§ 50. For children then Comenius gave good counsel when he would have their senses exercised on the world about them. But after all, whatever may be thought of the proposition that all knowledge comes through the senses, we must not ignore what is bequeathed to us, both in science and in literature. Comenius says: “And now I beseech you let this be our business that the schools may cease to persuade and begin to demonstrate; cease to dispute and begin to look; cease lastly to believe and begin to know. For that Aristotellical maxim ‘Discentem oportet credere, A learner must believe,’ is as tyrannical as it is dangerous; so also is that same Pythagorean ‘Ipse dixit, The Master has said it.’ Let no man be compelled to swear to his Masters words, but let the things themselves constrain the intellect.” (P. to Nat. Phil. R.) But the things themselves will not take us far. Even in Natural Science we need teachers, for Science is not reached through the senses but through the intellectual grasp of knowledge which has been accumulating for centuries. If the education of times past has neglected the senses, we must not demand that the education of the future should care for the senses only. There is as yet little danger of our thinking too much of physical education; but we sometimes hear reformers talking as if the true ideal were sketched in “Locksley Hall:”
“Iron-jointed, supple-sinew’d, they shall dive, and they shall run,
Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun,
Whistle back the parrot’s call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks;
Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books.”
There seems, however, still some reason for counting “the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child.” And the reason is that we are “the heirs of all the ages.” Our education must enable every child to enter in some measure on his inheritance; and not a few of our most precious heirlooms will be found not only in scientific discoveries but also in those great works of literature which the votaries of science are apt to despise as “miserable books.” This truth was not duly appreciated by Comenius. As Professor Laurie well says, “he accepted only in a half-hearted way the products of the genius of past ages.” (Laurie’s C., p. 22.) In his day there was a violent reaction from the Renascence passion for literature, and Comenius would entirely banish from education the only literatures which were then important, the “heathen” literatures of Greece and Rome. “Our most learned men,” says he, “even among the theologians take from Christ only the mask: the blood and life they draw from Aristotle and a crowd of other heathens.” (See Paulsen’s Gesch., pp. 312, ff.) So for Cicero and Virgil he would substitute, and his contemporaries at first seemed willing to accept, the Janua Linguarum. But though there may be much more “real” knowledge in the Janua, the classics have survived it.[82] In these days there is a passion for the study of things which in its intensity resembles the Renascence passion for literature. There is a craving for knowledge, and we know only the truths we can verify; so this craving must be satisfied, not by words, but things. And yet that domain which the physicists contemptuously describe as the study of words must not be lost sight of, indeed cannot be, either by young or old. As Matthew Arnold has said, “those who are for giving to natural knowledge the chief place in the education of the majority of mankind leave one important thing out of their account—the constitution of human nature.”
“We live by Admiration, Hope, and Love,
And e’en as these are well and wisely fixed,
In dignity of being we ascend.”
So says Wordsworth, and if this assertion cannot be verified, no more can it be disproved; that the words have become almost proverbial shows that it commends itself to the general consciousness. Whatever knowledge we may acquire, it will have little effect on our lives unless we can “relate it” (again to use Matthew Arnold’s words), “to our sense of conduct and our sense of beauty.” (Discourses in America. “Literature and Science.”) So long as we retain our sense for these, “the humanities” are safe. Like Milton we may have no inclination to study “modern Januas,” but we shall not cease to value many of the works which the Janua of Comenius was supposed to have supplanted.[83]