arriving
at the thought of the true development and culture of
mankind.' ... His educational career commenced November 13th,
1816, in Greisheim, a little village near Stadt-Ilm, in
Thuringia; but in 1817, when his Pestalozzian friend,
Middendorf, joined him ... the school was transferred to the
beautiful village of Keilhau, near Rudolstadt, which may be
considered as his chief starting-place. ... Langenthal,
another Pestalozzian, associated himself with them, and they
commenced building a house. The number of pupils rose to
twelve in 1818. Then the daughter of war-counselor Hoffman of
Berlin, from enthusiasm for Frœbel's educational ideas, became
his wife. She had a considerable dowry, which, together with
the accession of Frœbel's elder brother, increased the funds
and welfare of the school. In 1831 he was invited by the
composer, Schnyder von Wartensee, to erect a similar garden on
his estate, near the lake of Sempach, in the canton Luzern. It
was done. Frœbel changed his residence the next year, from
Keilhau to Switzerland. In,1834 the government of Bern invited
him to arrange a training course for teachers in Burgdorf. In
1835 he became principal of the orphan asylum in Burgdorf, but
in 1836 he and his wife wished to return to Germany. There he
was active in Berlin, Keilhau, Blankenburg, Dresden,
Liebenstein in Thuringia, Hamburg, (1849,) and Marienthal,
near Liebenstein, where he lived until his decease in 1852,
among the young ladies, whom he trained as nurses for the
kindergarten, and the little children who attended his
school."
H. Barnard, editor, Papers on Froebel's Kindergarten:
Memoir.
{745}
"The child thinks only through symbols. In other words, it
explains all it sees not by the recorded experience of others,
as does an adult, but by marshaling and comparing its own
concept or symbol of what it has itself seen. Its sole
activity is play. 'The school begins with teaching the
conventionalities of intelligence. Froebel would have the
younger children receive a symbolic education in plays, games,
and occupations which symbolize the primitive arts of man.'
For this purpose, the child is led through a series of
primitive occupations in plaiting, weaving, and modeling,
through games and dances, which bring into play all the social
relations, and through songs and the simple use of number,
form and language. The 'gifts' all play their manifold
purpose, inspiring the child, awakening its interest, leading
the individual along the path the race has trod, and teaching
social self-control. The system has its palpable dangers. The
better and more intricate the tool, the more skill needed in
its safe use. ... The kindergarten requires trained hands.
With trivial teachers its methods may easily degenerate into
mere amusement, and thwart all tendency to attention,
application, or industry. Valuable as it is in its hints for
the care and development of children, its gay round needs to
be ballasted with the purpose and theory uppermost in
Froebel's mind when he opened his first school in a German
peasant village, down whose main street a brook tumbled, and
through whose lanes the halberdier still walked by night and
sang the hours. It is idle to suppose that Froebel founded a
perfect system, or to insist on all the details of the
professional kindergartner's creed. Here as elsewhere, and
aforetime, it has taken only forty years from the founder's
death for faith to degenerate into religion and sect. But the
central purpose he had in view must be steadily maintained. He
sought his ends through play, and not through work. It is as
dangerous for this method to harden into an approach to the
primary school as it is for it to soften into a riot of
misrule, and lax observance of order. ... Switzerland, then
the only republic in Europe, was the first country to adopt
Froebel's method, though in some Swiss towns the kindergarten
is still supported by private associations. France, another
republic, has more children beginning school under an
adaptation of Froebel than all the rest of the world put
together. It was Froebel's own opinion that 'the spirit of
American nationality was the only one in the world with which
his method was in complete harmony, and to which its
legitimate institutions would present no barriers.' The
figures given below of the growth of the kindergarten in this
country are the best possible proof of the truth of Froebel's
prescient assertion. ... In 1870 there were in this country
only five kindergarten schools, and in 1872 the National
Education Association at its Boston meeting appointed a
committee which reported a year later recommending the system.
Between 1870 and 1873, experimental kindergartens were
established in Boston, Cleveland, and St. Louis, public
attention was enlisted by the efforts of Miss Elizabeth Palmer
Peabody, the most important worker in the early history of the
kindergarten in this country, and the system began a rapid
growth. Taking private and public kindergartens together, the
advance of the system has displayed this most rapid progress:
1875 1880 1885 1891-2
Schools. 95 232 413 1,001
Teachers. 216 524 902 2,242
Pupils. 2,809 8,871 18,780 50,423
Down to 1880, these figures, outside of St. Louis, relate
almost altogether to private schools. By 1885 the public
kindergartens were not over a fifth in number of the schools,
and held not over a fourth of the pupils. In the figures last
given in this table there are 724 private kindergartens with
1,517 teachers and 29,357 pupils, and 277 public kindergartens
with 725 teachers and 21,066 pupils, so that the latter have
now 27 per cent. of the schools, 33 per cent. of the teachers,
and 42 per cent. of the pupils. ... Yet great as is this
advance, the kindergarten as yet plays but an infinitesimal
part in our educational system as a whole. ... Of the sixteen
American cities with a population of over 200,000 in 1890,
only four--Philadelphia, Boston, Milwaukee, and St. Louis
have incorporated the kindergarten on any large scale in their
public-school systems. Four more--New York, Chicago, Brooklyn,
and Buffalo--have kindergarten associations organized to
introduce the new method as a part of free public education."
T. Williams, The Kindergarten Movement
(The Century, January, 1893).
EDUCATION: A. D. 1865-1883.
The Higher Education of Women in England.
The movement in England to secure a higher education for women
dates from 1865. "In that year a Royal Commission was
appointed to inquire into and report on the endowed grammar
schools of England and Wales, and on what is called
'secondary' education generally. Several ladies who were
already alive to the deficiencies in the education of their
own sex, memorialized this Commission to extend the scope of
its inquiry to girls' schools, and the Commission taking what
was then thought quite a bold step, consented to do so. ...
One of the points brought out was the absence of any
institutions doing for women what the universities did for
men, and the consequent difficulty in which women stood of
obtaining the highest kind of education--a difficulty which
told on girls' schools by making it hard for them to procure
thoroughly competent mistresses. This led in the course of the
next year or two--the report of the Commission having been
published in 1868--to the establishment of a college for
women, which was first placed at Hitchin, a town on the Great
Northern Railway, between London and Cambridge, and in a
little while, when money had been collected sufficient for the
erection of buildings, this college was finally settled at
Girton, a spot about two miles from Cambridge, whence it takes
the name of Girton College. Its purpose was to provide for
women the same teaching in the same subjects as men receive in
Cambridge University, and the teachers were nearly all of them
professors or tutors there, men in some cases of high
eminence.
{746}
Meanwhile, in Cambridge itself, a system of day classes for
women, taught by University teachers, had been created, at
first as an experiment for one year only. When several years
had passed, when the number attending had increased, and it
was found that women came to lodge in Cambridge in order to
profit by these lectures, a house was hired in which to
receive them, and ultimately a company was formed and a
building erected a little way out of Cambridge, under the name
of Newnham Hall, to which the lectures, now mainly designed
for these students coming from a distance, were attached.
Thus, at about the same time, though from somewhat different
origins, Girton and Newnham came into being and began their
course of friendly rivalry. Both have greatly developed since
then. Their buildings have been repeatedly enlarged. Their
numbers have risen steadily. ... In Girton the charge for
lodging, board and instruction is £100 per annum, in Newnham a
little less. The life in both is very similar, a lady being
placed at the head as resident principal, while the affairs
are managed by a committee including both men and women. The
lectures are delivered partly by Cambridge men, professors in
the University, or tutors or lecturers in some of the
colleges, partly by ladies, who, having once been students
themselves, have come back as teachers. These lectures cover
all the subjects required in the degree examinations of the
University; and although students are not obliged to enter
themselves for those examinations, they are encouraged to do
so, and do mostly set the examinations before them as their
goal. Originally the University took no official notice of the
women students, and their being examined by the regular degree
examiners of the University was a matter of pure favor on the
part of those gentlemen. ... At last, however, some examiners
came into office (for the examiners are changed every two
years) who disapproved of this informal examination of the
women candidates, and accordingly a proposal was made to the
University that it should formally authorize and impose on the
examiners the function heretofore discharged by them in their
individual capacity. This proposal, after some discussion and
opposition, was carried, so that now women may enter both for
the honor examinations and the pass examinations for the
University degree as a matter of right. Their names do not
appear in the official lists among those of the men, but
separately; they are, however, tested by the same question
papers and judged by the same standard. ... Some Oxford
graduates and their friends, stimulated by the success of
Girton and Newnham, have founded two similar institutions in
Oxford, one of which, Episcopalian and indeed High Church in
its proclivities, is called Lady Margaret Hall, while the
other, in compliment to the late Mrs. Somerville, has been
given the title of Somerville Hall. These establishments are
conducted on much the same lines as the two Cambridge
colleges. ... In the large towns where new colleges have been
lately founded or courses of lectures established, such as
Manchester, Liverpool, and Leeds, steps are usually taken to
provide lectures for women. ... What is called among you the
question of co-education has come up very little in England.
All the lectures given inside the walls of the four English
colleges I have mentioned are, of course, given to women only,
the colleges being just as exclusively places for women as
Trinity and St. John's are places for men. ... At this moment
the principal of one of the two halls of which Newnham
consists is a daughter of the Prime Minister [Miss Helen
Gladstone], while her predecessor was a niece of the Marquis
of Salisbury. The principal of Girton is a niece of the late
Lord Lawrence, the famous Governor-General of India. Of the
students a fair proportion belong to the wealthy classes,
while a somewhat larger proportion mean to take teaching as
their profession."
Progress of Female Education in England.
(Nation, July 5, 1883).
See, also, above, SCOTLAND.
EDUCATION: A. D. 1865-1886.
Industrial Education in the United States.
"In 1865 John Boynton of Templeton, Mass., gave $100,000 for
the endowment and perpetual support of a Free Institute for
the youth of Worcester County, Mass. He thus explained his
objects: 'The aim of this school shall ever be the instruction
of youth in those branches of education not usually taught in
the public schools, which are essential and best adapted to
train the young for practical life'; especially such as were
intending to be mechanics, or manufacturers, or farmers. In
furtherance of this object, ten months later, in 1866, Ichabod
Washburn of Worcester gave $25,000, and later $50,000 more to
erect, equip, and endow a machine-shop which should
accommodate twenty apprentices and a suitable number of
skilled workmen to instruct them and to carry on the shop as a
commercial establishment. The apprentices were to be taught
the use of tools in working wood and metals, and to be
otherwise instructed, much as was customary fifty years ago
for boys learning a trade. The Worcester Free Institute was
opened for students in November, 1868, as a technical school
of about college grade; and the use of the shops and shop
instruction was limited to those students in the course of
mechanical engineering. Thus did the Worcester School under
the leadership of Prest. C. O. Thompson incorporate
tool-instruction and shop-practice into the training of
mechanical engineers. ... In the same year, 1868, Victor
Della-Vos introduced into the Imperial Technical (engineering)
School at Moscow the Russian method of class-instruction in
the use of tools. ... The great value of the work of Della-Vos
lay in the discovery of the true method of tool-instruction,
for without his discovery the later steps would have been
impossible. In 1870, under the direction of Professor Robinson and
Prest. J. M. Gregory of the University of Illinois, a
wood-working shop was added to the appliances for the course
in architecture, and an iron-working shop to the course in
mechanical engineering in that institution. In 1871, the
Stevens Institute of Hoboken, N. J., munificently endowed by
Edwin A. Stevens, as a school of mechanical engineering,
fitted up a series of shops for the use of its students. The
next step forward was taken by Washington University in St.
Louis in providing for all its engineering students systematic
instruction in both wood and metals. In 1872, a large shop in the
Polytechnic School was equipped with work-benches, two lathes,
a forge, a gear-cutter and full sets of carpenters',
machinists', and forging tools. ...
{747}
Thus far had we progressed when the Philadelphia Exposition of
1876 was opened. None of us knew anything of the Moscow
school, or of the one in Bohemia in which the Russian method
had been adopted in 1874. ... In his report of 1876, Prest. J.
D. Runkle, of the Mass. Institute of Technology, gave a full
exposition of the theory and practice of tool-instruction of
Della-Vos as exhibited at the Philadelphia Exposition, and he
recommended that without delay the course in mechanical
engineering at the Institute be completed by the addition of a
series of Instruction Shops. The suggestion was acted on, and
in the spring of 1877 a class of mechanical engineering
students was given instruction in chipping and filing. ... The
St. Louis Manual Training School was established June 6, 1879.
It embodied hopes long cherished and plans long formed. For
the first time in America the age of admission to school-shops
was reduced to fourteen years as a minimum, and a very general
three-years' course of study was organized. The ordinance by
which the school was established specified its objects in very
general terms:--'Its objects shall be instruction in
mathematics, drawing, and the English branches of a
high-school course, and instruction and practice in the use of
tools. The tool-instruction, as at present contemplated, shall
include carpentry, wood-turning, pattern-making, iron clipping
and filing, forge-work, brazing and soldering, the use of
machine-shop tools, and such other instruction of a similar
character, its it may be deemed advisable to add to the
foregoing from time to time. The students will divide their
working hours, as nearly as possible, equally between mental
and manual exercises.' ... The Baltimore Manual Training
School, a public school, on the same footing as the high
school, was opened in 1883. The Chicago Manual Training
School, established as an incorporated school by the
Commercial Club of that city, was opened in January, 1884. ...
Manual training was introduced into the high school of Eau
Claire, Wisconsin, in 1884. The 'Scott Manual Training School'
was organized as a part of the high school of Toledo in 1884.
... Manual training was introduced into the College (high
school) of the City of New York in 1884. The Philadelphia
Manual Training School, a public high school, was opened in
September, 1885. The Omaha high school introduced manual
training in 1885. ... Dr. Adler's Workingman's School for poor
children has for several years taught manual training to the
very lowest grades. ... The Cleveland Manual Training School
was incorporated in 1885, and opened in connection with the
city high school, in 1886. New Haven, which had for some time
encouraged the use of tools by the pupils of several of its
grammar schools, in September, 1886, opened a regular shop and
furnished systematic instruction in tool-work. The school
board of Chicago added manual training to the course of the
'West Side High School' in September, 1886."
C. M. Woodward, The Manual Training School, chapter 1.
"Concerning the manual-training school there are two widely
different views. The one insists that it shall teach no trade,
but the rudiments of all of them; the other that the
particular industries may properly be held to maintain schools
to recruit their own ranks. The first would teach the use of
the axe, the saw, the plane, the hammer, the square, the
chisel, and the file; claiming that 'the graduate from such a
course at the end of three years is within from one to three
months of knowing quite as thoroughly as an apprentice who had
served seven years any one of the twenty trades to which he
may choose to turn.' Of this class are, besides most of those
already named, the Haish Manual Training School of Denver;
that of Tulane University, New Orleans; the Felix Adler's
'Workingman's School, of New York City; and the School of
Manual Technology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville. Among
schools of the second class are some interesting institutions.
They include the numerous general and special trade-schools
for boys, instruction in the manifold phases of domestic
economy for girls, and the yet small but rapidly growing class
of industries open alike to both. Sewing is taught in public
or private schools in Baltimore, Boston, Cincinnati, Chicago,
New York, Philadelphia, Providence, St. Louis, and about a
dozen other cities, besides in a number of special
institutions. Cooking-schools are no longer a novelty in half
as many of the larger cities, since their introduction into
New York city in 1876. Printing may be learned in the Kansas
Agricultural College; Cooper Union, New York; Girard College,
Philadelphia, and elsewhere. Telegraphy, stenography,
wood-engraving, various kinds of smithing, and carpentry,
have, especially the last two, numerous representatives. The
New York Kitchen Garden, for the instruction of children in
the work of the household, is an interesting modification of
the Kindergarten along the industrial line. For young ladies,
the Elizabeth Aull Seminary, Lexington, Missouri, is a school
of home-work, in which 'are practically taught the mysteries
of the kitchen and laundry,' and upon whose graduates is
conferred the degree of 'Mistress of Home-Work.' The Lasell
Seminary at Auburndale, Massachusetts, also has recently
(1885) undertaken a similar but more comprehensive experiment,
including lessons and lectures in anatomy and physiology, with
hygiene and sanitation, the principles of common law by an
eminent attorney, instruction and practice in the arts of
domestic life, the principles of dress, artistic
house-furnishing, healthy homes, and cooking. Of
training-schools for nurses there are thirty-one. ... Of
schools of a different character still, there have been or are
the Carriage Builder's Apprenticeship School, New York; those
of Hoe & Co., printing-press manufacturers; and Tiffany & Co.,
jewelers; and the Tailors' 'Trades School' recently
established and flourishing in Baltimore, besides the
Pennsylvania Railroad novitiate system, at Altoona; in which
particular trades or guilds or corporations have sought to
provide themselves with a distinct and specially trained class
of artisans. The latest and in some respects the most
interesting experiment of the kind is that of the 'Baltimore
and Ohio Railroad service' at Mt. Clare, Baltimore. It was
inaugurated in 1885, apprentices being selected from
applicants by competitive examination."
R. G. Boone, Education in the United States, chapter 13.
{748}
EDUCATION: A. D. 1873-1889.
University Extension in England.
"The University Extension Movement, which has now been before
the country eighteen years, has revealed the existence of a
real need for larger opportunities of higher education amongst
the middle and working classes. From the time of its
inauguration in 1873 by the University of Cambridge, owing
mainly to the enthusiastic advocacy and skill in practical
affairs of Mr. James Stuart (at that time Fellow and Lecturer
of Trinity College), down to the present day, when the
principle has been accepted by all the Universities in Great
Britain and by some in countries beyond the seas, the movement
has shown marvellous vitality and power of adjustment to
changing conditions. From a small beginning in three towns in
the Midlands, it has grown until the centres in connection
with the various branches are to be numbered by hundreds and
the students by tens of thousands. The success attained by
Cambridge in the first three years led, in 1876, to the
formation of the London Society for the Extension of
University Teaching, for the express purpose of carrying on
similar work within the metropolitan area. In 1878 the
University of Oxford undertook to make similar arrangements
for Lectures, but after a year or two, they were for the time
abandoned. Subsequently in 1885 the Oxford work was revived
and has since been carried on with vigour and success. The
University of Durham is associated with Cambridge in this work
in the northeast of England, while courses of Lectures on the
Extension plan have been given for several years in connection
with Victoria University in centres around Manchester. Two or
three years ago the four Scottish Universities united in
forming a like scheme for Scotland, while at the close of 1889
a Society for the Extension of University Teaching was formed
in the north of Ireland. Finally the movement has spread to
Greater Britain and the United States, and there are signs
that work on similar lines is about to be established in
various countries on the continent of Europe."
R. D. Roberts, Eighteen years of University Extension,
chapter 1.
"One of the chief characteristics of the system is the method
of teaching adopted in connection with it. A working man at
one of the centres in the north of England who had attended
the lectures for several terms, described the method as
follows in a paper read by him at a meeting:--
'Any town or village which is prepared to provide an audience,
and pay the necessary fees, can secure a course of twelve
lectures on any subject taught in the University, by a
lecturer who has been educated at the University, and who is
specially fitted for lecturing work. A syllabus of the course
is printed and put into the hands of students. This syllabus
is a great help to persons not accustomed to note-taking.
Questions are given on each lecture, and written answers can
be sent in by anyone, irrespective of age or sex. All the
lectures, except the first, are preceded by a class, which
lasts about an hour. In this class the students and the
lecturer talk over the previous lecture. The written answers
are returned with such corrections as the lecturer deems
necessary. At the end of the course an examination is held and
certificates are awarded to the successful candidates. These
lectures are called University Extension Lectures.'
Another definition which has been given is this:
'Advanced systematic teaching for the people, without
distinction of rank, sex, or age, given by means of lectures,
classes, and written papers during a connected course,
conducted by men "who believe in their work, and intend to do
it," teachers who connect the country with the University by
manner, method, and information.'"
R. D. Roberts, The University Extension Scheme, pages 6-7.
EDUCATION: A. D. 1887-1892.
University Extension in the United States.
"The first conscious attempts to introduce English University
Extension methods into this country were made in 1887, by
individuals connected with the Johns Hopkins University. The
subject was first publicly presented to the American Library
Association at their meeting upon one of the Thousand Islands
in September, 1887. The idea was heartily approved," and the
first result of the suggestion was a course of lectures on
economic questions given in one of the lecture-rooms of the
Buffalo Library the following winter by Dr. Edward W. Bemis.
The next winter "Dr. Bemis repeated his course on 'Economic
Questions of the Day' in Canton, Ohio. ... The Canton
experiment was followed in February, 1889, by another course,
conducted by Dr. Bemis, in connection with the Public Library
at St. Louis. ... About the time when these various
experiments were being tried in St. Louis, Canton, and
Buffalo, individual members of Johns Hopkins University were
attempting to introduce University Extension methods in
connection with local lectures in the city of Baltimore. ...
The idea of University Extension in connection with Chautauqua
was conceived by Dr. J. H. Vincent during a visit to England,
in 1886, when he saw the English lecture system in practical
operation and his own methods of encouraging home reading in
growing favor with university men. The first definite American
plan, showing at once the aims, methods, cost, and history, of
University Extension lectures, was drawn up at Chautauqua by
the writer of this article in the early summer of 1888. ...
Contemporary with the development of Chautauqua College and
University Extension was the plan of Mr. Seth T. Stewart, of
Brooklyn, New York, for 'University and School Extension.' ...
Several public meetings were held in New York in 1889-90 for
the promotion of University and School Extension. ... One of
the most gratifying recent experiments in University Extension
in America has been in the city of Philadelphia under the
auspices of the American Society for the Extension of
University Teaching. At various local centres Mr. Richard G.
Moulton, one of the most experienced lecturers from Cambridge,
England, lectured for ten weeks in the winter and spring of
1891 to large and enthusiastic audiences. All the essential
features of English University Extension were methodically and
persistently carried out. ... The American field for
University Extension is too vast for the missionary labors of
any one society or organization. ... The most significant sign
of the times with regard to University Extension in America is
the recent appropriation of the sum of $10,000 for this very
object by the New York legislature. The money is to be
expended under the direction of the Regents of the University
of the State of New York. ... The intention of the New York
act is simply to provide the necessary means for organizing a
State system of University Extension ... and to render such
general assistance and co-operation as localities may
require."
H. B. Adams, University Extension in America,
(Forum, July, 1891).
On the opening, in 1892, of the Chicago University,
munificently endowed by Mr. John D. Rockefeller, of Cleveland,
University Extension was made one of the three grand divisions
of its organization.
{749}
EDWARD,
King of Portugal,
A. D. 1433-1438..
Edward, called the Confessor, King of England,
A. D. 1042-1065.
Edward, called the Elder, King of Wessex,
A. D. 901-925.
Edward, called the Martyr, King of Wessex,
A. D. 975.
Edward I., King of England,
A. D. 1274-1307.
Edward II., King of England,
A. D. 1307-1327.
Edward III., King of England,
A. D. 1327-1377.
Edward V., King of England (first king of the House of York),
A. D. 1461-1483.
Edward V., titular King of England,
A. D. 1483 (from April 9, when his father, Edward IV.,
died, until June 22, when he is believed to have been
murdered in the Tower by command of his uncle, the usurper,
Richard III.).
Edward VI., King of England,
A. D. 1547-1553.
EDWARD, Fort: A. D. 1755.
Built by the New England troops.
See CANADA: A. D. 1755 (SEPTEMBER).
EDWARD, Fort: A. D. 1717.
Abandoned to the British.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D.1777(JULY-OCTOBER).
----------EDWARD, Fort: End----------
EDWIG, King of Wessex, A. D. 955-957.
EDWIN, King of Northumbria, A. D. 617-633.
Egesta.
See SYRACUSE: B. C. 415-413;
and SICILY: B. C. 409-405.
EGFRITH, King of Northumbria, A. D. 670-685.
EGINA.--EGINETANS.
See ÆGINA.
EGMONT, Count, and the struggle in the Netherlands.
See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1562-1566, and 1566-1568.
EGNATIAN WAY, The.
A Roman road constructed from Apollonia on the Adriatic to the
shores of the Hellespont; finally carried to Byzantium.
EGRA: A. D. 1647.
Siege and capture by the Swedes.
See GERMANY: A. D. 1646-1648.
EGYPT:
Its Names.
"Egypt is designated in the old inscriptions, as well as in
the books of the later Christian Egyptians, by a word which
signifies 'the black land,' and which is read in the Egyptian
language Kern, or Kami."
[Footnote: Kamit in the edition of 1891.]
"The ancients had early remarked that the cultivable land of
Egypt was distinguished by its dark and almost black colour.
... The neighbouring region of the Arabian desert bore the
name of Tesher, or the red land. ... The Egyptians designated
themselves simply as 'the people of the black land,' and ...
the inscriptions, so far as we know, have handed down to us no
other appellation. ... A real enigma is proposed to us in the
derivation and meaning of the curious proper name, by which
the foreign peoples of Asia, each in its own dialect, were
accustomed to designate Egypt. The Hebrews gave the land the
name of Mizraim; the Assyrians Muzur; the Persians, Mudraya.
We may feel assured that at the basis of all these
designations there lies an original form which consisted of
the three letters M-z-r, all explanations of which have been
as yet unsuccessful. Although I intend hereafter to consider
more particularly the derivation of this puzzling name, which
is still preserved at the present day in the Arabic
appellation Misr, I will here premise the remark that this
name was originally applied only to a certain definite part of
Egypt, in the east of the Delta, which, according to the
monuments, was covered and defended by many 'zor,' or
fortresses, and was hence called in Egyptian Mazor (that is,
fortified)."
H. Brugsch-Bey, History of Egypt under the Pharaohs,
chapter 2.
"Brugsch explains the name Egypt by 'ha-ka-ptah,' i. e. 'the
precinct of Ptah.' As Ptah was more especially the god of
Memphis, this name would have come from Memphis."
M. Duncker, History of Antiquity, book 1, chapter 1, note.
"The last use of Kem died out in the form Chemi in Coptic, the
descendant of the classical language, which ceased to be
spoken a century ago. It survives among us in the terms
'chemistry' and 'alchemy,' sciences thought to be of Egyptian
origin."
R. S. Poole, Cities of Egypt, introduction.
EGYPT:
Its Historical Antiquity.
The lists of Egyptian kings which have been found "agree in
presenting the name of Mena [or Menes] as that of the first
Pharaoh of Egypt, and as such he is unhesitatingly accepted,
although no contemporary monumental record of the fact has yet
been discovered. According to Manetho, the age of Mena dates
back to a period of 5,004 years before the Christian era, a
date which is nearly equal to 7,000 years from the present
day. Brugsch favours a somewhat less interval, namely, 4455 B. C.;
others place it as low as 2700 B. C., whilst Birch and
Chabas adopt a medium date, namely 4000 B. C., which is
equivalent to 6000 years backward from the existing time.
These extreme variations are chiefly referable to the
difficulty of ascertaining the precise length of each
individual reign, and especially to the occasional
contemporaneous reign of two or more kings, and sometimes the
existence of two or more dynasties in different parts of the
empire. ... Lieblein gives full credit to the chronology of
Manetho as recorded by the historian Africanus, as likewise did the
distinguished Mariette, and differs very little from the
standard adopted by Birch. He assigns to Mena, as the pioneer
of the first monarchy, a date in round numbers of 3900 years."
E. Wilson, The Egypt of the Past, chapter 1.
"As to the era ... when the first Pharaoh mounted the throne,
the German Egyptologers have attempted to fix it at the
following epochs: Boeckh, B. C. 5702; Unger, 5613; Brugsch,
4455; Lauth, 4157; Lepsius, 3892; Bunsen, 3623. The difference
between the two extreme points of the series is amazingly
great, for its number of years amounts to no less than 2079.
... The calculations in question are based on the extracts
already often mentioned from a work by the Egyptian priest
Manetho on the history of Egypt. That learned man had then at
his command the annals of his country's history, which were
preserved in the temples, and from them, the best and most
accurate sources, be derived the materials for his work,
composed in the Greek language, on the history of the ancient
Egyptian Dynasties. His book, which is now lost, contained a
general review of the kings of the land, divided into Thirty
Dynasties, arranged in the order of their names, with the
lengths of their reigns, and the total duration of each
dynasty. Though this invaluable work was little known and
certainly but little regarded by the historians of the old
classical age, large extracts were made from it by some of the
ecclesiastical writers. In process of time the copyists,
either by error or designedly, corrupted the names and the
numbers, and thus we only possess at the present day the ruins
instead of the complete building. The truth of the original,
and the authenticity of its sources were first proved by the
deciphering of the Egyptian writings. And thus the Manethonian
list served, and still serves, as a guide for assigning to the
royal names read on the monuments their places in the
Dynasties."
H. Brugsch-Bey, History of Egypt under the Pharaohs,
chapter 4.
See, also, MANETHO, LIST OF.
{750}
EGYPT:
Origin of the ancient people.
"The Egyptians, together with some other nations, form, as it
would seem, a third branch of that [the Caucasian] race,
namely, the family called Cushite, which is distinguished by
special characters from the Pelasgian and the Semitic
families. Whatever relations may be found always to exist
between these great races of mankind, thus much may be
regarded as certain, that the cradle of the Egyptian people
must be sought in the interior of the Asiatic quarter of the
world. In the earliest ages of humanity, far beyond all
historical remembrance, the Egyptians, for reasons unknown to
us, left the soil of their primeval home, took their way
towards the setting sun, and finally crossed that bridge of
nations, the Isthmus of Suez, to find a new fatherland on the
favoured banks of the holy Nile. Comparative philology, in its
turn, gives powerful support to this hypothesis. The Egyptian
language ... shows in no way any trace of a derivation and
descent from the African families of speech. On the contrary,
the primitive roots and the essential elements of the Egyptian
grammar point to such an intimate connection with the
Indo-Germanic and Semitic languages that it is almost
impossible to mistake the close relations which formerly
prevailed between the Egyptians and the races called
Indo-Germanic and Semitic."
H. Brugsch-Bey, History of Egypt under the Pharaohs,
chapter 1.
"It has been maintained by some that the immigration was from
the south, the Egyptians having been a colony from Ethiopia
which gradually descended the Nile and established itself in
the middle and lower portions of the valley; and this theory
can plead in its favour, both a positive statement of
Diodorus, and the fact, which is quite certain, of an ethnic
connection between the Egyptians and some of the tribes who
now occupy Abyssinia (the ancient Ethiopia). But modern
research has shown quite unmistakably that the movement of the
Egyptians was in the opposite direction. ... We must look,
then, rather to Syria or Arabia than to Ethiopia as the cradle
of the Egyptian nation. At the same time we must admit that
they were not mere Syrians or Arabs, but had, from the
remotest time whereto we can go back, distinct
characteristics, whereby they have a good claim to be
considered as a separate race."
G. Rawlinson, History of Ancient Egypt, chapter 3.
"So far as our knowledge reaches, the northern edge of Africa,
like the valley of the Nile as far as the marshes at the foot
of the Abyssinian hills, was inhabited by nations who in
colour, language, and customs were sharply distinguished from
the negro. These nations belong to the whites: their languages
were most closely allied to the Semitic. From this, and from
their physical peculiarities, the conclusion has been drawn
that these nations at some time migrated from Asia to the soil
of Africa. They formed a vast family, whose dialects still
continue in the language of the Berbers. Assisted by the
favourable conditions of their land, the tribe which settled
on the Lower Nile quickly left their kinsmen far behind.
Indeed the latter hardly rose above a pastoral life. The
descendants of these old inhabitants of the valley of the
Nile, in spite of the numerous layers which the course of
centuries has subsequently laid upon the soil of the land,
still form the larger part of the population of Egypt, and the
ancient language is preserved in the dialect of the Copts."

M. Duncker, History of Antiquity, book 1, chapter 1.
EGYPT:
The Old Empire and the Middle Empire.
The following are the Egyptian Dynasties, from the first
Pharaoh, Mena, to the epoch of the Hyksos, or Shepherd kings,
with the dates and periods assigned to each by Brugsch:
The First Dynasty; of Thinis: B. C. 4400-4166.
The Second; of Thinis: 4133-4000.
The Third; of Memphis: 3966-3766.
The Fourth; of Memphis: 3733-3600.
The Fifth; of Elephantine: 3566-3333.
The Sixth; of Memphis: 3300-3066.
The Seventh to the Eleventh
(a confused and obscure period): 3033-2500.
The Twelfth; of Thebes: 2466-2266.
H. Brugsch-Bey, History of Egypt under the Pharaohs,
appendix A.
"The direct descendants of Menes [or Mena] form the First
Dynasty, which, according to Manetho, reigned 253 years. No
monument contemporary with these princes has come down to us.
... The Second Dynasty, to which Manetho assigns nine kings,
lasted 302 years. It was also originally from This [or
Thinis], and probably related to the First. ... When this
family had become extinct, a Dynasty, originally from Memphis,
seized the throne, forming the Third, and to it a duration of
214 years is attributed. ... With the Fourth Dynasty, Memphite
like the Third, and which reigned 284 years, history becomes
clearer and monuments more numerous. This was the age of the
three Great Pyramids, built by the three kings, Khufu (the
Cheops of Herodotus), Shafra (Chefren), and Menkara
(Mycerinus). ... The Fifth Dynasty came originally from
Elephantine, at the southern extremity of Upper Egypt, and
there possibly the kings generally resided, though at the same
time Memphis was not deprived of its importance. ... On the
death of the last king of the Fifth Dynasty, a new family, of
Memphitic origin according to Manetho, came to the throne. ...
Primitive art attained its highest point under the Sixth
Dynasty. ... But, from the time of the civil commotions in
which Neit-aker [the Nitocris of Herodotus] perished, Egyptian
civilization underwent a sudden and unaccountable eclipse.
From the end of the Sixth Dynasty to the commencement of the
Eleventh, Manetho reckons 436 years, and for this whole period
the monuments are absolutely silent. Egypt seems then to have
disappeared from the rank of nations; and when this long
slumber ended, civilization commenced a new career, entirely
independent of the past. ...
{751}
Thus ends that period of nineteen centuries, which modern
scholars know as the Old Empire. ... Thebes did not exist in
the days of the glory of the Old Empire. The holy city of Amen
seems to have been founded during the period of anarchy and
obscurity, succeeding, as we have said, to the Sixth Dynasty.
Here was the birthplace of that renewed civilization, that new
monarchy, we are accustomed to call the Middle Empire, the
middle age in fact of ancient Egypt--a middle age anterior to
the earliest ages of all other history. From Thebes cane the
six kings of the Eleventh Dynasty. ... We again quote the
excellent remarks of M. Mariette: 'When, with the Eleventh
Dynasty, we see Egypt awake from her long slumber, all old
traditions appear to be forgotten; the proper names used in
ancient families, the titles of functionaries, the style of
writing, and even the religion--all seem new. This,
Elephantine, and Memphis, are no longer the favourite
capitals. Thebes for the first time becomes the seat of
sovereign power. Egypt, moreover, has lost a considerable
portion of her territory, and the authority of her legitimate
kings hardly extends beyond the limited district of the
Thebaid. The study of the monuments confirms these general
views; they are rude, primitive, sometimes coarse; and when we
look at them we may well believe that Egypt, under the
Eleventh Dynasty, again passed through a period of infancy, as
she had already done under the Third Dynasty.' A dynasty
probably related to, and originally from the same place as
these first Theban princes succeeded them. ... This Twelfth
Dynasty reigned for 213 years, and its epoch was one of
prosperity, of peace at home and glorious achievements abroad.
... Although the history of the Twelfth Dynasty is clear and
well known, illustrated by numerous monuments, there is,
nevertheless, no period in the annals of Egypt more obscure
than the one closing with the Thirteenth Dynasty. It is one
long series of revolutions, troubles, and internal
dissensions, closed by a terrible catastrophe, the greatest
and most lasting recorded in Egyptian history, which a second
time interrupted the march of civilization on the banks of the
Nile, and for a while struck Egypt from the list of nations."
F. Lenormant and E. Chevallier,
Manual of Ancient History of the East, book 3, chapter 1-2.
ALSO IN:
C. C. J. Bunsen, Egypt's Place in Universal History, volume 2.
See, also, MEMPHIS, and THEBES, EGYPT.
EGYPT:
The Hyksos, or Shepherd-Kings.
According to the Manethouian account which the Jewish
historian Josephus has preserved to us by transcribing it, the
Egyptian Netherlands were at a certain time overspread by a
wild and rough people, which came from the countries of the
east, overcame the native kings who dwelt there, and took
possession of the whole country, without finding any great
opposition on the part of the Egyptians. They were called
Hyksos, which Josephus interpreted as meaning Shepherd-kings.
"Hyk," he explained, meant King, in the holy language, and
"sos," in the dialect of the people, signified Shepherd. But
Dr. Brugsch identifies "sos" with the name "Shasu," which the
old Egyptians gave to the Bedouins, whose name became
equivalent to Shepherds. Hence Dr. Brugsch inclines to the
ancient opinion transmitted by Josephus, that the Hyksos were
Arabs or Bedouins--the Shasu of the Egyptian records, who hung
on the northeastern frontier of Egypt from the most ancient
times and were always pressing into the country, at every
opportunity. But many objections against this view are raised
and the different theories advanced to account for the Hyksos
are quite numerous. Canon Rawlinson says: "The Egyptians of
the time of Herodotus seem to have considered that they were
Philistines. Moderns have regarded them as Canaanites,
Syrians, Hittites. It is an avoidance rather than a solution
of the difficulty to say that they were 'a collection of all
the nomad hordes of Arabia and Syria' [Lenormant], since there
must have been a directing hand. ... On the whole, therefore,
we lean to the belief that the so-called Hyksos or Shepherds
were Hittites."
G. Rawlinson, History of Ancient Egypt. chapter 19.
"It is maintained on good authority that the Hyksos, or
Shepherd-Kings, had secured possession of the eastern frontier
of Lower Egypt immediately after the close of the Twelfth
Dynasty; that at this time the Thirteenth and the Fourteenth
Dynasties ruled contemporaneously, the former in Upper, the
latter in Lower Egypt; one was illegitimate, the other the
illegitimate line; but authors are not in accord as to their
right of priority. It is supposed that, while Egypt claimed
the Thirteenth Dynasty as her own, the Hyksos usurped the
mastery over the Fourteenth Dynasty, and governed through the
agency of its kings, treating them meanwhile as vassal chiefs.
These local kings had cities from which they were unable to
escape, and were deprived of an army of defence. Such was the
state of the country for 184 years, when the Fourteenth
Dynasty died out, and when the Fifteenth Dynasty, constituted
of six successive Hyksos kings, took the reins of government
into their own hands. Lieblein, whose views we are now
endeavouring to express, assigns as the date of the invasion
of the Hyksos 2108 years B. C. ... It is not improbable that
the well-known journey of Abraham to Egypt was made during the
early period of the reign of the Shepherd-Kings; whilst the
visit of Joseph occurred near the close of their power."
E. Wilson, The Egypt of the Past, chapter 5.
"'The Shepherds possessed themselves of Egypt by violence,'
writes Mariette-Bey, 'but the civilization which they
immediately adopted on their conquest was rather Egyptian than
Asiatic, and the discoveries of Avaris (San) prove that they
did not even banish from their temples the gods of the ancient
Egyptian Pantheon.' In fact the first shepherd-king, Solatis
himself, employed an Egyptian artist to inscribe ... his title
on the statue of a former legitimate Pharaoh. 'They did not
disturb the civilization more than the Persians or the Greeks,
but simply accepted the higher one they had conquered.' So our
revered scholar Dr. Birch has summed up the matter; and Professor
Maspero has very happily described it thus: 'The popular
hatred loaded them with ignominious epithets, and treated them
as accursed, plague-stricken, leprous. Yet they allowed
themselves very quickly to be domesticated. ... Once admitted
to the school of Egypt, the barbarians progressed quickly in
the civilized life. The Pharaonic court reappeared around
these shepherd-kings, with all its pomp and all its following
of functionaries great and small. The royal style and title of
Cheops and the Amenemhas were fitted to the outlandish names
of Jannes and Apapi. The Egyptian religion, without being
officially adopted, was tolerated, and the religion of the
Canaanites underwent some modifications to avoid hurting
beyond measure the susceptibility of the worshippers of
Osiris.'"
H. G. Tomkins, Studies on the Times of Abraham, chapter 8.
{752}
In a late Italian work ("Gli Hyksos") by Dr. C. A. de Cara,
"he puts together all that is ascertained in regard to them
[the Hyksos], criticises the theories that have been
propounded on their behalf, and suggests a theory of his own.
Nothing that has been published on the subject seems to have
escaped his notice. ... His own view is that the Hyksos
represented a confederacy of various Asiatic tribes, under the
leadership of the northern Syrians. That their ruling class
came from this part of the world seems to me clear from the
name of their supreme god Sutekh, who occupied among them the
position of the Semitic Baal."
A. H. Sayce, The Hyksôs (Academy, September 20,1890).
"Historical research concerning the history of the Hyksos may
be summed up as follows:
I. A certain number of non-Egyptian kings of foreign
origin, belonging to the nation of the Menti, ruled for a
long time in the eastern portion of the Delta.
II. These chose as their capitals the cities of Zoan and
Avaris, and provided them with strong fortifications.
III. They adopted not only the manners and customs of the
Egyptians, but also their official language and writing,
and the order of their court was arranged on Egyptian
models.
IV. They were patrons of art, and Egyptian artists erected,
after the ancient models, monuments in honour of these
usurpers, in whose statues they were obliged to reproduce
the Hyksos physiognomy, the peculiar arrangement of the
beard und head-dress, as well as other variations of their
costume.
V. They honored Sutekh, the son of Nut, as the supreme god
of their newly acquired country, with the surname Nub, 'the
golden.' He was the origin of all that is evil and perverse
in the visible and invisible world, the opponent of good
and the enemy of light. In the cities of Zoan and Avaris,
splendid temples were constructed in honour of this god,
and other monuments raised, especially Sphinxes, carved out
of stone from Syene.
VI. In all probability one of them was the founder of a new
era, which most likely began with the first year of his
reign. Down to the time of the second Ramses, four hundred
years had elapsed of this reckoning which was acknowledged
even by the Egyptians.
VII. The Egyptians were indebted to their contact with them
for much useful knowledge. In particular their artistic views
were expanded and new forms and shapes, notably that of the
winged sphinx, were introduced, the Semitic origin of which is
obvious at a glance. ...
The inscriptions on the monuments designate that foreign
people who once ruled in Egypt by the name of Men or Menti. On
the walls of the temple of Edfû it is stated that 'the
inhabitants of the land of Asher are called Menti.' ... In the
different languages, ... and in the different periods of
history, the following names are synonymous: Syria, Rutennu of
the East, Asher, and Menti."--"Since, on the basis of the
most recent and best investigations in the province of ancient
Egyptian chronology, we reckon the year 1350 B. C. as a mean
computation for the reign of Ramses, the reign of the Hyksos
king, Nub, and probably its beginning, falls in the year 1750
B. C., that is, 400 years before Ramses II. Although we are
completely in the dark as to the place King Nub occupied in
the succession of the kindred princes of his house, yet the
number mentioned is important, as an approximate epoch for the
stay of the foreign kings in Egypt. According to the statement
in the Bible, the Hebrews from the immigration of Jacob into
Egypt until the Exodus remained 430 years in that land. Since
the Exodus from Egypt took place in the time of Meneptah II.,
the son of Ramses II.--the Pharaoh of the oppression--the
year B. C. 1300 may be an approximate date. If we add to this
430 years, as expressing the total duration of the sojourn of
the Hebrews in Egypt, we arrive at the year 1730 B. C. as the
approximate date for the immigration of Jacob into Egypt, and
for the time of the official career of Joseph at the court of
Pharaoh. In other words, the time of Joseph (1730 B. C.) must
have fallen in the period of the Hyksos domination, about the
reign of the above-mentioned prince Nub (1750 B. C)."
H. Brugsch-Bey, Egypt under the Pharaohs (edition of 1891,
by.M. Brodrick), pages 106-109, and 126.
See JEWS: THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL IN EGYPT.
ALSO IN:
F. C. H. Wendel, History of Egypt, chapter 4.
EGYPT: About B. C. 1700-1400.
The New Empire.
The Eighteenth Dynasty.
"The dominion of the Hyksos by necessity gave rise to profound
internal divisions, alike in the different princely families
and in the native population itself. Factions became rampant
in various districts, and reached the highest point in the
hostile feeling of the inhabitants of Patoris or the South
country against the people of Patomit or North country, who
were much mixed with foreign blood. ... From this condition of
divided power and of mutual jealousy the foreign rulers
obtained their advantage and their chief strength, until King
Aahmes made himself supreme."
H. Brugsch-Bey, Egypt under the Pharaohs
(edition of 1891, by M. Brodrick).
"The duration of the reign of this first Pharaoh of the New
Empire was twenty-five years. He was succeeded by his son
Amenhotep I. and the latter by his son Thothmes I. "The reign
of Thothmes 1. ... derives its chief distinction from the fact
that, at this period of their history, the Egyptians for the
first time carried their arms deep into Asia, overrunning
Syria, and even invading Mesopotamia, or the tract between the
Tigris and the Euphrates. Hitherto the furthest point reached
in this direction had been Sharuhen in Southern Palestine. ...
Syria was hitherto almost an undiscovered region to the
powerful people which nurturing its strength in the Nile
valley, had remained content with its own natural limits and
scarcely grasped at any conquests. A time was now come when
this comparative quietude and absence of ambition were about
to cease. Provoked by the attack made upon her from the side
of Asia, and smarting from the wounds inflicted upon her pride
and prosperity by the Hyksos during the period of their rule,
Egypt now set herself to retaliate, and for three centuries
continued at intervals to pour her armies into the Eastern
continent, and to carry fire and sword over the extensive and
populous regions which lay between the Mediterranean and the
Zagros mountain range. There is some uncertainty as to the
extent of her conquests; but no reasonable doubt can be
entertained that for a space of three hundred years Egypt was
the most powerful and the most aggressive state that the world
contained, and held a dominion that has as much right to be
called an 'Empire' as the Assyrian, the Babylonian or the Persian.
{753}
While Babylonia, ruled by Arab conquerors, declined in
strength, and Assyria proper was merely struggling into
independence, Egypt put forth her arm and grasped the fairest
regions of the earth's surface." The immediate successor of
Thothmes I. was his son, Thothmes II., who reigned in
association with a sister of masculine character, queen
Hatasu. The strong-minded queen, moreover, prolonged her reign
after the death of this elder brother, until a younger
brother, Thothmes III. displaced her. The Third Thothmes was
the greatest of Egyptian conquerors and kings. He carried his
arms beyond the Euphrates, winning a memorable victory at
Megiddo over the confederated kings of the Syrian and
Mesopotamian countries. He left to his son (Amenhotep II.) "a
dominion extending about 1,100 miles from north to south, and
(in places) 450 miles from west to east." He was a great
builder, likewise, and "has left the impress of his presence
in Egypt more widely than almost any other of her kings, while
at the same time he has supplied to the great capitals of the
modern world their most striking Egyptian monuments." The
larger of the obelisks now standing in Rome and
Constantinople, as well as those at London and New York were
all of them produced in the reign of this magnificent Pharaoh.
The two obelisks last named stood originally, and for fourteen
centuries at the front of the great temple of the sun, in
Heliopolis. They were removed by the Roman Emperor, Augustus,
B. C: 23, to Alexandria, where they took in time the name of
Cleopatra's Needles,--although Cleopatra had no part in their
long history. After nineteen centuries more of rest, these
strangely coveted monuments were again disturbed, and
transported into lands which their builder knew not of. The
later kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty seem to have, none of
them, possessed the energy and character of Thothmes III. The
line ended about 1400 B. C. with Horemheb, who left no heirs.
G. Rawlinson, History of Ancient Egypt, chapter 20.
ALSO IN:
H. Brugsch-Bey, Egypt under the Pharaohs chapter 13.
H. H. Gorringe, Egyptian ·Obelisks.
EGYPT: About B. C. 1500-1400.
The Tell el-Amarna Tablets.
Correspondence of the Egyptian kings with Babylonia, Assyria,
Armenia, Asia Minor, Syria and Palestine.
"The discovery made in 1887 by a peasant woman of Middle Egypt
may be described as the most important of all contributions to
the early political history of Western Asia. We have become
possessed of a correspondence, dating from the fifteenth
century B. C., which was carried on during the reigns of three
Egyptian kings, with the rulers of Babylon, Assyria, Armenia,
Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, during a period of great
activity, when revolutions which affected the whole history of
the east shore lands of the Mediterranean were in progress;
and we find in these tablets a contemporary picture of the
civilisation of the age. ... The Tell Amarna tablets represent
a literature equal in bulk to about half the Pentateuch, and
concerned almost exclusively with political affairs, They are
clay tablets, varying from two inches to a foot in length,
with a few as large as eighteen inches, covered with cuneiform
writing generally on both sides, and often on the edges as
well. The peasantry unearthed nearly the complete collection,
including some 320 pieces in all; and explorers afterwards
digging on the site have added only a few additional
fragments. The greater number were bought for the Berlin
Museum, while eighty-two were acquired for England, and the
rest remain either in the Boulak Museum at Cairo; or, in a few
instances, in the hands of private collectors. ... Tell Amarna
(apparently 'the mound of the tumuli ') is an important ruined
site on the east bank of the Nile, about a hundred and fifty
miles in a straight line south of Cairo. Its Egyptian name is
said to have been Khu-en-aten, 'Glory of the Sun-disk.'"
The Tell Amarna Tablets (Edinburgh Review, July, 1893).
"The collection of Cuneiform Tablets recently found [1887] at
Tell el-Amarna in Upper Egypt, consisted of about three
hundred and twenty documents, or portions of documents. The
British Museum possesses eighty-two ... the Berlin Museum has
one hundred and sixty, a large number being fragments; the
Gizeh Museum has sixty; and a few are in the hands of private
persons. ... In color the Tablets vary from a light to a dark
dust tint, and from a flesh-color to dark brick-red. The
nature of the clay of which they are made sometimes indicates
the countries from which they come. The size of the Tablets in
the British Museum varies from 8¾ inches x 4-7/8 inches to 2-1/8
inches x 1-11/16 inches; the longest text contains 98 lines, the
shortest 10. ... The greater number are rectangular, and a few
are oval; and they differ in shape from any other cuneiform
documents known to us. ... The writing ... resembles to a
certain extent the Neo-Babylonian, i. e., the simplification
of the writing of the first Babylonian Empire used commonly in
Babylonia and Assyria for about seven centuries B. C. It
possesses, however, characteristics different from those of
any other style of cuneiform writing of any period now known
to exist; and nearly every tablet contains forms of characters
which have hitherto been thought peculiar to the Ninevite or
Assyrian style of writing. But, compared with the neat,
careful hand employed in the official documents drawn up for
the kings of Assyria, it is somewhat coarse and careless, and
suggests the work of unskilled scribes. One and the same hand,
however, appears in tablets which come from the same person
and the same place. On some of the large tablets the writing
is bold and free; on some of the small ones the characters are
confused and cramped, and are groups of strokes rather than
wedges. The spelling ... is often careless, and in some
instances syllables have been omitted. At present it is not
possible to say whether the irregular spelling is due to the
ignorance of the scribe or to dialectic peculiarities. ... The
Semitic dialect in which these letters are written is
Assyrian, and is, in some important details, closely related
to the Hebrew of the Old Testament. ... The documents were
most probably written between the years B. C. 1500 to 1450.
... They give an insight into the nature of the political
relations which existed between the kings of Western Asia and
the kings of Egypt, and prove that an important trade existed
between the two countries from very early times. ... A large
number of the present tablets are addressed to 'the King of
Egypt,' either Amenophis III. or Amenophis IV. Nearly all of
them consist of reports of disasters to the Egyptian power and
of successful intrigues against it, coupled by urgent
entreaties for help, pointing to a condition of distraction
and weakness in Egypt. ... The most graphic details of the
disorganized condition, and of the rival factions, of the
Egyptian dependencies lying on the coastline of Phoenicia and
Northern Palestine, are to be gathered from a perusal of the
dispatches of the governors of the cities of Byblos, Beyrut
and Tyre."
The Tell el-Amarna Tablets in the British Museum, introduction.
{754}
"In the present state of cuneiform research I believe it to be
impossible to give a translation of the Tell el-Amarna texts
which would entirely satisfy the expert or general reader. No
two scholars would agree as to any interpretation which might
be placed upon certain rare grammatical forms and unknown
words in the Babylonian text, and any literal translation in a
modern language would not be understood by the general reader
on account of the involved style and endless repetition of
phrases common to a Semitic idiom and dialect. About the
general meaning of the contents of the greater number of the
letters there can be no doubt whatever, and it is therefore
possible to make a summary of the contents of each letter,
which should, as a rule, satisfy the general reader, and at
the same time form a guide to the beginner in cuneiform.
Summaries of the contents of the Tell el-Amarna tablets in the
British Museum have been published in 'The Tell el-Amarna
Tablets in the British Museum, with autotype facsimiles,'
printed by order of the Trustees, London, 1892, and it is
hoped that the transliteration, given in the following pages
may form a useful supplement to that work." ...
No. 1. A Letter from Egypt--Amenophis III. to Kallimma (?)
Sin, King of Karaduniyash, referring to his proposed marriage
with Sukharti, the daughter of Kallimma-Sin, and containing
the draft of a commercial treaty, and an allusion to the
disappearance of certain chariots and horses.
No.2. Letters from Babylonia-Burraburiyash, King of
Karaduniyash, to Amenophis IV., referring to the friendship
which had existed between their respective fathers, and the
help which had been rendered to the King of Egypt by
Burraburiyash himself; the receipt of two manahs of gold is
acknowledged and a petition is made for more.
No. 3. Burraburiyash, King of Karaduniyash to Amenophis IV.,
complaining that the Egyptian messengers had visited his
country thrice without bringing gifts, and that they withheld
some of the gold which had been sent to him from Egypt;
Burraburiyash announces the despatch of a gift of lapis-lazuli
for the Egyptian princess who was his son's wife. ...
No. 30. Letter from Abi-milki, governor of Tyre, to the King
of Egypt, reporting that he believes Zimrida will not be able
to stir up disaffection in the city of Sidon, although he has
caused much hostility against Tyre. He asks for help to
protect the city, and for water to drink and wood to burn, and
he sends with his messenger Ili-milki five talents of copper
and other gifts for the King of Egypt. He reports that the
King of Danuna is dead and that his brother reigns in his
stead; one half of the city of Ugarit has been destroyed by
fire; the soldiers of the Khatti have departed; Itagamapairi,
governor of Kedesh, and Aziru are fighting against Namyawiza.
If the King of Egypt will but send a few troops, all will be
well with Tyre. ...
No. 43. Letter from the governor of a town in Syria to the
King of Egypt, reporting that the rebels have asserted their
independence; that Biridashwi has stirred up rebellion in the
city of Inu-Amma; that its people have captured chariots in
the city of Ashtarti: that the kings of the cities of Buzruna
and Khalunni have made a league with Biridashwi to slay
Namyawiza (who, having taken refuge in Damascus and being
attacked by Arzawiya, declared himself to be a vassal of
Egypt); that Arzawiya went to the city of Gizza and afterwards
captured the city of Shaddu; that Itakkama ravaged the country
of Gizza; and that Arzawiya and Biridashwi have wasted the
country of Abitu.
No. 44. Continuation (1) of a letter to the King of Egypt,
reporting that, owing to the hostilities of Abd-Ashirta,
Khâya, an official, was unable to send ships to the country of
Amurri, as he had promised. The ships from Arvad which the
writer has in his charge, lack their full complement of men
for war service, and he urges the king to make use of the
ships and crews which he has had with him in Egypt. The writer
of the letter also urges the King of Egypt to appoint an
Egyptian official over the naval affairs of Sidon, Beyrut and
Arvad, and to seize Abd-Ashirta and put him under restraint to
prevent him obstructing the manning of the ships of war. ...
No. 58. Letter from the governor of a district in Palestine
(?) to the governors of neighbouring states in the land of
Canaan, informing them that he is about to send his messenger
Akiya on a mission to the King of Egypt, and to place himself
and every thing that he has at his disposal. Akiya will go to
Egypt by the way of Canaan, and the writer of this letter
suggests that any gifts they may have to send to Egypt should
be carried by him, for Akiya is a thoroughly trustworthy man.
C. Bezold, Oriental Diplomacy: Being the transliterated
text of the Cuneiform Despatches, preface.
Under the title of "The Story of a 'Tell,'" Mr. W. M. Flinders
Petrie, the successful excavator and explorer of Egyptian
antiquities, gave a lecture in London, in June, 1892, in which
he described the work and the results of an excavation then in
progress under his direction on the supposed site of Lachish,
at a point where the maritime plain of Philistia rises to the
mountains of Judæa, on the route from Egypt into Asia. The
chairman who introduced Mr. Petrie defined the word "Tell" as
follows: "A Tell is a mound of earth showing by the presence
of broken pottery or worked stone that it is the site of a
ruined city or village. In England when a house falls down or
is pulled down the materials are usually worth the expense of
removing for use in some new building. But in Egypt common
houses have for thousands of years been built of sun-dried
bricks; in Palestine of rough rubble walling, which, on
falling, produces many chips, with thick flat roofs of
plaster. It is thus often less trouble to get new than to use
old material; the sites of towns grow in height, and
depressions are filled up." The mound excavated by Mr. Petrie
is known as Tell el Hesy. After he left the work it was
carried on by Mr. Bliss, and Mr. Petrie in his lecture says
"The last news is that Mr. Bliss has found the long looked for
prize, a cuneiform tablet. ... From the character of the
writing, which is the same as on the tablets written in
Palestine in 1400. B. C., to the Egyptian king at Tel el
Amarna, we have a close agreement regarding the chronology of
the town. Further, it mentions Zimrida as a governor, and this
same man appears as governor of Lachish on the tablets found
at Tel el Amarna. We have thus at last picked up the other end
of the broken chain of correspondence between Palestine and
Egypt, of which one part was so unexpectedly found in Egypt a
few years ago on the tablets at Tel el Amarna; and we may hope
now to recover the Palestinian part of this intercourse and so
establish the pre-Israelite history of the land."
W. M. F. Petrie, The Story of a "Tell"
(The City and the Land, lecture 6).
See, also, PALESTINE.
ALSO IN:
C. R. Conder, The Tell Amarna Tablets, translated.
{755}
EGYPT: About B. C. 1400-1200.
The first of the Ramesides.
The Pharaohs of the Oppression and the Exodus,
"Under the Nineteenth Dynasty, which acquired the throne after
the death of Har-em-Hebi [or Hor-em-heb] the fortune of Egypt
maintained to some extent its ascendancy; but, though the
reigns of some war-like kings throw a bright light on this
epoch, the shade of approaching trouble already darkens the
horizon." Ramses I. and his son, or son-in-law, Seti I., were
involved in troublesome wars with the rising power of the
Hittites, in Syria, and with the Shasu of the Arabian desert.
Seti was also at war with the Libyans, who then made their
first appearance in Egyptian history. His son Ramses II., the
Sesostris of the Greeks, who reigned for sixty-seven years, in
the fourteenth century B. C., has always been the most famous
of the Egyptian kings, and, by modern discovery, has been made
the most interesting of them to the Christian world. He was a
busy and boastful warrior, who accomplished no important
conquests; but "among the Pharaohs he is the builder 'par
excellence.' It is almost impossible to find in Egypt a ruin
or an ancient mound, without reading his name." ... It was to
these works, probably, that the Israelites then in Egypt were
forced to contribute their labor; for the Pharaoh of the
oppression is identified, by most scholars of the present day,
with this building and boasting Sesostris.
F. Lenormant and E. Chevallier, Manual of the
Ancient History of the East, book 3, chapter 3.
"The extreme length of the reign of Ramses was, as in other
histories, the cause of subsequent weakness and disaster. His
successor was an aged son, Menptah, who had to meet the
difficulties which were easily overcome by the youth of his
energetic father. The Libyans and their maritime allies broke
the long tranquillity of Egypt by a formidable invasion and
temporary conquest of the north-west. The power of the
monarchy was thus shaken, and the old king was not the leader
to restore it. His obscure reign was followed by others even
obscurer, and the Nineteenth Dynasty ended in complete
anarchy, which reached its height when a Syrian chief, in what
manner we know not, gained the rule of the whole country. It
is to the reign of Menptah that Egyptian tradition assigned
the Exodus, and modern research has come to a general
agreement that this is its true place in Egyptian history. ...
Unfortunately we do not know the duration of the oppression of
the Israelites, nor the condition of Lower Egypt during the
Eighteenth Dynasty, which, according to the hypothesis here
adopted, corresponds to a great part of the Hebrew sojourn. It
is, however, clear from the Bible that the oppression did not
begin till after the period of Joseph's contemporaries, and
had lasted eighty years before the Exodus. It seems almost
certain that this was the actual beginning of the oppression,
for it is very improbable that two separate Pharaohs are
intended by the 'new king which knew not Joseph' and the
builder of Rameses, or, in other words, Ramses II., and the
time from the accession of Ramses II. to the end of Menptah's
reign can have little exceeded the eighty years of Scripture
between the birth of Moses and the Exodus. ... If the
adjustment of Hebrew and Egyptian history for the oppression,
as stated above, be accepted, Ramses II. was probably the
first, and certainly the great oppressor. His character suits
this theory; he was an undoubted autocrat who ... covered
Egypt and Lower Nubia with vast structures that could only
have been produced by slave-labor on the largest scale."
R. S. Poole, Ancient Egypt (Contemporary Review,
March, 1879).
ALSO IN:
H. Brugsch-Bey, Egypt Under the Pharaohs, chapter 14.
H. G. Tomkins, Life and Times of Joseph.
See, also:
JEWS: THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL IN EGYPT.
EGYPT: About B. C. 1300.
Exodus of the Israelites.
See JEWS: THE ROUTE OF THE EXODUS.
EGYPT: About B. C. 1200-670.
The decline of the empire of the Pharaohs.
From the anarchy in which the Nineteenth Dynasty came to its
end, order was presently restored by the seating in power of a
new family, which claimed to be of the Rameside stock. The
second of its kings, who called himself Ramses III. and who is
believed to be the Rhampsinitus of the Greeks, appears to have
been one of the ablest of the monarchs of his line. The
security and prosperity of Egypt were recovered under his
reign and he left it in a state which does not seem to have
promised the rapid decay which ensued. "It is difficult to
understand and account for the suddenness and completeness of
the collapse. ... The hieratic chiefs, the high priests of the
god Ammon at Thebes, gradually increased in power, usurped one
after another the prerogatives of the Pharaohs, by degrees
reduced their authority to a shadow, and ended with an open
assumption not only of the functions, but of the very insignia
of royalty. A space of nearly two centuries elapsed, however,
before this change was complete. Ten princes of the name of
Ramses, and one called Meri-Tum, all of them connected by
blood with the great Rameside house, bore the royal title and
occupied the royal palace, in the space between B. C. 1280 and
B. C. 1100. Egyptian history during this period is almost
wholly a blank. No military expeditions are conducted--no
great buildings are reared--art almost disappears--literature
holds her tongue." Then came the dynasty of the priest-kings,
founded by Her-Hor, which held the throne for more than a
century and was contemporary in its latter years with David
and Solomon. The Twenty-Second Dynasty which succeeded had its
capital at Bubastis and is concluded by Dr. Brugsch to have
been a line of Assyrian kings, representing an invasion and
conquest of Egypt by Nimrod, the great king of Assyria. Other
Egyptologists disagree with Dr. Brugsch in this, and Professor
Rawlinson, the historian of Assyria, finds objections to the
hypothesis from his own point of view.
{756}
The prominent monarch of this dynasty was the Sheshonk of
Biblical history, who sheltered Jeroboam, invaded Palestine
and plundered Jerusalem. Before this dynasty came to an end it
had lost the sovereignty of Egypt at large, and its Pharaohs
contended with various rivals and invaders. Among the latter,
power grew in the hands of a race of Ethiopians, who had risen
to importance at Napata, on the Upper Nile, and who extended
their power, at last, over the whole of Egypt. The Ethiopian
domination was maintained for two-thirds of a century, until
the great wave of Assyrian conquest broke upon Egypt in 672 B.
C. and swept over it, driving the Ethiopians back to Napata
and Meroë.
G. Rawlinson, History of Ancient Egypt, chapter 25.
ALSO IN:
H. Brugsch-Bey, Egypt under the Pharaohs, chapter 15-18.
E. Wilson, Egypt of the Past, chapter 8.
See, also, ETHIOPIA.
EGYPT: B. C. 670-525.
Assyrian conquest and restored independence.
The Twenty-sixth Dynasty.
The Greeks at Naucratis.
Although Syria and Palestine had then been suffering for more
than a century from the conquering arms of the Assyrians, it
was not until 670 B. C., according to Professor Rawlinson, that
Esarhaddon passed the boundaries of Egypt and made himself
master of that country. His father Sennacherib, had attempted
the invasion thirty years before, at the time of his siege of
Jerusalem, and had recoiled before some mysterious calamity
which impelled him to a sudden retreat. The son avenged his
father's failure. The Ethiopian masters of Egypt were expelled
and the Assyrian took their place. He "broke up the country
into twenty governments, appointing in each town a ruler who
bore the title of king, but placing all the others to a
certain extent under the authority of the prince who reigned
at Memphis. This was Neco, the father of Psammetichus (Psamtik
I.)--a native Egyptian of whom we have some mention both in
Herodotus and in the fragments of Manetho. The remaining
rulers were likewise, for the most part, native Egyptians."
These arrangements were soon broken up by the expelled
Ethiopian king, Tirhakah, who rallied his forces and swept the
Assyrian kinglets out of the country; but Asshur-bani-pal, son
and successor of Esarhaddon, made his appearance with an army
in 668 or 667 B. C. and Tirhakah fled before him. Again and
again this occurred, and for twenty years Egypt was torn
between the Assyrians and the Ethiopians, in their struggle
for the possession of her. At length, out of the chaos
produced by these conflicts there emerged a native ruler--the
Psammetichus mentioned above--who subjugated his fellow
princes and established a new Egyptian monarchy, which
defended itself with success against Assyria and Ethiopia,
alike. The Twenty-Sixth Dynasty, of Sais, founded by
Psammetichus, is suspected to have been of Libyan descent. It
ruled Egypt until the Persian conquest, and brought a great
new influence to bear on the country and people, by the
introduction of Greek soldiers and traders. It was under this
dynasty that the Greek city of Naucratis was founded, on the
Canobic branch of the Nile.
G. Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies: Assyria, chapter 9.
The site of Naucratis, near the Canobic branch of the Nile,
was determined by excavations which Mr. W. M. Flinders Petrie
began in 1884, and from which much has been learned of the
history of the city and of early relations between the
Egyptians and the Greeks. It is concluded that the settlement
of Naucratis dates from about 660 B. C.--not long after the
beginning of the reign of Psammitichus--and that its Greek
founders became the allies of that monarch and his successors
against their enemies. "All are agreed that before the reign
of Psammitichus and the founding of Naucratis, Egypt was a
sealed book to the Greeks. It is likely that the Phoenicians,
who were from time to time the subjects of the Pharaohs, were
admitted, where aliens like the Greeks were excluded. We have
indeed positive evidence that the Egyptians did not wish
strange countries to learn their art, for in a treaty between
them and the Hittites it is stipulated that neither country
shall harbour fugitive artists from the other. But however the
fact may be accounted for, it is an undoubted fact that long
before Psammitichus threw Egypt open to the foreigner, the
Phoenicians had studied in the school of Egyptian art, and
learned to copy all sorts of handiwork procured from the
valley of the Nile. ... According to Herodotus and Diodorus,
the favour shown to the Greeks by the King was the cause of a
great revolt of the native Egyptian troops, who left the
frontier fortresses, and marched south beyond Elephantine,
where they settled, resisting all the entreaties of
Psammitichus, who naturally deplored the loss of the mainstay
of his dominions, and developed into the race of the Sebridae.
Wiedemann, however, rejects the whole story as unhistorical,
and certainly, if we closely consider it, it contains great
inherent improbabilities. ... Psammitichus died in B. C: 610,
and was succeeded by his son Necho, who was his equal in
enterprise and vigour. This King paid great attention to the
fleet of Egypt, and Greek shipwrights were set to work on both
the Mediterranean and Red Seas to build triremes for the State
navy. A fleet of his ships, we are told, succeeded in sailing
round Africa, a very great feat for the age. The King even
attempted the task, of which the completion was reserved for
the Persian Darius, the Ptolemies, and Trajan, of making a
canal from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. Herodotus says
that, after sacrificing the lives of 120,000 men to the labour
and heat of the task, he gave it up, in consequence of the
warning of an oracle that he was toiling only for the
barbarians. ... Necho, like his father, must needs try the
edge of his new weapon, the Ionian mercenaries, on Asia. At
first he was successful. Josiah, King of Judah, came out
against him, but was slain, and his army dispersed. Greek
valour carried Necho as far as the Euphrates. ... But
Nebuchadnezzar, son of the King of Babylon, marched against
the invaders, and defeated them in a great battle near
Carehemish. His father's death recalled him to Babylon, and
Egypt was for the moment saved from counter-invasion by the
stubborn resistance offered to the Babylonian arms by
Jehoiakim, King of Judah, a resistance fatal to the Jewish
race; for Jerusalem was captured after a long siege, and most
of the inhabitants carried into captivity. Of Psammitichus
II., who succeeded Necho, we should know but little were it
not for the archaeological record. Herodotus only says that he
attacked Ethiopia, and died after a reign of six years.
{757}
But of the expedition thus summarily recorded we have a
lasting and memorable result in the well-known inscriptions
written by Rhodians and other Greek mercenaries on the legs of
the colossi at Abu Simbel in Nubia, which record how certain
of them came thither in the reign of Psammitichus, pushing up
the river in boats as far as it was navigable, that is,
perhaps, up to the second cataract. ... Apries, the Hophra of
the Bible, was the next king. The early part of his reign was
marked by successful warfare against the Phoenicians and the
peoples of Syria; but, like his predecessor, he was unable to
maintain a footing in Asia in the face of the powerful and
warlike Nebuchadnezzar. The hostility which prevailed between
Egypt and Babylon at this time caused King Apries to open a
refuge for those Jews who fled from the persecution of
Nebuchadnezzar. He assigned to their leaders, among whom were
the daughters of the King of Judah, a palace of his own at
Daphnae, 'Pharaoh's house at Tahpanhes,' as it is called by
Jeremiah. That prophet was among the fugitives, and uttered in
the palace a notable prophecy, (xliii. 9) that King
Nebuchadnezzar should come and spread his conquering tent over
the pavement before it. Formerly it was supposed that this
prophecy remained unfulfilled, but this opinion has to be
abandoned. Recently discovered Egyptian and Babylonian
inscriptions prove that Nebuchadnezzar conquered Egypt as far
as Syene. ... The fall of Apries as brought about by his
ingratitude to the Greeks, and his contempt for the lives of
his own subjects. He had formed the project of bringing under
his sway the Greek cities of the Cyrenaica. ... Apries
despatched against Cyrene a large force; but the Cyreneans
bravely defended themselves, and as the Egyptians on this
occasion marched without their Greek allies, they were
entirely defeated, and most of them perished by the sword, or
in the deserts which separate Cyrene from Egypt. The defeated
troops, and their countrymen who remained behind in garrison
in Egypt, imputed the disaster to treachery on the part of
Apries. ... They revolted, and chose as their leader Amasis, a
man of experience and daring. But Apries, though deserted by
his subjects, hoped still to maintain his throne by Greek aid.
At the head of 30,000 Ionians and Carians he marched against
Amasis. At Momemphis a battle took place between the rival
kings and between the rival nations; but the numbers of the
Egyptians prevailed over the arms and discipline of the
mercenaries, and Apries was defeated and captured by his
rival, who, however, allowed him for some years to retain the
name of joint-king. It is the best possible proof of the
solidity of Greek influence in Egypt at this time that Amasis,
though set on the throne by the native army after a victory
over the Greek mercenaries, yet did not expel these latter
from Egypt, but, on the contrary, raised them to higher favour
than before. ... In the delightful dawn of connected European
history we see Amasis as a wise and wealthy prince, ruling in
Egypt at the time when Polycrates was tyrant of Samos; and
when Croesus of Lydia, the richest king of his time, was
beginning to be alarmed by the rapid expansion of the Persian
power under Cyrus. ... In the days of Psammitichus III., the
son of Amasis, the storm which had overshadowed Asia broke
upon Egypt. One of the leaders of the Greek mercenaries in
Egypt named Phanes, a native of Halicarnassus, made his way to
the Persian Court, and persuaded Cambyses, who, according to
the story, had received from Amasis one of those affronts
which have so often produced wars between despots, to invade
Egypt in full force."
P. Gardner, New Chapters in Greek History, chapter 7.
ALSO IN:
W. M. F. Petrie, Naukratis.
See, also, NAUKRATIS.
EGYPT: B. C. 525-332.
Persian conquest and sovereignty.
The kings of the Twenty-Sixth or Saite Dynasty maintained the
independence of Egypt for nearly a century and a half, and
even revived its military glories briefly, by Necho's
ephemeral conquests in Syria and his overthrow of Josiah king
of Judah. In the meantime, Assyria and Babylonia had fallen
and the Persian power raised up by Cyrus had taken their
place. In his own time, Cyrus did not finish a plan of
conquest which included Egypt; his son Cambyses took up the
task. "It appears that four years were consumed by the Persian
monarch in his preparations for his Egyptian expedition. It
was not until B. C. 525 that he entered Egypt at the head of
his troops and fought the great battle which decided the fate
of the country. The struggle was long and bloody [see PERSIA:
B. C. 549-521]. Psammenitus, who had succeeded his father
Amasis, had the services, not only of his Egyptian subjects,
but of a large body of mercenaries besides, Greeks and
Carians. ... In spite of their courage and fanaticism, the
Egyptian army was completely defeated. ... The conquest of
Egypt was followed by the submission of the neighbouring
tribes. ... Even the Greeks of the more remote Barca and
Cyrene sent gifts to the conqueror and consented to become his
tributaries." But Cambyses wasted 50,000 men in a disastrous
expedition through the Libyan desert to Ammon, and he
retreated from Ethiopia with loss and shame. An attempted
rising of the Egyptians, before he had quitted their country,
was crushed with merciless severity. The deities, the temples
and the priests of Egypt were treated with insult and contempt
and the spirit of the people seems to have been entirely
broken. "Egypt became now for a full generation the obsequious
slave of Persia, and gave no more trouble to her subjugator
than the weakest, or the most contented, of the provinces."
George Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies: Persia,
chapter 7.
"The Persian kings, from Cambyses to Darius II. Nothus, are
enrolled as the Twenty-Seventh Dynasty of Manetho. The ensuing
revolts [see ATHENS: B. C. 460-449] are recognized in the
Twenty-Eighth (Saite) Dynasty, consisting only of Amyrtæus,
who restored the independence of Egypt (B. C. 414-408), and
the Twenty-Ninth (Mendesian) and Thirtieth (Sebennyte)
Dynasties (about B. C. 408-353), of whose intricate history we
need only here say that they ruled with great prosperity and
have left beautiful monuments of art. The last king of
independent Egypt was Nectanebo II., who succumbed to the
invasion of Artaxerxes Ochus, and fled to Ethiopia (B. C.
353). The last three kings of Persia, Ochus, Arses, and Darius
Codomannus, form the Thirty-First Dynasty of Manetho, ending
with the submission of Egypt to Alexander the Great (B. C.
332)."
P. Smith, Ancient History of the East (Students'), chapter 8.
ALSO IN: S. Sharpe, History of Egypt, chapter 5.
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EGYPT: B. C. 332.
Alexander's conquest.
"In the summer of 332 [after the siege and destruction of
Tyre--see TYRE: B. C. 332, and MACEDONIA, &c.: B. C. 334-330]
Alexander set forward on his march toward Egypt, accompanied
by the fleet, which he had placed under the orders of
Hephæstion." But, being detained on the way several months by
the siege of Gaza, it was not before December that he entered
Egypt. "He might safely reckon not merely on an easy conquest,
but on an ardent reception, from a people who burnt to shake
off the Persian tyranny. ... Mazaces [the Persian commander]
himself, as soon as he heard of the battle of Issus, became
aware that all resistance to Alexander would be useless, and
met him with a voluntary submission. At Pelusium he found the
fleet, and, having left a garrison in the fortress, ordered it
to proceed up the Nile as far as Memphis, while he marched
across the desert. Here he conciliated the Egyptians by the
honours which he paid to all their gods, especially to Apis,
who had been so cruelly insulted by the Persian invaders. ...
He then embarked, and dropt down the western or Canobic arm of
the river to Canobus, to survey the extremity of the Delta on
that side, and having sailed round the lake Mareotis, landed
on the narrow belt of low ground which parts it from the sea,
and is sheltered from the violence of the northern gales ...
by a long ridge of rock, then separated from the main land by
a channel, nearly a mile (seven stades) broad and forming the
isle of Pharos. On this site stood the village of Racotis,
where the ancient kings of Egypt had stationed a permanent
guard to protect this entrance of their dominions from
adventurers. ... Alexander's keen eye was immediately struck
by the advantages of this position for a city, which should
become a great emporium of commerce, and a link between the
East and the West. ... He immediately gave orders for the
beginning of the work, himself traced the outline, which was
suggested by the natural features of the ground itself, and
marked the site of some of the principal buildings, squares,
palaces and temples" (see ALEXANDRIA: B. C. 332). Alexander
remained in Egypt until the spring of 331, arranging the
occupation and administration of the country. "The system
which he established served in some points as a model for the
policy of Rome under the Emperors." Before quitting the
country he made a toilsome march along the coast, westward,
and thence, far into the desert, to visit the famous oracle of
Ammon.
C. Thirlwall, History of Greece, chapter 50.
EGYPT: B. C. 323-30.
The kingdom of the Ptolemies.
In the division of the empire of Alexander the Great between
his generals, when he died, Ptolemy Lagus--reputed to be a
natural son of Alexander's father Philip--chose Egypt (see
MACEDONIA: B. C. 323-316), with a modesty which proved to be
wise. In all the provinces of the Macedonian conquest, it was
the country most easily to be held as an independent state, by
reason of the sea and desert which separated it from the rest
of the world. It resulted from the prudence of Ptolemy that he
founded a kingdom which lasted longer and enjoyed more
security and prosperity than any other among the monarchies of
the Diadochi. He was king of Egypt, in fact, for seventeen
years before, in 307, B. C., he ventured to assume the name
(see MACEDONIA: B. C. 310-301). Meantime, he had added to his
dominion the little Greek state of Cyrene, on the African
coast with Phœnicia, Judæa, Cœle-Syria, and the island of
Cyprus. These latter became disputed territory, fought over
for two centuries, between the Ptolemies and the Seleucids,
sometimes dominated by the one and sometimes by the other (see