The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius

Front matter

of

Johan Amos Comenius

Loe, here an Exile! who to erue his God, Hath sharply tasted of proud Pashurs Rod, Whoe learning, Piety, & true worth, being knowne To all the world, makes all the world his owne.

Preface

The present version of the Didactica Magna is a close paraphrase from the original Latin in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh. The Introductions are based upon original research and on the best German authorities. They embody a fuller account of Comenius’ life and works than has hitherto been accessible to the English reader; while a part of their contents is, I believe, a fresh contribution to the biography and the historical environment of the great School Reformer.

The portrait is a reproduction of the frontispiece to Hartlib’s A Reformation of Schooles, published in 1642.

My best thanks are due to my friend and colleague, Dr. J. S. Mackay, who read over a large portion of the work in manuscript, and gave me valuable assistance on many points.

M. W. K.

Introduction I.—Biographical

I

John Amos Comenius (in Bohemian Komensky) was born on the 28th of March 1592, in the village of Nivnitz, near Ungarisch-Brod in Moravia. His father, Martin Komensky, was a miller in fairly prosperous circumstances and belonged to the religious body known as the Moravian Brethren. This community had been organised in 1547; it carried on, with modifications, the traditions of John Hus, and took a position midway between the Utraquists, his followers, and the Roman Catholics. Though the ideas of the Lutherans had not been without a decided influence, the Moravians differed from that body on certain fundamental points, such as the Doctrine of Works, and, at one period, the celibacy of the clergy. Their chief characteristic was extreme simplicity, and their great desideratum to lead a pure life, and one as far as possible in accordance with the commands of Scripture, which they interpreted in their most literal sense.

It was in this atmosphere of free Biblical inquiry that Comenius was brought up, and the result of early training can be seen in his habit of appealing to the Scriptures on every possible occasion, and of proving his most technical propositions directly from their pages.

Shortly after his son’s birth, Martin Komensky left Nivnitz and moved to Ungarisch-Brod, where he died in 1602. His wife did not survive him more than a couple of years, and shortly afterwards his two daughters Ludmilla and Susanna died also. Comenius was thus left an orphan at an early age, and his guardians appear to have robbed him of any small fortune that his father had bequeathed. This was not the only manifestation of his evil star. During the two following years, while attending the elementary school at Strasnic, he made the acquaintance of Nicolaus Drabik. It was a strange irony of fate that a wanderer like Comenius, when only eleven years old and in his native land, should commence the intimacy that was to embitter his old age in Amsterdam.

From the point of view of positive instruction this early training was unproductive, and the Latin school at Prerau, to which he was not sent till his sixteenth year, appears to have been even less efficient than the other secondary schools of the age. Comenius however, who, as we shall see, was rather inclined to underestimate the educational activity of contemporary Europe, assures us that his experience was nothing exceptional, and that he was but one of the thousands whose youth was wasted in these “slaughter-houses” of the young. Often did his eyes fill with tears when thinking of his wasted childhood, often did he vainly wish that he might live those years over again and employ them more profitably.

Viewed differently, the defects in his early education were the seeds from which sprang the whole of his didactic efforts. Considerably older than his schoolfellows, he was able to criticise the methods in use, and speedily arrived at the conclusion that the lack of progress was due more to the inefficiency of the teachers than to the idleness of their pupils. From this time onwards, full of pity for the sufferings of his fellows, he began to devise new methods of class instruction and better schemes of study. From the vivid memory of the horrors through which he had passed, of the thousand-and-one rules that had to be learned by rote before they were understood, of the monotonous study of grammar, only diversified by the maddening effort to translate Latin authors without the assistance of suitable dictionaries or commentaries, sprang that intense sympathy with beginners which characterises his whole life and gives practical worth to every precept that he enunciated.

In the Latin school he only remained for two years. He had definitely made up his mind to seek ordination as a minister of the Moravian Brethren, and needed a more advanced education than could be obtained in Bohemia. Not that the University of Prague was in any way below the standard of the age, but it was in the hands of the Utraquists, whose attitude towards the “Brethren” was by no means friendly. It was therefore to Herborn in Nassau that Comenius, then eighteen years old, turned his steps. A university had been founded in this town in 1584, and enjoyed a very high reputation. The range of subjects taught was wide, as, though great prominence was given to Theology, ample provision was made for the “Humanities” as well; and in addition it was possible to learn music and the French and Italian languages.

It was under the Rectorship of Wolfgang Ficinus that Comenius matriculated in March 1611. Of his residence at the University we unfortunately know very little; but he can scarcely have remained there for two years without coming under the influence of John Henry Alsted, and the similarity of their views and dispositions renders it probable that the two men were brought into very close contact. Although only twenty-six years old, Alsted had already a very considerable reputation, and in point of attainments was undoubtedly one of the most remarkable men of his time. His industry was so great that his contemporaries christened him Sedulitas, an anagram on the Latinised form of his name. As an etymologist he took a high place, as a writer on Didactic he ranks historically with Ratke as the immediate forerunner of Comenius, and his Encyclopædia Scientiarum Omnium, published at Herborn in 1630, proves him to have been a master in every branch of learning. The range of knowledge was limited, and to write with authority de omni scibili was not the impossibility that it now is, but a glance through the pages of this Encyclopædia shows that its author obtained a marvellous grip of every subject that he studied, and had a very unusual power of co-ordinating the mass of erudition that he possessed. Nor did his many-sidedness end here. His Triumphus Biblicus, in which he attempts to lay the foundation of all positive knowledge in the literal interpretation of Scripture, displays an aspect of his character that we do not meet in the Encyclopædia, and gives evidence of a mind imbued with the most intense mysticism.

Of the exact nature of the intercourse between Comenius and Alsted we have no direct information, but, as Alsted was in the habit of maintaining the closest relations with his pupils and is afterwards found in correspondence with Comenius, we may take it for granted that the great similarity of the views held by the two men should not be attributed to accident. The only point on which they were at actual variance was the constitution of the elementary or vernacular school. This Alsted would have restricted to the use of girls, and of boys destined for a handicraft, while Comenius insists on the necessity of giving a distinct primary education to those who are afterwards to enter a learned profession. With the exception of this difference of opinion, a large number of the most striking precepts that figure in the Great Didactic might have been taken direct from Alsted’s Encyclopædia. The man who declared that instruction in the mother tongue should precede the study of Latin, who thought that grammar was the least effective instrument in teaching a language, who proclaimed, almost in Baconian language, the doctrine of “Experience,” and who believed in method to such an extent that he drew up time-tables of the most intricate description for a day, a week, a month, and a year, assuredly played the part of a kindly foster-father to the callow educational zeal of the Herborn student.

That Comenius, while at Herborn, devoted much attention to the study of educational method, we know from his own words. Wolfgang’s Ratke’s essay on the Reformation of schools had been authorised and approved by the Universities of Jena and of Giessen in 1612, and a tractate on the new method, probably that by the Giessen professors Helwig and Jung, rapidly found its way into Comenius’ hands. To this he gratefully acknowledges his debt and attributes his efforts to reform the school at Prerau.

From Herborn he proceeded to Heidelberg, where he matriculated in June 1613. Here he appears to have devoted some attention to the study of astronomy, as we find him purchasing the original manuscript of one of Copernicus’ works. This, however, is the solitary incident that is known of his residence here.

After a journey through Europe, in the course of which he visited Amsterdam for the first time, he went back to Heidelberg. A short illness followed, possibly the result of exposure on his travels, and in 1614 he returned to Moravia on foot. He was now twenty-two years old, and, as he could not be ordained for two years, undertook the management of the school at Prerau. This was one of the many schools established by the “Unity” for the education of those of their own persuasion, and must have been rather more than an elementary school, as Comenius, who now for the first time came into contact with the practical difficulties of instruction, began to evolve an easier method for teaching Latin. To this he devoted a great deal of attention and produced a small book for beginners, afterwards printed at Prague in 1616, but which has not been preserved. This was not his first literary effort. As early as 1612, while at Herborn, he had begun to collect the materials for a Bohemian dictionary with the twofold object of purifying his native tongue and of mastering it thoroughly. As he was now old enough to commence his ministry in the Moravian Church, he was ordained in April 1616, in company with his old schoolfellow Drabik. The two following years he probably spent at Olmütz.

Of the next few years, as of the whole of the earlier portion of his life, the information to be obtained is fragmentary. In 1618 he was sent to Fulneck, where he acted as pastor to the Moravian community and was at the same time inspector of the school. During the three years that followed he devoted himself entirely to the spiritual and bodily welfare of his flock, sparing no pains to further the prosperity of the town. He even tried to introduce bee-culture, and sent to Hungary for bees, then unknown in Fulneck. His married life now began, and in the society of his wife, a Hungarian lady, Comenius spent what were probably his happiest years.

The year in which he entered upon his pastorate at Fulneck is memorable for the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War, and from this time onwards the position of the non-Catholic bodies, exposed as they were to the relentless persecution of Pope Paul V. and the Jesuits, was most precarious. Their hopes were finally overthrown by the battle of the White Mountain in November 1620, and by execution of the chief Bohemian Protestants, which followed at Prague in June 1621.

Comenius’ wanderings were now to begin. In 1621 Fulneck was plundered and burned by Spanish troops. On this occasion he lost everything that he possessed, including the greater part of his library and the manuscript of some Didactic works on which he had been engaged, and took refuge, in company with many others of the Brethren, on the estate of Karl von Zerotin. Here he remained for three years, during which time he occupied himself in reading books on education, and wrote besides several religious works in the Czech language. To this period must also be ascribed his metrical translation of the Psalms, a composition of great poetic merit; his Labyrinth of the World, an allegorical description of life, dedicated to Karl von Zerotin; and a map of Moravia that was for a long time the best in existence.

It was doubtless in this literary activity that he sought relief for the sorrow caused him by the death of his wife and his two children, who were carried off in 1622 by an epidemic that was raging through Moravia. He was thus once more left alone in the world.

In 1624, with startling rapidity, if we consider the cir- cumstances and the forlorn condition of the Brethren, he married again. His bride was Maria Dorothea Cyrill, the daughter of John Cyrill, a Moravian pastor and a former senior of the Consistory at Prague. The members of the Unity cannot have been left entirely destitute by the persecution to which they were subjected, as Maria brought her husband a small fortune. The sequel proved that marriage at such a time had been far from prudent. In the same year the order was issued that all non-Catholic preachers and pastors were to leave Bohemia within six weeks, and a few months later another mandate expelled them from Moravia as well. Karl von Zerotin had great influence with Ferdinand II., but the Jesuits were too strong for him. He received a personal injunction to cease harbouring non-Catholics on his estate, and the twenty-four ministers whom he was sheltering had to conceal themselves as best they could in caves and forests.

The Brethren now recognised that all hope of remaining in their fatherland must be relinquished, and in 1625 sent Comenius and two companions to Poland to report on the advisability of their removing thither in a body. On the way the messengers made the acquaintance of Christopher Kotter, a native of Sprottau. Kotter was a prophet, and his visions and the announcements that he had to make concerning the future of the Evangelical Church were full of interest to the Brethren. Comenius, to whom anything of a prophetic nature was always an attraction, gave a proof of his remarkable energy by translating the whole of Kotter’s prophecies into Czech, a task which took him sixteen days. After a short visit to Berlin, where there were a number of Bohemian exiles, he returned to Moravia. During the next two years the Brethren held themselves in readiness to fly at a moment’s notice. The only incident of any interest is the appearance on the scene of a prophetess, Christina Poniatowska. Christina was an hysterical girl, only sixteen years old, and her visions, like those of Kotter, dealt with the speedy restoration of the Evangelic Church, and the cessation of the persecutions to which it was being subjected. Needless to say, Comenius displayed as great an interest in her as he had done in Kotter. Already the visionary tendencies, out of which his enemies made such capital in later years, were getting possession of him.

In 1627 a few of the Evangelical Pastors, preparatory to their final departure, took refuge on the estate of George Sadowski at Slaupna, and here Comenius again took up the threads of his didactic efforts. As a slight return for the protection afforded him, John Stadius, one of the pastors, had undertaken the education of Sadowski’s three sons, and asked Comenius, whose interest in the subject was well known, to draw up a few rules for his guidance. The request was gladly complied with, and the return to his former pursuit was accentuated by the following incident.

One summer day Comenius and a few of the other pastors walked over to the castle of Wilcitz to look at the library there. Among other works of interest they found the Didactic of Elias Bodinus, which had recently been brought from Germany. The perusal of this fired Comenius to attempt a work on a similar scale in his own language. True, his Church and the institutions that it supported were falling into ruin before his eyes, but, if he might believe the prophecies of Kotter and of Poniatowska, the day was not distant when the Brethren would be restored to their native land, and then his first task would be the reorganisation of the schools. “With this end in view,” he writes, “I entered on the work with fervour, and completed as much of it as I could while I still remained in my native land.”

His efforts were soon interrupted. In 1628 all who shared the evangelic faith had definitely to leave Bohemia. Comenius, accompanied by his wife, his father-in-law, and the prophetess Poniatowska, set out for Poland, and on the 28th of March reached Lissa, a town in the province of Posen. Here, under the powerful protection of Count Raphael of Lissa, he was destined to find a home for the next twelve years, and it is to this period that his chief educational activity belongs. Though to the end of his days he never ceased to devise fresh plans for the easier instruction of the young, most of the works that made his name famous were written before 1641. There were many reasons why these years should be especially fruitful. Now for the first time since his ordination he took to teaching as a means of earning his livelihood, and, as a master of the Gymnasium at Lissa, of which he became Rector in 1636, he had ample means of putting his theories into practice, and of bringing them into harmony with the dust and friction of the class-room. To these years of actual work in a large institution is due much of the practical character of his writings, and the very faults of the Gymnasium (it had to be completely remodelled in 1635, in order to bring it into harmony with his ideas) served to show him more clearly what should be avoided. In addition to this he had far more time to devote to educational theory than at any later period of his life. Though the welfare of the Unity already absorbed a large share of his energy, he had not that weight of responsibility that made him, as its bishop, look on all else as a subsidiary task. His pansophic conceptions, that afterwards took such hold of him, were only in their infancy, and more important than all, his spirit was still unbroken. He still believed that the Evangelical religion would be restored in his native land, and that the happy days of his early ministry would be repeated. He still believed that the prophecies of Kotter and of Poniatowska would be fulfilled, and in his efforts to reform the Gymnasium at Lissa and to write suitable school-books for it, he saw nothing but a preparation for the future reformation of schools in Bohemia, and a means by which the youth of his own country might be brought up with minds well tempered to fight for their country and their Church. He accordingly applied himself to his task with great vigour. The Gymnasium at Lissa consisted of four classes, and instruction was given for five hours daily. All the time that remained to him he devoted to the working out of his ideas. The Great Didactic, his Magnum Opus, for which he had already begun to make notes at Slaupna, now began to assume a definite shape, and in order that it might embody the views of those whose opinion was most worth having, he attempted to place himself in communication with Ratke, first ascertaining that he was still alive. But Ratke, who in his characteristics resembled a vendor of quack medicines, returned no answer to Comenius’ letter. Again he wrote adjuring him, by all that was sacred, not to keep him in suspense any longer, but to give him some details of the true method that he was reported to have discovered. Again he waited in vain for an answer, and it was not till three years later that a letter from George Wincler, pastor of Goldbergen in Silesia, explained the silence. The fact was that Ratke made as great a mystery of his method as was possible, and hoped, by judiciously concealing its details and advertising its merits, to sell it for a high price to some prince or noble. Without gold he resolutely refused to speak. “What hopes,” writes Wincler, “did not the pompous eulogy of Ratke’s method by Helwig and Jung arouse? But our friend Ratke preserves his silence, and will continue to do so. Mr. Moser, the chief assistant in our school, actually went to live with him in the hope of finding out the basis of his method, but came away empty-handed.”

As a matter of fact, Comenius was acquainted with many points of the method that was so carefully shrouded, and, though he cannot resist a sneer at the system and its pretensions, never forgets to acknowledge that it was Ratke who first fired him to attempt school-reform.

Getting no answer from Ratke he now addressed a letter to John Valentine Andreae, whose works, both religious and educational, he had read with great interest. Andreae, who was then pastor of the church at Calva in the Duchy of Wittemberg, sent a prompt reply, but only to the effect that he was too old to pronounce an opinion on such matters. Greatly disappointed, Comenius wrote again, but, though the answer that he elicited was long and sympathetic, it contained nothing that could help him to put his ideas into shape.

Of greater use were the didactic works of Rhenius, Ritter, and Glaum that now came into his hands. These writers were loud in their complaints of contemporary education, and turned a search-light on the defective arrangements that Comenius saw daily in the Gymnasium. Less stimulating, perhaps, but of more definite assistance, were the writings of Eilhard Lubin and of C. Vogel. Lubin, a friend of Andreae’s, had been elected Professor of Theology at Rostock in 1605, and had brought out a parallel edition of the New Testament in Latin and Greek, to which he had prefixed some hints on the teaching of Latin to boys. Vogel, who was head-master of the Paedagogium at Göttingen, had drawn up a scheme of instruction in Latin in which he had specified the daily task for twelve months. The student was to commence by learning a list of simple words, arranged in alphabetical order with the German meanings attached, and was then to aid his memory by combining these words into sentences. In this way he claimed that a boy of moderate intelligence, by working only two hours daily, could easily learn the whole Latin language in one year. The system was probably in Comenius’ thoughts when he devised the Janua Linguarum; the claim has been made with equal assurance by all the inventors of infallible language-methods, from that day to this.

More original, and full of sound common-sense, were the ideas of J. Cecilius Frey, a physician residing in Paris. He had brought out a work on education in 1629, and this must have come into Comenius’ hands shortly after publication. According to Frey, all languages should be learned colloquially, and attention should be given to arithmetic, geography, drawing, and mechanics. In this upholder of “real studies” Comenius must have hailed a kindred spirit.

With these works before him Comenius applied himself to the double task of creating a more comprehensive and philosophically-based scheme of education than had ever before been devised, and of compiling a series of classbooks suited to the various stages of scholars. These books, while carefully adapted to the capacity of the schoolboy, were written in accordance with the philosophic principles set forth in The Great Didactic, and thus to a remarkable degree combined theory and practice. The class-books were written for the practical teacher, the Didactic was intended for the schoolmaster whose interest in his work was not confined to the school-room, and for nobles, statesmen, and philosophers who wished to reform the schools of their country, but found no scheme ready to hand that was both practical and comprehensive.

Comenius’ aims were revolutionary, and his didactic principles were capable of changing by slow degrees the aspect of civilisation, but the philosophic basis on which they rested was that of harmonious development from existing institutions. Children were to learn their lessons in less time and with less trouble. This had been suggested by previous writers. The time thus gained was to be devoted to a thorough grounding in morality and religion. This again had been frequently urged, though not so weightily or so systematically. But when we come to the introduction of “real studies,” the rudiments of which are to be taught in the nursery, and when his views on this subject gradually merge into “Pansophia” or “Universal Knowledge,” we feel that a really new element has been introduced. This element, however, contains nothing subversive. Nothing could be further removed from the method of Rousseau. Comenius starts with no fundamental condemnation of society. No brilliant paradoxes fill his pages. His reform is to be a gradual development of what already exists, and, that his suggestions may be practicable and may pave the way for a transition with as little friction as possible, he bases them on the writings of his predecessors. With some of these he was not familiar. As we shall see, in our general view of the educational systems of the age, there were writers of whom he had not heard; but, be that as it may, he had done all in his power to analyse the tendencies actually at work, and his Didactic is an endeavour to embody all that was good in existing schemes, while adding many features that were new.

From the first day of his residence in Lissa, Comenius never ceased to work at his comprehensive treatise The Great Didactic. Written in Czech, and probably completed in 1632, it remained in manuscript till 1849, when it was printed at Prague. A Latin translation, however, with several additional chapters, was published at Amsterdam in 1657, and occupies the first ninety-eight pages of the Opera Didactica Omnia.

Even before his final departure from Bohemia, Comenius had probably sketched out his educational scheme, in which he provides for the education of a child from the very hour of its birth. Six years in what he calls the Mother School, six years in the Vernacular School, and six years in the Latin School enable a young man to proceed to the University at eighteen, having had a training, though necessarily a somewhat superficial one, in every subject that possesses educational value. In accordance with this scheme Comenius prepared several guides and class-books for the use of the teachers and pupils in the various classes. The first of these, the Informatorium Skoly Materske, or Informatory of the Mother School, was written in Czech, in which language it was not published till 1858. A German translation was issued at Lissa in 1633 for the Palatine of Belz. This work, which appears in the folio of 1657 as Schola Infantia, or The School of Infancy, was primarily intended for parents, and treats at length some of the points touched on in The Great Didactic, and more particularly in chap. xxviii., Sketch of the Mother School. It is written in the voluminous style characteristic of the author, and the chapters treat of the following subjects:—

1. The greatest care should be taken of children, God’s most precious gift.

2. Why God sends so many children into the world.

3. Children stand in great need of a good education.

4. In what subjects children should be instructed.

5. How their safety and health can be attained.

6. How they can be taught to take an intelligent interest in what they see around them.

7. How they should be habituated to the actualities of life.

8. How they should be taught eloquence and the proper use of language.

9. How they can be brought up in the paths of morality.

10. How they can be imbued with piety.

11. How long they are to be detained in the Mother School.

12. How they are to be prepared for the Public Schools.

No mean scheme this for children under six years of age. Here was a great truth that Comenius was the first to enunciate. Education begins on the mother’s knee. The schools for older boys may be as good as possible, but they can never be thoroughly effective unless the children come to them possessed of an elementary grounding in each subject taught, a grounding that can only be given by the patient mother.

In this stage education cannot be organised in any cut-and-dried fashion. What is necessary is a suggestive handbook that shall tell parents what is required of them, and how these requirements can be met. It was to meet this need that the Informatory of the Mother School was composed. For the Mother School class-books were unnecessary, as the instruction given was naturally of an informal character. The children who go to the Vernacular School, however, are old enough to be arranged in definite classes, and to meet their wants Comenius wrote six classbooks, one for each class. These books, like the Informatory of the Mother School, were composed with a view to the reorganisation of Evangelist schools in Bohemia. This occasion did not come, and the books were never published. The Czech language, in which they were written, appealed to a very small audience, while the books dealing with the Latin School were of universal interest. Under pressure of other work, therefore, their author never found time to correct them, and no trace remains but their titles translated into Latin and a short description of each given by Comenius himself. The first, intended for boys in their seventh year, is the Violet-bed of the Christian Youth, containing “the pleasantest flowerets of scholastic instruction.”