XVII. THE NEW SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND THE SCHOOLS…

XVII. THE NEW SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND THE SCHOOLS

THE RISE OF REALISM IN EDUCATION. As will be remembered from our study of the educational results of the Revival of Learning (chapter XI), the new schools established in the reaction against medievalism, to teach pure Latin and Greek, in time became formal and lifeless (p. 283), and their aim came to be almost entirely that of imparting a mastery of the Ciceronian style, both in writing and in speech. This idea, first clearly inaugurated by Sturm at Strassburg (R. 137), had now become fixed, and in its extreme is illustrated by the teachings of the Jesuit Campion at Prague (R. 146). As a reaction against this extreme position of the humanistic scholars there arose, during the sixteenth century, and as a further expression of the new critical spirit awakened by the Revival of Learning, a demand for a type of education which would make truth rather than beauty, and the realities of the life of the time rather than the beauties of a life of Roman days, the aim and purpose of education. This new spirit became known as Realism, was contemporaneous with the rise of scientific inquiry, and was an expression of a similar dissatisfaction with the learning of the time. As applied to education this new spirit may be said to have manifested itself in three different stages, as follows:

1. Humanistic realism. 2. Social realism. 3. Sense realism.

We will explain each of these, briefly, in order.

1. HUMANISTIC REALISM

A NEW AIM IN INSTRUCTION. Humanistic realism represents the beginning of the reaction against form and style and in favor of ideas and content. The humanistic realists were in agreement with the classical humanists that the old classical literatures and the Bible contained all that was important in the education of youth. The ancient literatures, they held, presented "not only the widest product of human intelligence, but practically all that was worthy of man's attention." The two groups differed, however, in that the classical humanists conceived the aim of education to be the mastery of the vocabulary and style of Cicero, and the production of a new race of Roman youths for a revived Latin scholarly world, while the new humanistic realists wanted to use the old literatures as a means to a new end--that of teaching knowledge that would be useful in the world in which they lived. Monroe has so well expressed the humanistic-realist attitude that a passage from his History is worth quoting here. He says:

Not only did ancient philosophy contain the true philosophy of this life, but languages were the key to the real understanding of the Christian religion. Not only did mastery of these languages give power of speech, and hence influence over one's fellows; but, if military science was to be studied, it could in no place be better searched for than in Caesar and in Xenophon; was agriculture to be practiced, no better guide was to be found than Virgil or Columella; was architecture to be mastered, no better way existed than through Vitruvius; was geography to be considered, it must be through Mela or Solinus; was medicine to be understood, no better means than Celsus existed; was natural history to be appreciated, there was no more adequate source of information than Pliny and Seneca. Aristotle furnished the basis of all the sciences, Plato of all philosophy, Cicero of all institutional life, and the Church Fathers and the Scriptures of all religion.

EXPONENTS OF HUMANISTIC REALISM. The Dutch international scholar Erasmus (1467?-1536) (p. 274), the Frenchman Rabelais (1483-1553), and the English poet Milton (1608-74) stand as the clearest representatives of this new humanistic realism.

Erasmus had clearly distinguished between the education of words and the education of things, had pointed out the ease with which real truth is learned and retained, and had urged the study of the content rather than the form of the ancient authors. In his System of Studies he said:

From these very authors (Latin and Greek), whom we read for the sake of improving our language, incidentally, in no small degree is a knowledge of things gathered.

In his Ciceronian he had ridiculed those who mistook the form for the spirit of the ancients.

The French non-conforming monk, curé, physician, and university scholar, François Rabelais, in his satirical Life of Gargantua (1535) and The Heroic Deeds of Pantagruel (1533) had set forth, even more clearly, the idea of obtaining from a study of the ancient authors (R. 210) knowledge that would be useful. Writing largely in the character of a clown and a fool, because such was a safer method, he protested against the formal, shallow, and insincere life of his age. He made as vigorous a protest against medievalism and formalism as he dared, for he lived in a time when new ideas were dangerous commodities for one to carry about or to try to express. He ridiculed the old scholastic learning, set forth the idea of using the old classics for realistic as well as humanistic ends, and also advocated physical, moral, social, and religious education in the spirit of the best writers and teachers of the Italian Renaissance. His book was extensively read and had some influence in shaping thinking, though Rabelais's importance in the history of education lies rather in his influence on later educational thinkers than on the life of his time.

Perhaps the clearest example of humanistic realism is found in the writings of the English poet and humanitarian, John Milton. His Tractate on Education (1644) was extensively read, and was influential in shaping educational practice in the non-conformist secondary academies which arose a little later in England. Still later his ideas indirectly somewhat influenced American development.

Milton first gives us an excellent statement of the new religious-civic aim of post-Reformation education (R. 211), and then points out the defects of the existing education, whereby boys "spend seven or eight years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latine and Greek, as might be learnt otherwise easily and delightfully in one year." He then presents his plan for "a compleat and generous Education" for "noble and gentle youths," and tells "how all this may be done between twelve and one and twenty, less time than is now bestowed in pure trifling at Grammar and Sophistry." The course of study he outlines (R. 212) is enormous. The first year, that is beginning at twelve, the boy is to learn Latin grammar, arithmetic, and geometry, and to read simple Latin and Greek. During the next three or four years the pupil is to master Greek, and to study agriculture, geography, natural philosophy, physiology, mathematics, fortification, engineering, architecture, and natural history, all by reading the chief writings of the ancients, in prose and poetry, on these subjects. During the remaining years to twenty-one the pupil, similarly, is to obtain ethical instruction from the Greeks and the Bible; learn Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and Saxon law; learn Italian and Hebrew; and study economics, politics, history, logic, rhetoric, and poetry by reading selected ancient authors. What Rabelais suggested in jest for his giant, Milton adopted as a program for the school. In addition, in thoroughly characteristic modern English fashion, he makes careful provision for daily exercise and play. Aside, though, from its impossibility of accomplishment except by a superior few, Milton's plan is thoroughly representative of the new humanistic-realistic point of view-that is, that education should impart useful information, though the information as Milton conceived it was to be drawn almost entirely from the books of the ancients.

EDUCATIONAL RESULTS OF HUMANISTIC REALISM. The importance of humanistic realism in the history of education lies largely in that it was the first of a series of reactions that led later to sense-realism--that is, to the study of science and the application of scientific method in the schools.

In England it possesses still larger importance. Milton had called his institution an "Academy." [1] After the restoration of the Stuarts (Charles II, 1660), some two thousand non-conforming clergymen were "dispossessed" by the Act of Conformity (1662; R. 166), and soon after this the children of Non-Conformists were excluded from the grammar schools and universities. Many of these clergymen now turned to teaching as a means of earning a livelihood and serving their people, and the ideas of the non-conformist Milton were influential in turning the schools thus established even further toward the study of useful subjects. Many of the new schools offered instruction in the modern languages, logic, rhetoric, ethics, geography, astronomy, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, surveying, navigation, history, oratory, economics, and natural and moral philosophy, as well as the old classical subjects. All teaching, too, was done in English, and the study of English language and literature was emphasized. This made these non-conformist academies in many respects superior to the older Latin grammar schools. After the enactment of the Toleration Act, in 1689, these schools were allowed to incorporate and were gradually absorbed into the existing Latin grammar-school system of England, but unfortunately without producing much change in the character of these older institutions.

The idea of offering instruction in these new studies was in time carried to America, where better results were obtained. At first a few of the subjects, such as the mathematical studies, surveying, navigation, and English, were introduced into the existing Latin grammar or other schools of secondary grade. Especially was this true in the colonies south of New England. After 1751, and especially after about 1780, distinct Academies arose in the United States (chapter XVIII), whose purpose was to offer instruction in all these new subjects of study. From these our modern high schools have been derived.

II. SOCIAL REALISM

MONTAIGNE AND LOCKE. Social realism represents a still further reaction away from the humanistic schools. It was the natural reaction of practical men of the new world against a type of education that tended to perpetuate the pedantry of an earlier age, by devoting its energies to the production of the scholar and professional man to the neglect of the man of affairs. The social realists were small in number, but powerful because of their important social connections and wealth, and they were very determined to have an education suited to their needs, even if they had to create it themselves (R. 213). The French nobleman, scholar, author, and civic officer, M. de Montaigne (1533-92), and the English philosopher, John Locke (1632-1704), were the clearest exponents of this new point of view, though it found expression in the writings of many others. Each declared for a practical, useful type of education for the young boy who was to live the life of a gentleman in the world of affairs.

Neither had any sympathy with the colleges and grammar schools of the time (R. 214), and both rejected the school for the private tutor. This tutor must be selected with great care, and first of all must be a well-bred gentleman--a man, as Montaigne says, "who has rather a well-made than a well-filled head" (R. 215). Locke cautions that "one fit to educate and form the Mind of a young Gentleman is not every where to be found," and of the common type of teacher he asks, "When such an one has empty'd out into his Pupil all the Latin and Logick he has brought from the University, will that Furniture make him a fine Gentleman?" (R. 216).

Both condemn the school training of their time, and both urge that the tutor train the judgment and the understanding rather than the memory. To impart good manners rather than mere information, and to train for life in the world rather than for the life of a scholar, seem to both of fundamental importance in the education of a boy. "The great world," says Montaigne, "is the mirror wherein we are to behold ourselves. In short, I would have this to be the book my young gentleman should study with the most attention." "Latin and Learning," says Locke, "make all the Noise; and the main Stress is laid upon Proficiency in Things a great Part whereof belong not to a Gentleman's Calling; which is to have the Knowledge of a Man of Business, a Carriage suitable to his Rank, and to be eminent and useful to his Country, according to his Station" (R. 216). Both emphasized the importance of travel abroad as an important factor in the education of a gentleman.

THEIR PLACE IN THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION. Both Montaigne and Locke were concerned alone with the education of the sons of gentlemen, individuals now coming rapidly into prominence to dispute place in the world of affairs with the higher nobility on the one hand and the clergy on the other. With the education of any other class Montaigne never concerned himself. As for Locke, he was later appointed a King's Commissioner, with certain oversight of the poor, and for the education of the children of such he drew up a careful report which, in true English fashion, provided for their training in workhouses and their apprenticeship to a trade (R. 217). He wrote nothing with regard to the education of the children of middle-class workers and tradesmen. Both authors also deal entirely with the work of a tutor, and not with the work of a teacher in a school. Neither deals specifically with elementary education, but rather with what, in Europe, would be called the secondary-school period in the education of a boy. Locke was extensively read by the gentry of England, as expressive of the best current practice of their class, and his ideas as to education were also of some influence in shaping the instruction of the non-conformist teachers in the academies there. His place in the history of education is also of some importance, as we shall point out later, for the disciplinary theory of education which he set forth. Still more, Locke later exerted a deep influence on the writings of Rousseau (chapter XXI), and hence helped materially to shape modern educational theory.

THE NEW SCHOOLS FOR THE SONS OF THE GENTRY. Both Montaigne and Locke, in their emphasis on the importance of a practical education for the social and political demands of a gentleman concerned with the affairs of the modern world, represent a still further reaction against the humanistic schools of the time than did the humanistic realists whom we have just considered. Still more, both are expressive of the attitude of the nobility and gentry of the time, who had almost deserted the schools as pedantic institutions of little value. France was then the great country of Europe, and French language, French political ideas, French manners, and French tutors found their way into all neighboring lands. A new social and political ideal was erected--that of the polished man of the world, who could speak French, had traveled, knew history and politics, law and geography, heraldry and genealogy, some mathematics and physics with their applications, could use the sword and ride, was adept in games and dancing, and was skilled in the practical affairs of life.

To give such training the French created numerous Academies in their cities. A writer of 1649 states that there were twelve such institutions at that time in Paris alone. Not infrequently some nobleman was at the head. Boys were first educated at home by tutors, and then sent to the Academy to be trained in riding, the military arts, fortification, mathematics, the modern languages, and the many graces of a gentleman. The Englishman, John Evelyn, who was in France in 1644, thus describes the French Academies:

At the Palais Cardinal in Paris I frequently went to see them ride and exercise the Greate Horse, especially at the Academy of Monsieur du Plessis, and de Veau, whose scholes of that art are frequented by the Nobility; and here also young gentlemen are taught to fence, daunce, play on musiq, and something in fortifications and mathematics.

At Richelieu, near Tours, belongs an Academy where besides the exercise of the horse, armes, dauncing, etc., all the sciences are taught in the vulgar French by Professors stipendiated by the great Cardinal. The Academy of Juilly included some study of physical science, mathematics, geography, heraldry, French history, Italian, and Spanish, besides the riding and gentlemanly arts.

In England the tutor in the home became the type form for the education of the sons of a gentleman, the boys frequently being sent abroad to complete their education. In German lands, which in the seventeenth century were in close sympathy with French life and thought, Heidelberg being a center for the dissemination of French ideas, the French academy idea was copied, and what were called Ritterakademieen (knightly academies) were founded in the numerous court cities [2] for the education, along such lines, of the sons of the many grades of the German nobility. Between 1620 and 1780, before the rise of the German nationalistic movement which sought to replace French ideas by native German culture, was the great period of these German court schools, and during this period they bestowed on the sons of the German nobility the courtly and military education of the French academies. The education of the nobility was in consequence segregated from the intellectual life of other classes. "Gallants" and "pedants" were the respective outputs of the two types of schools.

III. SENSE REALISM

THE NEW EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THIS GROUP. This represented a still further and more important step in advance than either of the preceding. In a very direct way sense realism in education was an outgrowth of the organizing work of Francis Bacon. Its aim was:

(1) To apply the same inductive method formulated by Bacon for the sciences to the work of education, with a view to organizing a general method which would greatly simplify the instructional process, reduce educational work to an organized system, and in consequence effect a great saving of time; and

(2) To replace the instruction in Latin by instruction in the vernacular, [3] and to substitute new scientific and social studies, deemed of greater value for a modern world, for the excessive devotion to linguistic studies.

The sixteenth century had been essentially a period of criticism in education, and the leading thinkers on education, as in other lines of intellectual activity, were not in the schools. In the seventeenth century we come to a new group of men who attempted to think out and work out in practice the ideas advanced by the critics of the preceding period. In the seventeenth century we have, in consequence, the first serious attempt to formulate an educational method since the days of the Athenian Greeks and the treatise of Quintilian.

The possibility of formulating an educational method that would simplify the educational process and save time in instruction, appealed to a number of thinkers, in different lands. This group of thinkers, due to their new methods of attack and thought, the German historian of education, Karl von Raumer, has called Innovators. The chief pedagogical ideas of the Innovators were:

1. That education should proceed from the simple to the complex, and the concrete to the abstract.

2. That things should come before rules.

3. That students should be taught to analyze, rather than to construct.

4. That each student should be taught to investigate for himself, rather than to accept or depend upon authority.

5. That only that should be memorized which is clearly understood and of real value.

6. That restraint and coercion should be replaced by interest in the studies taught.

7. That the vernacular should be used as the medium for all instruction.

8. That the study of real things should precede the study of words about things.

9. That the order and course of Nature be discovered, and that a method of teaching based on this then be worked out.

10. That physical education should be introduced for the sake of health, and not merely to teach gentlemanly sports.

11. That all should be provided with the opportunity for an education in the elements of knowledge. This to be in the vernacular.

12. That Latin and Greek be taught only to those likely to complete an education, and then through the medium of the mother tongue.

13. That a uniform and scientific method of instruction could be worked out, which would reduce education to a science and serve as a guide for teachers everywhere.

The Englishman, Francis Bacon, whom we have previously considered; the German, Wolfgang Ratichius (or Ratke); and the Moravian bishop and teacher, Johann Amos Comenius, stand as perhaps the clearest examples of this organizing tendency in education. Ratke and Comenius will be considered here as types.

WOLFGANG RATKE. Bacon had believed that the new scientific knowledge should be incorporated into the instruction of the schools, and had suggested, in his Advancement of Learning (1603-05), a broader course of study for them, and better facilities for scientific investigation and teaching. While Bacon was not a teacher and did not write specifically on school instruction, his writings nevertheless deeply influenced many of those who followed his thinking.

The first writer to apply Bacon's ideas to education and to attempt to evolve a new method and a new course of instruction was a German, by the name of Wolfgang Ratke (1571-1635). While studying in England he had read Bacon's Advancement of Learning, and from Bacon's suggestions Ratke tried to work out a new method of instruction. This he offered, and with much secrecy, unsuccessfully for sale at various German courts. Finally he issued an "Address" to the princes of Germany, assembled at an Electoral Diet at Frankfurt-am-Main, in 1612. In this he told them of his new method, which followed Nature, and declared that it was "fraught with momentous consequences" for mankind. He claimed that he could:

1. By using the German language in the earlier years: (a) Bring about the use of one common language among the German people, and thus lay the basis for unity in government and religion; (b) Impart to children a knowledge of the useful arts and sciences.

2. Teach Latin. Greek, and Hebrew better, and in far less time, than had previously been required for one language only.

This method he offered to sell to the princes, and he would impart it only on the promise that it be not revealed to others. Two professors were appointed to examine Ratke, and they reported very favorably on his plan.

In 1617 Ratke published, in Leipzig, his Methodus Nova, which was the pioneer work on school method, and is Ratke's chief claim to mention here. In this he laid down the fundamental rules for teaching, as he had thought them out. They were as follows:

1. The order of Nature was to be sought and followed.

2. One thing at a time, and that mastered thoroughly.

3. Much repetition to insure retention.

4. Use of the mother tongue for all instruction, and the languages to be taught through it.

5. Everything to be taught without constraint. The teacher to teach, and the scholars to keep order and discipline.

6. No learning by heart. Much questioning and understanding.

7. Uniformity in books and methods a necessity.

8. Knowledge of things to precede words about things.

9. Individual experience and contact and inquiry to replace authority.

We see here the essentials of the Baconian ideas, as well as the foreshadowings of many other subsequent reforms in teaching method.

During the next half-dozen years Ratke was a much-interviewed person, as the idea of a more general education of the people, advanced by the Protestant reformers, had appealed strongly to the imagination of many of the German princes. Finally the necessary money was raised to establish an experimental school, [4] printing-presses were set up to print the necessary books, the people of the village of Köthen, in Anhalt, were ordered to send their children for instruction, and the school opened with Ratke in charge and amid great expectations and enthusiasm. A year and a half later the school had failed, through the bad management of Ratke and his inability to realize the extravagant hopes he had aroused, and he himself had been thrown into prison as an impostor by the princes. This ended Ratke's work. He is important chiefly for his pioneer work as the forerunner of the greatest educator of the seventeenth century.

JOHANN AMOS COMENIUS. We now reach not only the greatest representative of sense realism, both in theory and practice, before the latter part of the eighteenth century, but also one of the commanding figures in the history of education. Comenius was born at Nivnitz, in Moravia, in 1592. As a member, pastor, and later bishop of the Moravian church, and as a follower of John Huss, he suffered greatly in the Catholic-Protestant warfare which raged over his native land during the period of the Thirty Years' War. His home twice plundered, his books and manuscripts twice burned, his wife and children murdered, and himself at times a fugitive and later an exile, Comenius gave his long life to the advancement of the interests of mankind through religion and learning. Driven from his home and country, he became a scholar of the world.

While a student at the University of Nassau, at the age of twenty, he read and was deeply impressed by the "Address" of Ratke. Bacon's Novum Organum, which appeared when he was twenty-eight, made a still deeper impression upon him. He seems to have been familiar also with the writings of the educational reformers of his time in all European lands. He traveled extensively, and maintained a large correspondence with the scholars of his time. He was master of a Latin school in Moravia from the age of twenty-two to twenty-four, when he was ordained as a pastor of the Moravian Church. Eight years later, in 1632, he was banished, with all Protestant ministers, from his native land, and while an exile for a time took charge of a school at Lissa, in Poland. Here he worked out, in practice, the great work on method which he later published. In 1638 he was invited to reform the schools of Sweden; in 1641 he visited England, in connection with a plan for the organization of all knowledge; he spent the next eight years working at school reform in Sweden; from 1650 to 1654 he was in charge of a school at Saros-Patak, in Hungary, where he worked out his famous textbooks for teaching language; he was consulted with reference to the presidency of Harvard College, in 1654; the same year he returned to Lissa, and once more lost his books and manuscripts and was made a homeless exile; and finally he found a patron and asylum in Amsterdam, where he died in 1671, at the age of seventy-nine. The verse beneath his portrait seems an especially appropriate commentary on his life.

COMENIUS AND EDUCATIONAL METHOD. While teaching at Lissa, in Poland, Comenius had formulated for himself the principles underlying school instruction, as he saw it, in a lengthy book which he called The Great Didactic. [5] The title page (R. 218) and the table of contents (R. 219) will give an idea as to its scope. In this work Comenius formulated and explained his two fundamental ideas, namely, that all instruction must be carefully graded and arranged to follow the order of nature, and that, in imparting knowledge to children, the teacher must make constant appeal through sense-perception to the understanding of the child. We have here the fundamental ideas of Bacon applied to the school, and Comenius stands as the clearest exponent of sense realism in teaching up to his time, and for more than a century afterward.

Deeply religious by nature and training, Comenius held the Holy Scriptures to contain the beginning and end of all learning; to know God aright he held to be the highest aim; and with true Protestant fervor he contended that the education of every human being was a necessity if mankind was to enter into its religious inheritance, and piety, virtue, and learning were to be brought to their fruition. Unlike those who were enthusiasts for religious education only, Comenius saw further, and held an ideal of service to the State and Church here below for which proper training was needed. Still more, he believed in the education of human beings simply because they were human beings, and not merely for salvation, as Luther had held.

Comenius was the first to formulate a practicable school method, working along the new lines marked out by Bacon. He had no psychology to guide him, and worked largely by analogies from nature. A great idea with him was that we should study and follow nature, and this led him to the conclusions that education should proceed from the easy to the difficult, the near to the remote, the general to the special, and the known to the unknown, and that the great business of the teacher was imparting and guiding, and not storing the memory. These conclusions seem commonplaces to us of to-day, but what is commonplace today was genius three hundred years ago. To select the subject-matter of instruction carefully and on the basis of utility, to eliminate needless materials, not to attempt too much at a time, to use concrete examples, to have frequent repetitions to fix ideas, to advance by carefully graded steps, to tie new knowledge to old, to learn by observing and doing, and to learn by use rather than by precept--were still other of the present-day commonplaces which Comenius worked out and formulated in his Didactica Magna. [6] His plea for a mild and gentle discipline in place of the brutality of his time, his emphasis of the vernacular and the realities of life, his conception as to the importance of early education, his careful gradation of the school, and his ability to see the usefulness of Latin without over-emphasizing its importance--all stamp him as a capable and practical schoolmaster who saw deeply into the nature of the educational process.

COMENIUS' IDEAS AS TO THE ORGANIZATION OF SCHOOLS. In his Didactica Magna Comenius divided the school life of a child into four great divisions. The first concerned the period from infancy to the age of six, which he called The Mother School. For this period he wrote The School of Infancy (1628), a book intended primarily for parents, and one of such deep insight and fundamental importance that parents and teachers may still read it with interest and profit. In it he anticipated many of the ideas of the kindergarten of to-day. The next division was The Vernacular School, which covered the period from the ages of six to twelve. For this period six classes were to be provided, and the emphasis was to be on the mother tongue. This school was to be for all, of both sexes, and in it the basis of an education for life was to be given. It was to teach its pupils to read and write the mother tongue; enough arithmetic for the ordinary business of life, and the commonly used measures; to sing, and to know certain songs by rote; to know about the real things of life; the Catechism and the Bible; a general knowledge of history, and especially the creation, fall, and redemption of man; the elements of geography and astronomy; and a knowledge of the trades and occupations of life; all of which, says Comenius, can be taught better through the mother tongue than through the medium of the Latin and Greek. In scope this school corresponds with the vernacular school of modern Europe.

The next school was The Latin School, covering the years from twelve to eighteen, and in this German, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew were to be taught, by improved methods, and with physics and mathematics added. This school he divided into six classes, named from the principal study in each, as follows: (1) Grammar, (2) Physics, (3) Mathematics, (4) Ethics, (5) Dialectics, (6) Rhetoric. He also later outlined a plan for a six-class Gymnasium for Saros-Patak (R. 220), culminating in a seventh year for preparation for the ministry, which was an improvement on the Latin School and very modern in character. Had such a school become common, secondary education in Europe might have been a century in advance of where the nineteenth century found it. The Latin school was to be attended only by those of ability who were likely to enter the service of Church or State, or who intended to pass on to the University. This last was to cover the period from eighteen to twenty-four. Unlike all educational practice of his time and later, Comenius here provides for an educational ladder of the present-day American type, wholly unlike the European two-class school system which (p. 353) later evolved.

COMENIUS' WORK IN REFORMING LANGUAGE TEACHING. At the time Comenius lived and wrote, the languages constituted almost the only subject of study, and Latin grammar was the great introductory subject. The mediaeval grammars (Donatus; Alexander de Villa Dei; pp. 156, 155) had been so poor that the instruction was difficult and, in consequence, long drawn out. Lily's Latin Grammar (p. 276), published in 1513, and Melanchthon's Latin Grammar, published in 1525, had represented marked advances. Still the subject remained difficult, even when taught from these new types of grammars. Comenius early became convinced, as a result of his teaching and studies in educational method, that the ancient classical authors were not only too difficult for boys beginning the study of Latin, but that they also did not contain the type of real knowledge he felt should be taught in the schools. He accordingly set to work to construct a series of introductory Latin readers which would form a graded introduction to the study of Latin, and which would also introduce the pupil to the type of world knowledge and scientific information he felt should be taught.

His plan eventually embraced a graded series of five books, as follows:

1. The Orbis Sensualium Pictus, or the World of Sense Objects Pictured. This was an illustrated primer and first reader, which appeared in 1658, and was the first illustrated book ever written for children (R. 221).

2. The Vestibulum (Vestibule, or gate). An easy first reader, consisting of but a few hundred of the most commonly used Latin words and sentences, with a translation into the vernacular in parallel columns. This book required about a half-year for its completion.

3. The Janua Linguarum Reserata, or Gate of Languages Unlocked. This was the first of the series printed (1631), the Vestibulum being an easy introduction to it, and the Orbis Pictus being the Janua simplified and illustrated. The Janua contained some eight thousand Latin words, arranged in simple sentences, with the vernacular equivalent in parallel columns; included information on a variety of subjects; [7] and was a regular Noah's Ark for vocabulary purposes. It embraced sufficient reading material and grammar for a year.

4. The Atrium. This was an expansion of the Janua, and treated the same topics more in detail. It was intended to be an advanced reader, based, as was the Janua, on studies about the real things of life. The vocabulary now was Latin-Latin, instead of Latin-vernacular.

5. The Thesaurus, which was never completed, but was planned to be a collection of graded extracts from easy Latin authors--Cornelius Nepos, Caesar, Cicero, Sallust, Vergil, Horace, Pliny--to furnish the needed reading material for the three upper years of the Latin School.

THE TEXTBOOKS ILLUSTRATED. Beginning in the Janua, and afterwards in the Vestibulum and Orbis Pictus as well, Comenius not only simplified the teaching of Latin by producing the best textbooks for instruction in the subject the world had ever known, but he also shifted the whole emphasis in instruction from words to things, and made the teaching of scientific knowledge and useful world information the keynote of his work. The hundred different chapters of the Janua, and the hundred and fifty-one chapters of the Orbis Pictus, were devoted to imparting information as to all kinds of useful subjects. The following selections from the chapter titles of the Orbis Pictus illustrate how large a place the new scientific studies occupied in his conception of the school:

The World Birds Weaving Philosophy The Heavens Cattle Tailor Prudence Fire Fish Barber Diligence Wind Parts of Man Schoolmaster Temperance Water Flesh and Bowels Shoemaker Fortitude Clouds Chanels and Bones Carpenter Humanity Earth Senses Potter Justice Fruits Deformities Printing Consanguinity Metals Husbandry Geometry A City Trees Bees and Honey The Planets Merchandizing Herbs Butchery Eclipses A Burial Flowers Cookery Europe Religious Forms

The accompanying illustrations (Figs. 126, 127) reveal the nature of the text-books he prepared. (See also R. 221 for four additional pages of illustrations from the Orbis Pictus.)

The success of these textbooks was immediate and very great. Within a short time after the publication of the Janua it had been translated into Flemish, Bohemian, English, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latin, Polish, Spanish, and Swedish, as well as into Arabic, Mongolian, Russian, and Turkish. The Orbis Pictus was an even greater success. [8] It went through many editions, in many languages; stood without a competitor in Europe for a hundred and fifteen years; and was used as an introductory textbook for nearly two hundred years. An American edition was brought out in New York City, as late as 1810.

Thousands of parents, who knew nothing of Comenius and cared nothing for his educational ideas, bought the book for their children because they found that they liked the pictures and learned the language easily from it. [9]

PLACE AND INFLUENCE OF COMENIUS. Comenius stands in the history of education in a position of commanding importance. He introduces the whole modern conception of the educational process, and outlines many of the modern movements for the improvement of educational procedure. What Petrarch was to the revival of learning, what Wycliffe was to religious thought, what Copernicus was to modern science, and what Bacon and Descartes were to modern philosophy, Comenius was to educational practice and thinking (R. 222). The germ of almost all eighteenth- and nineteenth- century educational theory is to be found in his work, and he, more than any one before him and for at least two centuries after him, made an earnest effort to introduce the new science studies into the school. Far more liberal than his Lutheran or Calvinistic or Anglican or Catholic contemporaries, he planned his school for the education of youth in religion and learning and to fit them for the needs of a modern world. Unlike the textbooks of his time, and for more than a century afterward, his were free from either sectarian bigotry or the intense and gloomy atmosphere of the age.

Yet Comenius lived at an unfortunate period in the history of human progress. The early part of the seventeenth century was not a time when an enthusiastic and aggressive and liberal-minded reformer could expect much of a hearing anywhere in western Europe. The shock of the contest into which western Christendom had been plunged by the challenge of Luther had been felt in every corner of Europe, and the culmination of a century of warfare was then raging, with all the bitterness and brutality that a religious motive develops. Christian Europe was too filled with an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust and hatred to be in any mood to consider reforms for the improvement of the education of mankind. As a result the far-reaching changes in method formulated by Comenius made but slight impression on his contemporaries; his attempt to introduce scientific studies awakened suspicion, rather than interest; and the new method which he formulated in his Great Didactic was ignored and the book itself was forgotten for centuries. His great influence on educational progress was through the reform his textbooks worked in the teaching of Latin, and the slow infiltration into the schools of the scientific ideas they contained. As a result, many of the fundamentally sound reforms for which he stood had to be worked out anew in the nineteenth century. It is sad to contemplate how far our western world might have been advanced in its educational organization and scientific progress, by the close of the eighteenth century, had it been in a mood to receive and utilize the reforms in aims and methods, and to accept the new scientific subject-matter, proposed and worked out by this far-sighted Moravian teacher. Religious bigotry has, in all lands and ages, proved itself one of the most serious of all obstacles in the path of human progress.

IV. REALISM AND THE SCHOOLS

THE VERNACULAR SCHOOLS. The ideas for which the realists just described had stood were adopted in the people's schools but slowly, and came only after long waiting. The final incorporation of science instruction into elementary education did not come until the nineteenth century, and then was an outgrowth of the reform work of Pestalozzi on the one hand, and the new social, political, economic, and industrial forces of a modern world on the other.

The Peace of Westphalia (1648), which closed a century of bitter and vindictive religious warfare, was followed by another century of hatred, suspicion, and narrow religious intolerance and reaction. All parties now adopted an extremely conservative attitude in matters of religion and education, and the protection of orthodoxy became the chief purpose of the school. Reading, religion, a little counting and writing, and, in Teutonic lands, music, came to constitute the curriculum of such elementary vernacular schools as had come to exist, and the religious Primer and the Bible became the great school textbooks. The people were poor, much of Europe was impoverished and depopulated as a result of long-continued religious strife, the common people still occupied a very low social position, there were as yet no qualified teachers, and no need for general education aside from religion. Still more, during more than a thousand years the Church had established the tradition of providing free education, and when the governing authorities of the States which turned to Protestantism had taken from the Church both the opportunity to continue the schools and the wealth with which to maintain them, they were seldom willing to tax themselves to set up institutions to continue the work formerly done gratis by the Church. In consequence, regardless of Protestant educational theory as to the need for general education, but little progress in providing vernacular schools was made during the whole of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Here and there in Teutonic lands, however, the new studies found an occasional patron. In 1619 schools were organized for the little Duchy of Weimar (p. 317) by a pupil of Ratke, and sense realism was given a place in them. The schoolmaster, Andreas Reyher, who in 1642 drew up the Schule Methodus "the actual title of that book was 'Schulmethodus" for Duke Ernest of Saxe-Gotha and Altenburg, was familiar with the work of both Ratke and Comenius, and made provision for instruction in "the natural and useful sciences" (R. 163) for Duke Ernest's children. Here and there a few other attempts to provide schools and add instruction in the new Realien were made. The number of such attempts was not large, but their work was influential, and as a result vernacular schools and science instruction finally became established among German-speaking peoples before they did in any other land.

THE SECONDARY SCHOOLS. The influence of Milton's Tractate on the non- conformist Academies of England has been traced, and the transfer of the idea of instruction in the new mathematical, scientific, literary, historical, and political subjects to the new American Academies has been mentioned. That these new studies also entered into the education of a gentleman in England and France, under the private-tutor and the courtly- academy system, and were copied from the French and constituted a large part of the instruction organized for the Ritterakademieen of the numerous court cities in German lands, has also been mentioned. In both England and France such private instruction exerted but little influence on the existing Latin grammar schools, and in consequence the schools of both countries remained largely unchanged in direction and purpose until the second half of the nineteenth century. In German lands the Ritterakademieen idea experienced a further development, which proved to be of large importance for the future of German education.

FRANCKE'S "INSTITUTIONS." With the introduction of French ideas and training into the German courts, French skepticism in matters of religion developed in the court circles. Under the influence of a pious Lutheran clergyman, Philip Spener (1635-1705), who tried to emphasize religion as an affair of the heart rather than the head; and especially as a result of the work of his spiritual successor, Augustus Hermann Francke, a movement arose in German lands, during the closing years of the seventeenth century, which became known as Pietism. [10] Disgusted with the lifeless and insincere religion of the time, these two strove to substitute a religion of both head and heart. In 1695, moved by pity for the poor, Francke established at Halle the first of his famous "Institutions,"--a school for poor children. A pay school for the well-to-do was soon added, and soon another school for the children of nobility. An orphan school also was in time provided. The school for the poor developed into a vernacular or Burgher (volks; peoples) school; the school for the pay pupils into a Latin School, or Gymnasium; and the school for nobles into a higher scientific school, or Pädagogium as it was called. At first Francke encountered some theological opposition, but the "Institutions" prospered, and at the time of his death contained over 2200 pupils, and over 300 teachers, workers, and attendants.

The interesting thing about Francke's work was the courses of instruction he provided for his schools. [11] In the Burgher School he gave the children instruction in history, geography, and animal life, in addition to the reading, writing, counting, music, and religion of the usual German vernacular school. Into the Gymnasium he introduced instruction in history, geography, music, science, and mathematics, in addition to the usual Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He also changed the purpose of the language instruction. Greek was studied to be able to read the New Testament in the original, and Hebrew better to understand the Old. The Pädagogium was provided with a botanical garden, a cabinet of natural history, physical apparatus, a laboratory for the study of chemistry and anatomy, and a workshop for turning and glass-cutting. Independent of the work of Comenius, but as an outgrowth of the new movement for the study of science now beginning to influence educational thought, we have here the most important attempt at the introduction into the school of sense realism, or Realien, as the Germans say, that the modern world had so far witnessed. In 1697 Francke added a Seminarium Praeceptorium, to train teachers in his new ideas. This was the first teachers' training- school in German lands, and the teachers he trained served to scatter his educational ideas over the German States. [12]

THE FIRST REALSCHULE. Associated with Francke as a teacher was one Christopher Semler (1669-1740), who became deeply interested in the new studies of the secondary school. In 1706 Semler had submitted a plan to the government of Magdeburg for the teaching of the practical studies. This was referred to the Berlin Society of Sciences, which approved the plan, and later elected Semler to membership in the Society. For years Semler continued as a teacher at Halle, but without carrying the idea far enough to create a new type of school. In 1739 Semler published a paper "Upon the Mathematical, Mechanical, and Agricultural Real School in the City of Halle," in which he described the instruction given there. This was probably the first use of the term "real school" (Realschule). The important subjects described as taught, aside from religion, were "the useful and in daily life wholly indispensable sciences," such as mathematics, drawing, geography, history, natural history, agriculture, and economics, with much emphasis on observation by the pupils.

The work at Halle soon stimulated complaints as to the existing Latin schools, where children, destined for business or the service of the State, were kept trying to learn Latin, "to the neglect of more practical and more useful studies." The usefulness of the new real studies now began to be more correctly estimated, and the conviction gradually grew that those boys who were destined for trade--now a rapidly increasing number-- should not be obliged to follow the same course as those destined to be scholars. In 1720 Rector Gesner, of the gymnasium at Rotenburg, wrote, rather sarcastically:

The one class, who will not study, but will become tradesmen, merchants, or soldiers, must be instructed in writing, arithmetic, writing letters, geography, description of the world, and history. The other class may be trained for studying.

In 1742 the Rector at Dresden, Schöttgen, issued a "Humble proposal for the special class in public city schools" to provide for those children "who are to remain without (that is, cannot learn) Latin." Instead of forcing them to attempt to learn Donatus, which he said was useless for them, he urged that a special class (school) be organized to train them to become useful merchants, artists, and mechanics. In 1751 Rector Henzky, of Prenzlau, issued a treatise to show "That Real schools can and must become common." In 1756 Gesner, professor at the new University of Göttingen, in a pamphlet "On the organization of a gymnasium" (R. 223), urged that there were three classes of youths for whom schools should be provided, one of which needed the Realschule.

In 1747 a clergyman by the name of Julius Hecker (1707-1768), who had been a pupil in, and later had taught in Francke's "'Institutions," went to Berlin and opened there the first distinct German Realschule. In this school Hecker provided instruction in religion, ethics, German, French, Latin, mathematics, drawing, history, geography, mechanics, architecture, and a knowledge of nature and of the human body. Classes were organized in architecture, agriculture, bookkeeping, manufacturing, and mining. The school prospered from the first, and in time became the "Royal Realschule" of Berlin. In answer to a growing demand for advanced education for that constantly increasing number of youths destined for the trades or a mercantile career, the realschule idea was copied in a number of the important cities of Germany. Thus early--a century in advance of other nations, and a century and a quarter ahead of the United States--did Prussia lay the foundations of that scientific and technical education which, later on, did so much toward creating modern industrial Germany.

THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE NEW SCIENTIFIC LEARNING. Though the theological persecution of scientific workers largely died out after about the middle of the seventeenth century, and was never much of a factor in lands which had embraced some form of Protestantism, the new sciences nevertheless made but little headway in the universities until after the beginning of the eighteenth century. Up to the close of the seventeenth century the universities in all lands continued to be dominated by their theological faculties, and instruction still remained largely encompassed by mediaevalism. England represents perhaps the most notable exception to this statement, scientific studies having been received with greater tolerance by the universities there than in other lands. In both Catholic and Protestant lands the need was felt for orthodox training, through fear of further heresy, and many petty restrictions were thrown about study and teaching which were stifling to free thinking and investigation. Each little Kingdom or State now took over the supervision of some old university within its borders, or established a new one, that it might more completely control orthodoxy and prepare its own civil servants. Of the seventeenth century, Paulsen [13] well says:

It was essentially the period of the territorial-confessional university, and is characterized by a preponderance of theological- confessional interest.... Many new foundations, both Catholic and Protestant, now appeared. The chief impetus leading to these numerous foundations was the accentuation of the principle of territorial sovereignty, from the ecclesiastical as well as the political point of view. The consequence was that the universities began to be instrumentia denominationis of the government as professional schools for its ecclesiastical and secular officials. Each individual government endeavored to secure its own university in order--(1) to make sure of wholesome instruction, which meant, of course, instruction in harmony with the confessional standards of its established church; (2) to retain training of its secular officials in its own hands; and finally (3) render attendance at foreign universities unnecessary on the part of its subjects, and thus keep the money in the country.

Large amounts of money were not needed to establish a new university. A few thousand guilders or thalers sufficed for the salaries of ten or fifteen professors, a couple of preachers and physicians would undertake the theological and medical lectures, and some old monastery would supply the needed buildings.

After the Reformation the law faculty increased to the place of first importance in Protestant lands, because the Reformation had created a new demand for judges and higher court officials to replace the rule of the clergy. The medical faculty continued to be, as in the mediaeval universities, the smallest of all the faculties and amounted to little before the nineteenth century. [14] The arts faculty, or philosophical as it came to be termed in German lands, offered lectures in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and a general course in philosophy, but the Aristotelian texts and to some extent mediaeval methods in instruction continued to be used until the beginning of the eighteenth century.

Here and there some professor "read" on mathematics, and in Protestant lands on the new astronomy, and the study of botany began as the study of herbs in the medical faculty, [15] but during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries few professors or students were interested in the scientific subjects. By 1675 Bacon's Novum Organum had begun to be taught at both Oxford and Cambridge, and by 1700 the Newtonian physics had begun to displace Aristotle at Oxford. By 1740 it was well established there. At first instruction in the new subjects was offered as an extra and for a fee by men not having professional rank (R. 224), and later the instruction was given full recognition by the university. By 1700 Cambridge had become a center for mathematical study (R. 225), and with the growth in popularity of the Newtonian philosophy, mathematical studies there took the place held by logic in the mediaeval university. Cambridge has ever since remained a center for mathematical and, since the beginning of the nineteenth century, for scientific studies as well. Between 1680 and 1700 the University of Paris was reformed, and the mathematical and philosophical studies of Descartes (p. 394) began to be taught there. The universities of the Netherlands began to teach the new mathematical and scientific studies even earlier.

Aside from the above described Realschule development, the new scientific movement for a time largely passed over German lands, and in consequence the German universities remained unreformed until the eighteenth century. During the seventeenth century they sank to their lowest intellectual level. In 1694, largely in protest against the narrowness of the old universities, the new University of Halle was founded. It received into its faculty certain forward-looking men who had been driven from the old universities, [16] and is generally considered as the first modern university. The new scientific and mathematical subjects and a reformed philosophy were introduced; the instruction in Greek and Latin was reformed; German was made the medium of classroom instruction; and a scientific magazine in German was begun. In 1737 the University of Göttingen became a second center of modern influence, and from these two institutions the new scientific spirit gradually spread to all the Protestant universities of German lands. A century later they were the leading universities of the world.

THE TRANSITION NOW PRACTICALLY COMPLETE. From the time Petrarch made his first "find" at Liège (1333), in the form of two previously unknown orations of Cicero (p. 244), to the publication of the Principia (p. 388) of Newton (1687), is a period of approximately three and a half centuries. During these three and a half centuries a complete transformation of world-life had been effected, and the mediaeval man, with his eyes on the past, had given place to the modern man with his eyes on the future. During these three and a half centuries revolutionary forces had been at work in the world of ideas, and the transition from mediaeval to modern attitudes had been accomplished. From 1333 to 1433 was the century of "literary finds," and during this period the monastic treasures were brought to light and edited and the classical literature of Rome restored. Greek also was restored to the western world, and a reformed Latin, Greek, and Hebrew were given the place of first importance in the new humanistic school. The invention of printing took place in 1423; 1456 witnessed the appearance of the first printed book, and the perfection of the new means for the multiplication of books and the dissemination of ideas. Before 1500 the great era of geographical discovery had been inaugurated; a sea-route to India was found in 1487; and a new continent in 1492. In 1519-22 Magellan's ships rounded the world.

In 1517 Luther issued the challenge, the shock of which was felt in every corner of Christian Europe, and within a half-century much of northern and western Europe had been lost to the original Roman Church. Soon independence in thinking had been extended to the problem of the organization of the universe, and in 1543 Copernicus issued the book that clearly marks the beginning of modern scientific thinking and inquiry. Bacon had done his organizing work by 1620, and Newton's Principia (1687) finally established modern scientific thought and work. Comenius died in 1671, his great organizing work done, and his textbooks, with their many new educational ideas, in use all over Europe. The mediaeval attitude still continued in religion and government, but the world as a whole had left mediaeval attitudes behind it, and was facing the future of modern world organization and life. To the educational organization of this modern world we now turn, though before doing so we shall try to present a cross-section, as it were, of the development in educational theory and practice which had been attained by about the middle of the eighteenth century.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Explain why the scholars of the time were so intent on producing a new race of Roman youths for a revived Latin scholarly world.

2. Show that a reaction against humanism was certain to arise, and why.

3. How do you explain the very small influence exerted on the Latin grammar schools of England by the non-conformist Academies, after they had been absorbed into the existing English non-state system of higher schools?

4. Compare Milton and Montaigne.

5. What would be the most probable effect on education of the erection of the polished-man-of-the-world ideal?

6. Enumerate the forces favoring and opposing the change of the language of instruction from Latin to the vernacular.

7. How many of the thirteen principles of the Innovators do we still hold to be valid?

8. Just what was new in the nine fundamental rules laid down by Ratke, in his Methodus Nova?

9. What is your estimate of the vernacular schools as outlined by Comenius? Of the plans for a gymnasium at Saros-Patak?

10. Compare Comenius' Latin school with the College of Calvin.

11. State the new ideas in instruction embodied in the textbooks of Comenius.

12. Show that Comenius dominates modern educational ideas, even though his work was largely lost, in the same way that Petrarch or Wyclifle or Copernicus do modern work in their fields.

13. Explain the very slow development of vernacular schools after the Protestant Revolts.

14. Why would the introduction of real studies into them be especially slow?

15. What explanation can you offer for the much earlier beginnings in scientific instruction in German lands than in England or America, when much more of the important early scientific work was done by Englishmen than by Germans? and the failure of science for a time to find a home in the German universities?

16. Explain the continued dominance of the theological faculty in the universities of the seventeenth century.

SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying Book of Readings the following illustrative selections are reproduced:

210. Rabelais: On the Nature of Education. 211. Milton: The Aim and Purpose of Education. 212. Milton: His Program for Study. 213. Adamson: Discontent of the Nobility with the Schools. 214. Montaigne: Ridicule of the Humanistic Pedants. 215. Montaigne: His Conception of Education. 216. Locke: Extracts from his Thoughts on Education. 217. Locke: Plan for Working Schools for Poor Children. 218. Comenius: Title-Page of the Great Didactic. 219. Comenius: Contents of the Great Didactic. 220. Comenius: Plan for the Gymnasium at Saros-Patak. 221. Comenius: Sample pages from the Orbis Pictus. (a) A page from a Latin-German edition of 1740. (b) Two pages from a Latin-English edition of 1727. (c) A page from the New York edition of 1810. 222. Butler: Place of Comenius in the History of Education. 223. Gesner: Need for Realschulen for the New Classes to be Educated. 224. Handbill: How the Scientific Studies began at Cambridge. 225. Green: Cambridge Scheme of Study of 1707.

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. Show that Rabelais was in close sympathy with the best of the new humanists of his age.

2. Would Milton's definition of the purpose of education be true, still?

3. Show from Milton's program of studies that he represents a transition type, and also that his program contains the nucleus of the more modern studies of the secondary school.

4. Explain the discontent of the nobility with the existing Church schools.

5. Assuming Montaigne's description of the education of his time to be true, explain why this might naturally be the case.

6. Just what kind of an education does Montaigne outline, and how great a reaction was this from existing conditions?

7. In how far would Locke's ideas still apply to the education of a boy of the leisure class?

8. Show that Locke's plan for work-house schools was in thorough accord with English post-Reformation ideas as to the duty of the State in matters of education, and also that it contained the beginnings of the pauper- school idea of education which we later had to combat.

9. From the title-page and the table of contents (219) of Comenius' Great Didactic, point out the originality and novelty of his ideas.

10. Compare Comenius' plan for the Saros-Patak Gymnasium with such schools as Sturm's, the college of Guyenne, the college of Calvin, and the Jesuits.

11. Compare Comenius' plan (220) with the instruction in an American high school of seventy-five years ago.

12. Compare the Alphabet page of Comenius' Orbis Pictus with the same page in the New England Primer.

13. When so many educational reforms were inaugurated so early by Comenius, explain their neglect, and our having to work them out anew in the nineteenth century.

14. What does the need for Realschulen indicate as to the evolution of German society and the recuperation from the ravages of war?

15. Compare the beginnings of scientific study at Cambridge with beginnings of new subjects to-day in our schools.

16. Just what does the Cambridge Scheme of Study indicate as being taught there?

SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

* Adamson, J. W. Pioneers of Modern Education, 1600-1700. Barnard, Henry. German Teachers and Educators. * Butler, N. M. "The Place of Comenius in the History of Education": in Proc. N. E. A., 1892, pp. 723-28. Browning, Oscar, Editor. Milton's Tractate on Education. * Comenius, J. A. Orbis Pictus (Bardeen; Syracuse). Hanus, Paul H. "The Permanent Influence of Comenius"; in _Educational Review_, vol. 3, pp. 226-36 (March, 1892). Laurie, S. S. _History of Educational Opinion since the Renaissance_. * Laurie, S. S. John Amos Comenius. Quick, R. H., Editor. Locke's Thoughts on Education. * Quick, R. H. Essays on Educational Reformers. * Vostrovsky, Clara. "A European School of the Time of Comenius (Prague, 1609)"; in Education, vol. 17, pp. 356-60 (February, 1897.) Wordsworth, Christopher. _Scholae Academicae; Studies at the English Universities in the Eighteenth Century_.

XVIII. THEORY AND PRACTICE BY THE MIDDLE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

We have now reached, in our history of the transition age which began with the Revival of Learning--the great events of which were the recovery of the ancient learning, the rediscovery of the historic past, the reawakening of scholarship, and the rise of religious and scientific inquiry--the end of the transition period, and we are now ready to pass to a study of the development and progress of education in modern times. Before doing so, however, we desire to gather up and state the progress in both educational theory and practice which had been attained by the end of this transition period, and to present, as it were, a cross-section of education at about the middle of the eighteenth century. To do this, then, before passing to a consideration of educational development in modern times, will be the purpose of this chapter. We shall first review the progress made in evolving a theory as to the educational purpose, and then present a cross-section view of the schools of the time under consideration.

I. PRE-EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDUCATIONAL THEORIES

THE STATE PURPOSE OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS. As we saw, early in our study of the rise and progress of the education of peoples, the City-States of Greece were the first consciously to evolve a systematic plan of schooling and a prolonged course of training for those who were to guide and direct the State. In Sparta the training was almost wholly for military efficiency and tribal safety, but in Athens we found a people using a well-worked-out system of training to develop individual initiative, advance civilization, and promote the welfare of the State. The education provided was for but a class, to be sure, and a small ruling class at that, but it was the first evidence of the new western, individualistic, and democratic spirit expressing itself in the education of the young. There also we found, for the first time, the thinkers of the State deeply concerned with the education of the youth of the State, and viewing education as a necessity to make life worth living and to secure the State from dangers, both without and within. The training there given produced wonderful results, and for two centuries the men educated by it ably guided the destinies of Athens.

The essentials of this Greek training were later embodied in the private- adventure school system that arose in Rome, which was adapted to conditions and needs there, and which was used for the training of a few Roman youths of the wealthier families for a political career. Schooling at Rome, though, never attained the importance or rendered the service that characterized education at Athens, and never became an instrument of the State used consciously for State ends. One Roman writer, Quintilian, as we have seen (R. 25), worked out a careful statement of the whole process of educating a youth for a public career, and this, the first practical treatise on education, was for long highly prized as the best- written statement of the educational art.

THE FUTURE-LIFE CONCEPTION OF THE CHRISTIANS. With the decline of Roman power and influence, and the victory of Christianity throughout the Roman world, the State conception of education was entirely lost to western Europe, and more than a thousand years elapsed before it again arose in the western world. The Church now became the State, and the need for any education for secular life almost entirely passed away. For centuries the aim was almost entirely a preparation for life in the world to come. Throughout all the early Middle Ages this attitude continued, supplemented only by the meager education of a few to carry on the work of the Church here below.

After the tenth century we noted the rise of some more or less independent study in some of the monastery and cathedral schools, and after the twelfth century the rise of studia generalia marked the congregation into groups of the few interested in a studious life. These in turn gave rise to the university foundations, and to the beginning of independent and secular study once more in the western world. The Revival of Learning, the recovery of the ancient manuscripts, the revival of the study of Greek in the West, the founding of libraries, the invention of paper and printing, and the revival of trade and commerce--all were new forces tending to give a new direction to scholarly study, and as a result a new race of scholars, more or less independent of the Church, now arose in western Europe. They were, however, a class, and a very small class at that, and though the result of their work was the creation of a new humanistic secondary school, this still ministered to the needs of but a few. This few was intended either for the service of the Church, for the governmental service of the towns which had by this time attained their independence, or for the governments of the rising principalities or states.

For the great mass of the people, whose purpose in life was to work and believe and obey, agriculture, warfare, the rising trades with their guilds (p. 209), and the services of the Church constituted almost all in the way of education which they ever received. To be useful to his overlord and master here and to be saved hereafter were the chief life- purposes of the common man. The former he must himself undertake in order to be able to live at all; the latter the Church undertook to supply to those who followed her teachings.

THE RISE OF THE VERNACULAR RELIGIOUS SCHOOL. For the first time in history, if we except the schools of the early Christian period, the Protestant Revolts created a demand for some form of an elementary religious school for all. The Protestant theory as to personal versus collective salvation involved as a consequence the idea of the education of all in the essentials of the Christian faith and doctrine. The aim was the same as before--personal salvation--but the method was now changed from that of the Church as intermediary to personal knowledge and faith and effort. To be saved, one must know something of the Word of God, and this necessitated instruction. To this end, in theory at least, schools had to be established to educate the young for membership in the new type of Church relationship. Reading the vernacular, a little counting and writing, in Teutonic countries a little music, and careful instruction in a religious Primer (R. 202), the Catechism, and the Bible, now came to constitute the subject matter of a new vernacular school for the children of Protestants, and to a certain extent in time for the children of Catholics as well. As we pointed out earlier (p. 353), between this new type of school for religious ends and the older Latin grammar school for scholarly purposes there was almost no relationship, and the two developed wholly independently of one another. In the Latin grammar schools one studied to become a scholar and a leader in the political or ecclesiastical world; in the vernacular religious school one learned to read that he might be able to read the Catechism and the Bible, and to know the will of the Heavenly Father. There was scarcely any other purpose to the maintenance of the elementary vernacular schools. This condition continued until well into the eighteenth century.

EARLY UNSUCCESSFUL EDUCATIONAL REFORMERS. Back in the seventeenth century, as we have pointed out in the preceding chapter, a very earnest effort was made by Ratke and Comenius to introduce a larger conception of the educational process into the elementary vernacular school, to eliminate the gloomy religious material from the textbooks, to substitute a human- welfare purpose for the exclusively life-beyond view, and to transform the school into an institution for imparting both learning and religion. Comenius in particular hoped to make of the new elementary religious school a potent instrument for human progress by introducing new subject- matter, and by formulating laws and developing methods for its work which would be in harmony with the new scientific procedure so well stated by Francis Bacon. Comenius stands as the commanding figure in seventeenth- century pedagogical thought. He reasoned out and introduced us to the whole modern conception of the educational process and purpose, and gave to the school of the people a solid theoretical and practical basis. Living, though, at an unfortunate period in human history, he was able to awaken little interest either in rational teaching-method or in reforms looking to the advancement of the welfare of mankind. Instead he roused suspicion and distrust by the innovations and progressive reforms he proposed; his now-celebrated book on teaching method (Rs. 218, 219) was not at the time understood and was for long forgotten, while the fundamentally sound ideas and pedagogical reforms which he proposed and introduced were lost amid the hatreds of his time, and had to be worked out again and reëstablished in a later and a more tolerant age.

Another unsuccessful reformer of some importance, and one whose work antedated that of both Ratke and Comenius, was the London schoolmaster, Richard Mulcaster (1531-1611), for twenty-five years headmaster of the famous Merchant Taylors' School, and later Master of Saint Paul's School. In 1581 he issued his Positions, a pedagogical work so far in advance of his time, and written in such a heavy and affected style, that it passed almost unnoticed in England, and did not become known at all in other lands. Yet the things he stood for became the fundamental ideas of nineteenth-century educational thought. These were:

1. That the end and aim of education is to develop the body and the faculties of the mind, and to help nature to perfection.

2. That all teaching processes should be adapted to the pupil taught.

3. That the first stage in learning is of large importance, and requires high skill on the part of the teacher.

4. That the thing to be learned is of less importance than the pupil learning.

5. That proper brain development demands that pressure and one-sided education alike be avoided.

6. That the mother tongue should be taught first and well, and should be the language of the school from six to twelve.

7. That music and drawing should be taught.

8. That reading and writing at least should be the common right of all, and that girls should be given equal opportunity with boys.

9. That training colleges for teachers should be established and maintained.

The modern nature of many of Mulcaster's proposals may be seen from the table of contents of his volume (R. 226). Mulcaster, like Comenius, thought far in advance of his age, and in consequence his book was soon and for long forgotten. Yet what Quick [1] says of him is very true:

It would have been a vast gain to all Europe if Mulcaster had been followed instead of Sturm. He was one of the earliest advocates of the use of the vernacular instead of Latin, and good reading and writing in English were to be secured before Latin was begun. His elementary course included five things: English reading, English writing, drawing, singing, playing a musical instrument. If this were made to occupy the school time up to twelve, Mulcaster held that more would be done between twelve and sixteen than between seven and seventeen in the ordinary (Latin grammar school) way. There would be a further gain in that the children would not be set against learning.

John Locke, and the disciplinary theory of education. Another commanding figure in seventeenth-century pedagogical thought was the English scholar, philosopher, teacher, physician, and political writer, John Locke (1632- 1704). In the preceding chapter we pointed out the place of Locke as a writer on the education of the sons of the English gentry, and illustrated by an extract from his Thoughts (R. 216) the importance he placed on such a practical type of education as would prepare a gentleman's son for the social and political demands of a world fast becoming modern. Locke's place in the history of education, though, is of much more importance than was there (p. 402) indicated. Locke was essentially the founder of modern psychology, based on the application of the methods of modern scientific investigation to a study of the mind, [2] and he is also of importance in the history of educational thought as having set forth, at some length and with much detail, the disciplinary conception of the educational process.

Locke had served as a tutor in an English nobleman's family, had worked out his educational theories in practice and thought them through as mind processes, and had become thoroughly convinced that it was the process of learning that was important, rather than the thing learned. Education to him was a process of disciplining the body, fixing good habits, training the youth in moral situations, and training the mind through work with studies selected because of their disciplinary value. This conception of education he sets forth well in the following paragraph, taken from his Thoughts:

The great Work of the Governor is to fashion the Carriage and form the Mind; to settle in his Pupils good Habits and the Principles of Virtue and Wisdom; to give him by little and little a View of Mankind, and work him into a Love and Imitation of what is excellent and praiseworthy; and in the Prosecution of it, to give him Vigor, Activity, and Industry. The Studies which he sets him upon, are but as it were the Exercise of his Faculties, and Employment of his Time, to keep him from Sauntering and Idleness, to teach him Application, and accustom him to take Pains, and to give him some little Taste of what his own Industry must perfect (§94).

In his Thoughts Locke first sets forth at length the necessity for disciplining the body by means of diet, exercise, and the hardening process. "A sound mind in a sound body" he conceives to be "a short but full description of a happy state in this world," and a fundamental basis for morality and learning. The formation of good habits and manners through proper training, and the proper adjustment of punishments and rewards next occupies his attention, and he then explains his theory as to making all punishments the natural consequences of acts. Similarly the mind, as the body, must be disciplined to virtue by training the child to deny, subordinate desires, and apply reason to acts. The formation of good habits and the disciplining of the desires Locke regards as the foundations of virtue. On this point he says:

As the Strength of the Body lies chiefly in being able to endure Hardship, so also does that of the Mind. And the great Principle and Foundation of all Virtue and Worth is plac'd in this:--That a Man is able to deny himself his own Desires, cross his own Inclinations, and purely follow what Reason directs as best, tho' the Appetite lean the other Way (§ 33).

Similarly, in intellectual education, good thinking and the employment of reason is the aim, and these, too, must be attained through the proper discipline of the mind. Good intellectual education does not consist merely in studying and learning, he contends, as was the common practice in the grammar schools of his time, but must be achieved by a proper drilling of the powers of the mind through the use of selected studies. The purpose of education, he holds, is above all else to make man a reasoning creature. Nothing, in his judgment, trains to reason closely so well as the study of mathematics, though Locke would have his boy "look into all sorts of knowledge," and train his understanding with a wide variety of exercises. In the education given in the grammar schools of his time he found much that seemed to him wasteful of time and thoroughly bad in principle, and he used much space to point out defects and describe better methods of teaching and management, giving in some detail reasons therefor. His ideas as to needed reforms in the teaching of Latin (R. 227) are illustrative.

LOCKE ON ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. For the beginnings of education, and for elementary education in general, Locke sticks close to the prevailing religious conception of his time. As for the education of the common people, he writes:

The knowledge of the Bible and the business of his own calling is enough for the ordinary man; a Gentleman ought to go further.

Continuing regarding the beginnings of education and the studies and textbooks of his day, he says:

The Lord's Prayer, the Creeds, and the Ten Commandments, 't is necessary he should learn perfectly by heart.... What other Books there are in English of the Kind of those above-mentioned (besides the Primer) fit to engage the Liking of Children, and tempt them to read, I do not know;... and nothing that I know has been considered of this Kind out of the ordinary Road of the Horn Book, Primer, Psalter, Testament, and Bible (§ 157).

Locke does, however, give some very sensible suggestions as to the reading of the Bible (R. 228), the imparting of religious ideas to children, and the desirability of transforming instruction so as to make it pleasant and agreeable, with plenty of natural playful activity. [3] On this point he writes:

He that has found a Way how to keep up a Child's Spirit easy, active, and free, and yet at the same time to restrain him from many Things he has a Mind to, and to draw him to Things that are uneasy to him; he, I say, that knows how to reconcile these seeming Contradictions, has, in my Opinion, got the true Secret of Education (§ 46).

INFLUENCE OF LOCKE'S THOUGHTS. The volume by Locke contains much that is sensible in the matter of educating a boy. The emphasis on habit formation, reasoning, physical activities and play, the individuality of children, and a reformed method in teaching are its strong points. The thoroughly modern character of the book, in most respects, is one of its marked characteristics. The volume seems to have been much read by middle and upper-class Englishmen, and copies of it have been found in so many old colonial collections that it was probably well known among early eighteenth-century American colonists. That the book had an important influence on the attitude of the higher social classes of England toward the education of their sons and, consciously or unconsciously, in time helped to redirect the teaching in that most characteristic of English educational institutions, the English Public (Latin Grammar) School, seems to be fairly clear. On elementary religious and charity-school education it had practically no influence.

Locke's great influence on educational thought did not come, though, for nearly three quarters of a century afterward, and it came then through the popularization of his best ideas by Rousseau. Karl Schmidt [4] well says of his work:

Locke is a thorough Englishman, and the principle underlying his education is the principle according to which the English people have developed. Hence his theory of education has in the history of pedagogy the same value that the English nation has in the history of the world. He stood in strong opposition to the scholastic and formalized education current in his time, a living protest against the prevailing pedantry; in the universal development of pedagogy he gives impulse to the movement which grounds education upon sound psychological principles, and lays stress upon breeding and the formation of character.

Restating and expanding the leading ideas of Locke in his Emile (chapter XXI), and putting them into far more attractive literary form, Rousseau scattered Locke's ideas as to educational reform over Europe. In particular Rousseau popularized Locke's ideas as to the replacement of authority by reason and investigation, his emphasis on physical activity and health, his contention that the education of children should be along lines that were natural and normal for children, and above all Locke's plea for education through the senses rather than the memory. In so popularizing Locke's ideas, and at a time when all the political tendencies of the period were in the direction of the rejection of authority and the emphasis of the individual, those educational reformers who were inspired by the writings of Rousseau created and applied, largely on the foundations laid down by John Locke, a new theory as to educational aims and procedure which dominated all early nineteenth-century instruction. This we shall trace further in a subsequent chapter (chapter XXI).

It was at this point that the educational problem stood, in so far as a theory as to educational aims and the educational process was concerned, when Rousseau took it up (1762). Before passing to a consideration of his work, though, and the work of those inspired by him and by the French revolutionary writers and statesmen, let us close this third part of our history by a brief survey of the development so far attained, the purpose, character, aims, and nature of instruction in the schools, and their means of support and control at about the middle of the century in which Rousseau wrote, and before the philosophical and political revolutions of the latter half of the eighteenth century had begun to influence educational aims and procedure and control.

II. MID-EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDUCATIONAL CONDITIONS

THE PURPOSE. The purpose of maintaining the elementary vernacular school, in all European lands, remained at the middle of the eighteenth century much as it was a century before, though in the German States and in the American Colonies there was a noticeable shifting of emphasis from the older exclusively religious purpose toward a newer conception of education as preparation for life in the world here. Still, one learned to read chiefly "to learn some orthodox Catechism," "to read fluently in the New Testament," and to know the will of God, or, as stated in the law of the Connecticut Colony (R. 193), "in some competent measure to understand the main grounds and principles of Christian religion necessary to salvation." The teacher was still carefully looked after as to his "soundness in the faith" (R. 238 a); he was required "to catechise his scholars in the principles of the Christian religion," and "to commend his labors amongst them unto God by prayer morning and evening, [5] taking care that his scholars do reverently attend during the same." The minister in practically all lands examined the children as to their knowledge of the Catechism and the Bible, and on his visits quizzed them as to the Sunday sermon. In Boston (1710) the ministers were required, on their school visits, to pray with the pupils, and "to entertain them with some instructions of piety adapted to their age." In Church-of-England schools "the End and Chief Design" of the schools established continued to be instruction in "the Knowledge and Practice of the Christian Religion as Professed and Taught in the Church of England" (R. 238 b). In German lands the elementary vernacular school was still regarded as "the portico of the Temple," "Christianity its principal work," and not as "mere establishments preparatory to public life, but be pervaded by the religious spirit." [6] The uniform system of public schools ordered established for Prussia by Frederick the Great, in 1763, were after all little more than religious schools (R. 274), conducted for purposes of both Church and State. As Frederick expressed it, "we find it necessary and wholesome to have a good foundation laid in the schools by a rational and a Christian education of the young for the fear of God, and other useful ends." In the schools of La Salle's organization, which was most prominent in elementary vernacular education in Catholic France, the aim continued to be (R. 182) "to teach them to live honestly and uprightly, by instructing them in the principles of our holy religion and by teaching them Christian precepts."

WEAKENING OF THE OLD RELIGIOUS THEORY. By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, there is a noticeable weakening of the hold of the old religious theory on the schools in most Protestant lands. In England there was a marked relaxation of the old religious intolerance in educational matters as the century proceeded, and new textbooks, embodying but little of the old gloomy religious material, appeared and began to be used. By a series of decisions, between 1670 and 1701 (chapter XXIV), the English courts broke the hold of the bishops in the matter of the licensing of elementary schoolmasters, and by the Acts of 1713 and 1714 the Dissenters were once more allowed to conduct schools of their own. Coincident with this growth of religious tolerance among the English we find the Church of England redoubling its efforts to hold the children of its adherents, by the organization of parish schools and the creation of a vast system of charitable religious schools. In German lands, too, a marked shifting of emphasis away from solely religious ends and toward the needs of the government began, toward the end of the eighteenth century, to be evident. In Würtemberg, which was somewhat typical of late eighteenth-century action by other German States, a Circular of the General Synod, of November 1787, declares the German schools to be "those nurseries in which should be taught the true and genuine idea of the duties of men--created with a reasoning soul toward God, government, their fellow-men, and themselves, and also at least the first rudiments of useful and indispensable knowledge."

It was in the American Colonies, though, that the waning of the old religious interest was most notable. Due to rude frontier conditions, the decline in force of the old religious-town governments, the diversity of sects, the rise of new trade and civil interests, and the breakdown of old-home connections, the hold on the people of the old religious doctrines was weakened there earlier than in the old world. By 1750 the change in religious thinking in America had become quite marked. As a consequence many of the earlier parochial schools had died out, while in the New England Colonies the colonial governments had been forced to exercise an increasing state oversight of the elementary school to keep it from dying out there as well.

STUDIES AND TEXTBOOKS. The studies of the elementary vernacular school remained, throughout the whole of the eighteenth century, much as before, namely, reading, a little writing and ciphering, some spelling, religion, and in Teutonic countries a little music. La Salle (R. 182) had prescribed, for the Catholic vernacular schools of France, instruction in French, some. Latin, "orthography, arithmetic, the matins and vespers, le Pater, l'Ave Maria, le Credo et le Confiteor, the Commandments, responses, Catechism, duties of a Christian, and maxims and precepts drawn from the Testament." The Catechism was to be taught one half-hour daily. The schoolbooks in England in Locke's day, as he tells us (p. 435), were "the Horn Book, Primer, Psalter, Testament, and Bible." These indicate merely a religious vernacular school. The purpose stated for the English Church charity-schools (R. 238 b), schools that attained to large importance in England and the American Colonies during the eighteenth century, shows them to have been, similarly, religious vernacular schools. The School Regulations which Frederick the Great promulgated for Prussia (1763), fixed the textbooks to be used (R. 274, § 20), and indicate that the instruction in Prussia was still restricted to reading, writing, religion, singing, and a little arithmetic. In colonial America, Noah Webster's description (R. 230) of the schools he attended in Connecticut, about 1764-70, shows that the studies and textbooks were "chiefly or wholly Dilworth's Spelling Books, the Psalter, Testament, and Bible," with a little writing and ciphering. A few words of description of these older books may prove useful here.

THE HORN BOOK. The Horn Book goes back to the close of the fifteenth century, [7] and by the end of the sixteenth century was in common use throughout England. Somewhat similar alphabet boards, lacking the handle, were also used in Holland, France, and in German lands. This, a thin oak board on which was pasted a printed slip, covered by translucent horn, was the book from which children learned their letters and began to read, the mastery of which usually required some time. Cowper thus describes this little book:

Neatly secured from being soiled or torn Beneath a pane of thin translucent horn, A book (to please us at a tender age 'T is called a book, though but a single page) Presents the prayer the Savior designed to teach, Which children use, and parsons--when they preach.

The Horn Book was much used well into the eighteenth century, but its reading matter was in time incorporated into the school Primer, now evolved out of an earlier elementary religious manual.

THE PRIMER. Originally the child next passed to the Catechism and the Bible, but about the middle of the seventeenth century the Primer began to be used. The Primer in its original form was a simple manual of devotion for the laity, compiled without any thought of its use in the schools. It contained the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and a few of the more commonly used prayers and psalms. [8] The Catechism soon was added, and with the prefixing of the alphabet and a few syllables and words it was transformed, as schools arose, into the first reading book for children. There was at first no attempt at grading, illustration, or the introduction of easy reading material. About the close of the seventeenth century the illustrated Primer, with some attempt at grading and some additional subject-matter, made its appearance, both in England and America, and at once leaped into great popularity.

The idea possibly goes back to the Orbis Pictus (1654) of Comenius (p. 413: R. 221), the first illustrated schoolbook ever written. The first English Primer adapted to school use was The Protestant Tutor, a rather rabid anti-Catholic work which appeared in London, about 1685. A later edition of this contained the alphabet, some syllables and words, the figures and letters, the list of the books of the Bible, an alphabet of lessons, the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and a poem, long famous, on the death of the martyr, John Rogers. [9] It was an abridgement of this book which the same publisher brought out in Boston, about 1690, under the name of The New England Primer (R. 202). This at once leaped into great popularity, and became the accepted reading book in all the schools of the American Colonies except those under the Church of England. For the next century and a quarter it was the chief school and reading book in use among the Dissenters and Lutherans in America. Schoolmasters drilled the children on the reading matter and the Catechism it contained, and the people recited from it yearly in the churches. It was also used for such spelling as was given. It was the first great American textbook success, and was still in use in the Boston dame schools as late as 1806. It was reprinted in England, and enjoyed a great sale among Dissenters there. Its sales in America alone have been estimated at least three million copies. The sale in Europe was also large. It was followed in England by other Primers and other introductory reading books, of which The History of Genesis (1708), a series of simple stories retold from the first book of the Bible, and The Child's Weeks-Work (1712), containing proverbs, fables, conundrums, lessons on behavior, and a short catechism, are types. Frederick the Great, in his list of required textbooks for Prussian schools (R. 274, § 20), does not mention a Primer.

THE CATECHISM. In all Protestant German lands the Shorter Catechism prepared by Luther, or the later Heidelberg Catechism; in Calvinistic lands the Catechism of Calvin; and in England and the American Colonies the Westminster Catechism, [10] formed the backbone of the religious instruction. Teachers drilled their pupils in these as thoroughly as on any other subject, writing masters set as copies sentences from the book, children were required to memorize the answers, and the doctrines contained were emphasized by teacher and preacher so that the children were saturated with the religious ideas set forth. No book except the Bible did so much to form the character, and none so much to fix the religious bias of the children. Almost equal importance was given to the Catechism in Catholic lands (R. 182, §§ 21-22), though there supplemented by more religious influences derived from the ceremonial of the Church.

SPELLERS. The next step forward, in the transition from the religious Primer to secular reading matter for school children, came in the use of the so-called Spellers. Probably the first of these was The English School-Master of Edmund Coote (R. 229), first issued in 1596. This gave thirty-two pages to the alphabet and spelling; eighteen to a shorter Catechism, prayers, and psalms; five to chronology; two to writing copies; two to arithmetic; and twenty to a list of hard words, alphabetically arranged and explained. As will be seen from this analysis of contents, this was a schoolmaster's general manual and guide. After about 1740 such books became very popular, due to the publication that year of Thomas Dilworth's A New Guide to the English Tongue. This book contained, as the title-page (R. 229) declared, selected lists of words with rules for their pronunciation, a short treatise on grammar, a collection of fables with illustrations for reading, some moral selections, and forms of prayer for children. It became very popular in New as well as in old England, and was followed by a long line of imitators, culminating in America in the publication of Noah Webster's famous blue-backed American Spelling Book, in 1783. This was after the plan of the English Dilworth, but was put in better teaching form. It contained numerous graded lists of words, some illustrations, a series of graded reading lessons, and was largely secular in character. It at once superseded the expiring New England Primer in most of the American cities, and continued popular in the United States for more than a hundred years. [11] It was the second great American textbook success, and was followed by a long list of popular Spellers and Readers, leading up to the excellent secular Readers of the present day.

ARITHMETIC AND WRITING. The first English Arithmetic, published about 1540 to 1542, has been entirely lost, and was probably read by few. The first to attain any popularity was Cocker's Arithmetic (1677), this "Being a Plain and Familiar Method suitable to the meanest Capacity, for the understanding of that incomparable. Art." A still more popular book was Arithmetick: or that Necessary Art Made Most Easie, by J. Hodder, Writing Master, a reprint of which appeared in Boston, in 1719. The first book written by an American author was Isaac Greenwood's Arithmetick, Vulgar and Decimal, which appeared in Boston, in 1729. In 1743 appeared Dilworth's The Schoolmaster's Assistant, a book which retained its popularity in both England and America until after the beginning of the nineteenth century.

No text in Arithmetic is mentioned in the School Regulations of Frederick the Great (R. 274, §20), or in scarcely any of the descriptions left us of eighteenth-century schools. The study itself was common, but not universal, and was one that many teachers were not competent to teach. To possess a reputation as an "arithmeticker" was an important recommendation for a teacher, while for a pupil to be able to do sums in arithmetic was unusual, and a matter of much pride to parents. The subject was frequently taught by the writing master, in a separate school, [12] while the reading teacher confined himself to reading, spelling, and religion. Thus, for example, following earlier English practice, the Town Meeting of Boston, in 1789, ordered "three reading schools and three writing schools established in the town" for the instruction of children between the ages of seven and fourteen, the subjects to be taught in each being:

The writing schools: Writing, Arithmetic

The reading schools: Spelling, Accentuation, Reading of prose and verse, English grammar and composition

The teacher might or might not possess an arithmetic of his own, but the instruction to the pupil was practically always dictated and copied instruction. Each pupil made up his own book of rules and solved problems, and few pupils ever saw a printed arithmetic. Many of the early arithmetics were prepared after the catechism plan. There was almost no attempt to use the subject for drill in reasoning or to give a concrete type of instruction, before about the middle of the eighteenth century, [13] and but little along such reform lines was accomplished until after the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Writing, similarly, was taught by dictation and practice, and the art of the "scrivener," as the writing master was called, was one thought to be difficult to learn. The lack of practical value of the art, the high cost of paper, and the necessity usually for special lessons, all alike tended to make writing a much less commonly known art than reading. Fees also were frequently charged for instruction in writing and arithmetic; reading, spelling, and religion being the only free subjects. The scrivener and the arithmetic teacher also frequently moved about, as business warranted, and was not fixed as was the teacher of the reading school.

THE TEACHERS. The development of the vernacular school was retarded not only by the dominance of the religious purpose of the school, but by the poor quality of teachers found everywhere in the schools. The evolution of the elementary-school teacher of to-day out of the church sexton, bell- ringer, or grave-digger, [14] or out of the artisan, cripple, or old dame who added school teaching to other employment in order to live, forms one of the interesting as well as one of the yet-to-be-written chapters in the history of the evolution of the elementary school.

Teachers in elementary schools everywhere in the eighteenth century were few in number, poor in quality, and occupied but a lowly position in the social scale. School dames in England (R. 235) and later in the American Colonies, and on the continent of Europe teachers who were more sextons, choristers, beadles, bell-ringers, grave-diggers, shoemakers, tailors, barbers, pensioners, and invalids than teachers, too often formed the teaching body for the elementary vernacular school (Rs. 231, 232, 233). In Switzerland, the Netherlands, and some of the American Colonies, where schools had become or were becoming local semi-civic affairs, the standards which might be imposed for teaching also were low. The grant of the tailoring monopoly to the elementary teachers of Prussia, [15] in 1738, and Krüsi's recollections of how he became a schoolmaster in Switzerland, in 1793 (R. 234), were quite typical of the time. In Catholic France, and in some German Catholic lands as well, teaching congregations (p. 345), some of whose members had some rudimentary training for their work, were in charge of the existing parish schools. These provided a somewhat better type of teaching body than that frequently found in Protestant lands, though by the latter part of the eighteenth century the beginnings of teacher-training are to be seen in some of the German States. The Church of England, too, had by this time organized strong Societies [16] for the preparation of teachers for Church-of-England schools, both at home and abroad. In Dutch, German, and Scandinavian lands, and in colonies founded by these people in America, the parish school, closely tied up with and dependent upon the parish church, was the prevailing type of vernacular school, and in this the teacher was regarded as essentially an assistant to the pastor (R. 236) and the school as a dependency of the Church.

[FIG. 135. A "CHRISTIAN BROTHERS" SCHOOL La Salle teaching at Grenoble. Note the adult type of dress of the boys.]

In England, in addition to regular parish schools and endowed elementary schools, three peculiar institutions, known as the Dame School, the religious charity-school, and the private-adventure or "hedge school" had grown up, and the first two of these had reached a marked development by the middle of the eighteenth century. Because these were so characteristic of early English educational effort, and also played such an important part in the American Colonies as well, they merit a few words of description at this point.

THE DAME SCHOOL. The Dame School arose in England after the Reformation. By means of it the increasing desire for a rudimentary knowledge of the art of reading could be satisfied, and at the same time certain women could earn a pittance. This type of school was carried early to the American Colonies, and out of it was in time evolved, in New England, the American elementary school. The Dame School was a very elementary school, kept in a kitchen or living-room by some woman who, in her youth, had obtained the rudiments of an education, and who now desired to earn a small stipend for herself by imparting to the children of her neighborhood her small store of learning. For a few pennies a week the dame took the children into her home and explained to them the mysteries connected with learning the beginnings of reading and spelling. Occasionally a little writing and counting also were taught, though not often in England. In the American Colonies the practical situations of a new country forced the employment as teachers of women who could teach all three subjects, thus early creating the American school of the so-called "3 Rs"--"Reading, Riting, Rithmetic." The Dame School appears so frequently in English literature, both poetry and prose, that it must have played a very important part in the beginnings of elementary education in England. Of this school Shenstone (1714-63) writes (R. 235):

In every village marked with little spire, Embowered in trees, and hardly known to fame, There dwells, in lowly shed and mean attire, A matron old, whom we schoolmistress name, Who boasts unruly brats with birch to tame.

The Reverend George Crabbe (1754-1832), another poet of homely life, writes (R. 235) of a deaf, poor, patient widow who sits

And awes some thirty infants as she knits; Infants of humble, busy wives who pay, Some trifling price for freedom through the day.

This school flourished greatly in America during the eighteenth century, but with the coming of Infant Schools, early in the nineteenth, was merged into these to form the American Primary School.

THE RELIGIOUS CHARITY-SCHOOL. Another thoroughly characteristic English institution was the church charity-school. The first of these was founded in Whitechapel, London, in 1680. In 1699, when the School of Saint Anne, Soho (R. 237), was founded by "Five Earnest Laymen for the Poore Boys of the Parish," it was the sixth of its kind in England. In 1699 the "Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge" (S.P.C.K.) was founded for the purpose, among other things, of establishing catechetical schools for the education of the children of the poor in the principles of the Established Church (R. 238 b). In 1701 the "Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts" (S.P.G.) was also founded to extend the work of the Anglican Church abroad, supply schoolmasters and ministers, and establish schools, to train children to read, write, know and understand the Catechism, and fit into the teachings and worship of the Church. To develop piety and help the poor to lead industrious, upright, self- respecting lives, "to make them loyal Church members, and to fit them for work in that station of life in which it had pleased their Heavenly Father to place them," were the principal objects of the Society.

All were taught reading, spelling, and the Catechism, and instruction in writing and arithmetic might be added. The training might also be coupled with that of the "schools of industry" (workhouse schools, as described by Locke [R. 217]) to augment the economic efficiency of the boy. Girls seem to have been provided for almost equally with boys, and, in addition to being taught to read and spell, were taught "to knit their Stockings and Gloves, to Mark, Sew, and make and mend their Cloathes." Both boys and girls were usually provided with books and clothing, [17] a regular uniform being worn by the boys and girls of each school.

The chief motive in the establishment of these schools, though, was to decrease the "Prophaness and Debauchery ... owing to a gross Ignorance of the Christian Religion" (R. 237) and to educate "Poor Children in the Rules and Principles of the Christian Religion as professed and taught in the Church of England." Writing, in 1742, Reverend Griffith Jones, an organizer for the S.P.C.K. in Wales, said:

It is but a cheap education that we would desire for them [the poor], only the moral and religious branches of it, which indeed is the most necessary and indispensable part. The sole design of this charity is to inculcate upon such ... as can be prevailed upon to learn, the knowledge and practice, the principles and duties of the Christian religion; and to make them good people, useful members of society, faithful servants of God, and men and heirs of eternal life.

These schools multiplied rapidly and soon became regular institutions, as the following table, showing the growth of the S.P.C.K. schools in London alone, shows:

Year Schools Boys Girls Total 1699 0 0 0 0 1704 54 1386 745 2131 1709 88 2181 1221 3402 1714 117 3077 1741 4818

In England and Ireland combined the Society had, by 1714, a total of 1073 schools, with 19,453 pupils enrolled, and by 1729 the number had increased to 1658, with approximately 34,000 pupils. From England the charity-school idea was early carried to the Anglican Colonies in America and became a fixed institution in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and somewhat in the Colonies farther south. In the Pennsylvania constitution of 1790 we find the following directions for the establishment of a state charity-school system to supplement the parish schools of the churches:

Sec. I. The legislature shall, as soon as conveniently may be, provide, by law, for the establishment of schools throughout the State, in such manner that the poor may be taught gratis.

The first Pennsylvania school law of 1802 carried this direction into effect by providing for pauper schools in the counties, a condition that was not done away with until 1834. In New Jersey the system lasted until 1838.

THE PRIVATE-ADVENTURE, OR "HEDGE," SCHOOL. This was a school analogous to the Dame School, but was kept by a man instead of a woman, and usually at his home or shop. Plate 15, showing a shoe cobbler teaching, represents one type of such schools. The term "hedge schools" arose in Ireland, where teaching was forbidden the Catholics, and secret schools arose in which priests and others taught what was possible. Of these McCarthy writes: [18]

On the highways and on the hillsides, in ditches and behind hedges, in the precarious shelter of the ruined walls of some ancient abbey, or under the roof of a peasant's cabin, the priests set up schools and taught the children of their race.

The term soon came to be applied to any kind of a poor school, taught in an irregular manner or place. Similar irregular schools, under equivalent names, also were found in German lands, [19] the Netherlands, and in France, while in the American Colonies "indentured white servants" were frequently let out as schoolmasters. The following advertisement of a teacher for sale is typical of private-adventure elementary school-keeping during the colonial period.

These schools were taught by itinerant school-keepers, artisans, and tutors of the poorer type, but offered the beginnings of elementary education to many a child who otherwise would never have been able to learn to read. In the early eighteenth century these schools attained a remarkable development in England.

A new influence of tremendous future importance--general reading--was now coming in; the vernacular was fast supplanting Latin; newspapers were being started; little books or pamphlets (tracts) containing general information were being sold; books for children and beginners were being written; the popular novel and story had appeared; [20] and all these educative forces were creating a new and a somewhat general desire for a knowledge of the art of reading. This in turn caused a new demand for schools to teach the long-locked-up art, and this demand was capitalized to the profit of many types of people.

THE APPRENTICING OF ORPHANS AND CHILDREN OF THE POOR. The compulsory apprenticing of the children of the poor, as we have seen (p. 326), was an old English institution, and workhouse training, or the so-called "schools of industry" became, by the eighteenth century, a prominent feature of the English care of the poor. These represented the only form of education supported by taxation, and the only form of education to which Parliament gave any attention during the whole of the eighteenth century. This type of institution also was carried to the Anglican Colonies in America, as we have seen in the documents for Virginia (R. 200 a), and became an established institution in America as well.

The apprenticing of boys to a trade, a still older institution, was also much used as a means for training youths for a life in the trades, not only in England and the American Colonies, but throughout all European lands as well. The conditions surrounding the apprenticing of a boy had by the eighteenth century become quite fixed. The "Indenture of Apprenticeship" was drawn up by a lawyer, and by it the master was carefully bound to clothe and feed the boy, train him properly in his trade, look after his morals, and start him in life at the end of his apprenticeship. This is well shown in the many records which have been preserved, both in England (R. 242) and the American Colonies (R. 201). For many boys this type of education was the best possible at the time, and worthily started the possessor in the work of his trade.

In the eighteenth century different English church parishes began to set up workhouse schools of various types, and to maintain these out of parish "rates." The one established in Bishopsgate Street, London, in 1701, is typical. This cared for about 375 children and in it, by 1720, there had been educated and placed forth 1420 children, and in addition 123 had died. Of this school it is recorded that poor children

"being taken into the said Workhouse are there taught to Read and Write, and kept to Work until they are qualified to be put out to be Apprentices, and for the Sea Service, or otherwise disposed; ... The Habit of the Children is all the same, being made of Russit Cloth, and a round Badge worn upon their Breast, representing a poor Boy, and a Sheep; the Motto: 'God's Providence is our Inheritance.'" ... In this workhouse children were "taught to spin Wool and Flax, to Sow and Knit, to make their own Cloaths, Shoes, and Stockings, and the like Employments; to inure them betimes to labour. They are also taught to read, and such as are capable, to write and cast Accounts; and also the Catechism, to ground them in Principles of Religion and Honesty." [21]

The school established by Saint John's parish, Southwark, London, in 1735, and designed to train and "put out" girls for domestic service (R. 241), and which cared for, clothed, and trained forty girls, is also typical of these parish schools "for the children of the industrious poor."

METHODS OF INSTRUCTION. Throughout the eighteenth century the method of instruction commonly employed in the vernacular schools was what was known as the individual method. This was wasteful of both time and effort, and unpedagogical to a high degree (R. 244). Everywhere the teacher was engaged chiefly in hearing recitations, testing memory, and keeping order. The pupils came to the master's desk, one by one (see Figures 98, 99), and recited what they had memorized. Aside from imposing discipline, teaching was an easy task. The pupils learned the assigned lessons and recited what they had learned. Such a thing as methodology--technique of instruction-- was unknown. The dominance of the religious motive, too, precluded any liberal attitude in school instruction, the individual method was time- consuming, school buildings often were lacking, and in general there was an almost complete lack of any teaching equipment, books, or supplies. Viewed from any modern standpoint the schools of the eighteenth century attained to but a low degree of efficiency (R. 244). The school hours were long, the schoolmaster's residence or place of work or business was commonly used as a schoolroom, and such regular schoolrooms as did exist were dirty and noisy and but poorly suited to school purposes. Schools everywhere, too, were ungraded, the school of one teacher being like that of any other teacher of that class.

So wasteful of time and effort was the individual method of instruction that children might attend school for years and get only a mere start in reading and writing. Paulsen, [22] writing of schools in German lands at an even later date, says that even in the better type of vernacular schools

many children never achieved anything beyond a little reading and knowing a few things by heart.... The instruction in reading was never anything else but a torture, protracted through years, from saying the alphabet and formation of syllables to the deciphering of complete words, without any real success in the end, while writing was nothing but a wearisome tracing of the letters, the net result of all the toil being the gabbling of the Catechism and a few Bible texts and hymns, learned over and over again.

The imparting of information by the teacher to a class, or a class discussion of a topic, were almost unknown. Hearing lessons, assigning new tasks, setting copies, making quill pens, dictating sums, and imposing order completely absorbed the time and the attention of the teacher.

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE. The discipline everywhere was severe. "A boy has a back; when you hit it he understands," was a favorite pedagogical maxim of the time. Whipping-posts were sometimes set up in the schoolroom, and practically all pictures of the schoolmasters of the time show a bundle of switches near at hand. Boys in the Latin grammar schools were flogged for petty offenses (R. 245). The ability to impose order on a poorly taught and, in consequence, an unruly school was always an important requisite of the schoolmaster. A Swabian schoolmaster, Häuberle by name, with characteristic Teutonic attention to details, has left on record [23] that, in the course of his fifty-one years and seven months as a teacher he had, by a moderate computation, given 911,527 blows with a cane, 124,010 blows with a rod, 20,989 blows and raps with a ruler, 136,715 blows with the hand, 10,235 blows over the mouth, 7,905 boxes on the ear, 1,115,800 raps on the head, and 22,763 notabenes with the Bible, Catechism, singing book, and grammar. He had 777 times made boys kneel on peas, 613 times on a triangular piece of wood, had made 3001 wear the jackass, and 1707 hold the rod up, not to mention various more unusual punishments he had contrived on the spur of the occasion. Of the blows with the cane, 800,000 were for Latin words; of the rod 76,000 were for texts from the Bible or verses from the singing book. He also had about 3000 expressions to scold with, two thirds of which were native to the German tongue and the remainder his invention.

Another illustration of German school discipline, of many that might be cited, was the reform work of Johann Ernest Christian Haun, who was appointed, in 1783, as inspector of schools in the once famous Gotha (p. 317). Due to warfare and neglect the schools there had fallen into disrepute. Haun drove the incapable teachers from the work, and for a time restored the schools to something of their earlier importance. Among other reforms it is recorded that he forbade teachers to put irons around the boys' necks, to cover them with mud, to make them kneel on peas, or to brutally beat them. Diesterweg (R. 244) describes similar punishments as characteristic of eighteenth-century German schools. The eighteenth- century German schoolmaster shown in Fig. 142 was probably a good sample of his class.

Pedagogical writers of the time uniformly complain of the severe discipline of the schools, and the literature of the period abounds in allusions to the prevailing harshness of the school discipline. A few writers condemn, but most approve heartily of the use of the rod. "Spare the rod and spoil the child" had for long been a well-grounded pedagogical doctrine. Among many literary extracts that might be cited illustrating this belief, the following poem by the English poet Crabbe (1754-1832) is interesting. He puts the following words into the mouth of his early schoolmaster:

Students like horses on the road, Must be well lashed before they take the load; They may be willing for a time to run, But you must whip them ere the work be done; To tell a boy, that if he will improve, His friends will praise him, and his parents love, Is doing nothing--he has not a doubt But they will love him, nay, applaud without; Let no fond sire a boy's ambition trust, To make him study, let him learn he must.

CONDITIONS SURROUNDING CHILDHOOD. It is difficult for us of today to re- create in imagination the pitiful life-conditions which surrounded children a century and a half ago. Often the lot of the children of the poor, who then constituted the great bulk of all children, was little less than slavery. Wretchedly poor, dirty, unkempt, hard-worked, beaten about, knowing strong drink early, illiterate, often vicious--their lot was a sad one. For the children of the poor there were few, if any, educational opportunities. Writing on the subject David Salmon says: [24]

The imagination of the twentieth century cannot fathom the poverty of the eighteenth. The great development of mines and manufactures, which has brought ease and independence within the reach of industrious labour everywhere, had hardly begun; employment was so scarce and intermittent, and wages were so low, that the working classes lived in hovels, dressed in rags, and were familiar with the pangs of hunger; while those who were forced to look to the rates for hovels, rags, and food sufficient to maintain a miserable life numbered a sixth of the whole population.

In the towns children were apprenticed out early in life, and for long hours of daily labor. Child welfare was almost entirely neglected, children were cuffed about and beaten at their work, juvenile delinquency was a common condition, child mortality was heavy, and ignorance was the rule. Schools generally were pay institutions or a charity, and not a birthright, and usually existed only for the middle and lower-middle classes in the population who were attendants at the churches and could afford to pay a little for the schooling given. Reading and religion were usually the only free subjects. Only in the New England Colonies, where the beginnings of town and colony school systems were evident, and in a few of the German States where state control was beginning to be exercised, was a better condition to be found.

Among the middle and upper social classes, particularly on the continent of Europe, a stiff artificiality everywhere prevailed. Children were dressed and treated as miniature adults, the normal activities of childhood were suppressed, and the natural interests and emotions of children found little opportunity for expression. Wearing powdered and braided hair, long gold-braided coats, embroidered waistcoats, cockaded hats, and swords, boys were treated more as adults than as children. Girls, too, with their long dresses, hoops, powdered hair, rouged faces, and demure manner, were trained in a, for children, most unnatural manner. [25]

The dancing master for their manners and graces, and the religious instructor to develop in them the ability to read and to go through a largely meaningless ceremonial, were the chief guides for the period of their childhood.

SCHOOL SUPPORT. No uniform plan, in any country, had as yet been evolved for even the meager support which the schools of the time received. The Latin grammar schools were in nearly all cases supported by the income from old "foundations" and from students' fees, with here and there some state aid. The new elementary vernacular schools, though, had had assigned to them few old foundations upon which to draw for maintenance, and in consequence support for elementary schools had to be built up from new sources, and this required time.

In England the Act of Conformity of 1662 (R. 166), it will be remembered (p. 324), had laid a heavy hand on the schools by driving all Dissenters from positions in them, and the Five Mile Act of 1665 had borne even more severely on the teachers in the schools of the Dissenters. Fortunately for elementary education in England, however, the English courts, in 1670, had decided in a test case that the teacher in an elementary school could not be deprived of his position by failure of the bishop to license him, if he were a nominee of the founder or the lay patron of the school. The result of this decision was that, between 1660 and 1730, 905 endowed elementary schools were founded in England, and 72 others previously founded had their endowments increased. The number continued to increase throughout the eighteenth century, and by 1842 had reached a total of 2194. These new foundations probably gave the best schooling of the time, and tended to stir the Established Church to action. Accordingly we find that during the eighteenth century the vestries of the different church parishes began the creation of parish elementary schools for the children of the poor of the parish, supporting a teacher for them out of the parish rates, and without specific legal authorization to do so. These new parish schools also contributed somewhat to the provision of elementary education, and mark the beginning of the church "voluntary schools" which were such a characteristic feature of nineteenth-century English education. We thus have, in England, endowed elementary schools, parish schools, dame schools, private-adventure schools of many types, and charity-schools, all existing side by side, and drawing such support as they could from endowment funds, parish rates, church tithes, subscriptions, and tuition fees. The support of schools by subscription lists (R. 240) was a very common proceeding. Education in England, more than in any other Protestant land, early came to be regarded as a benevolence which the State was under no obligation to support. Only workhouse schools were provided for by the general taxation of all property.

In the Netherlands and in German lands church funds, town funds, and tuition fees were the chief means of support, though here and there some prince had provided for something approaching state support for the schools of his little principality. Frederick the Great had ordered schools established generally (1763) and had decreed the compulsory attendance of children (R. 274), but he had depended largely on church funds and tuition fees (§7) for maintenance, with a proviso that the tuition of poor and orphaned children should be paid from "any funds of the church or town, that the schoolmaster may get his income" (§8). In Scotland the church parish school was the prevailing type. In France the religious societies (p. 345) provided nearly all the elementary vernacular religious education that was obtainable.

In the Dutch Provinces, in the New England Colonies, and in some of the minor German States, we find the clearest examples of the beginnings of state control and maintenance of elementary schools--something destined to grow rapidly and in the nineteenth century take over the school from the Church and maintain it as a function of the State. The Prussian kings early made grants of land and money for endowment funds and support, and state aid was ordered granted by Maria Theresa for Austria (R. 274 a), in 1774. In the New England Colonies the separation of the school from the Church, and the beginnings of state support and control of education, found perhaps their earliest and clearest exemplification. In the other Colonies the lottery was much used (R. 246) to raise funds for schools, while church tithes, subscription lists, and school societies after the English pattern also helped in many places to start and support a school or schools.

Only by some such means was it possible in the eighteenth century that the children of the poor could ever enjoy any opportunities for education. The parents of the poor children, themselves uneducated, could hardly be expected to provide what they had never come to appreciate themselves. On the other hand, few of the well-to-do classes felt under any obligation to provide education for children not their own. There was as yet no realization that the diffusion of education contributed to the welfare of the State, or that the ignorance of the masses might be in any way a public peril. This attitude is well shown for England by the fact that not a single law relating to the education of the people, aside from workhouse schools, was enacted by Parliament during the whole of the eighteenth century. The same was true of France until the coming of the Revolution. It is to a few of the German States and to the American Colonies that we must turn for the beginnings of legislation directing school support. This we shall describe more in detail in later chapters.

THE LATIN SECONDARY SCHOOL. The great progress made in education during the eighteenth century, nevertheless, was in elementary education. Concerning the secondary schools and the universities there is little to add to what has previously been said. During this century the secondary school, outside of German lands, remained largely stationary. Having become formal and lifeless in its teaching (p. 283), and in England and France crushed by religious-uniformity legislation, the Latin grammar school of England and the surviving colleges in France practically ceased to exert any influence on the national life. The Jesuit schools, which once had afforded the best secondary education in Europe, had so declined in usefulness everywhere that they were about to be driven from all lands. The Act of Conformity of 1662 (R. 166) had dealt the grammar schools of England a heavy blow, and the eighteenth century found them in a most wretched condition, with few scholars, and their endowments shamefully abused. The Law of 1662, says Montmorency, "involved such a peering into the lives of schoolmasters, such a course of inquisitorial folly, that the position became intolerable. Men would not become schoolmasters.... Education had no meaning when none but political and religious hypocrites were allowed to teach.... National education was destroyed." and the grammar schools of England were "practically withdrawn during more than two centuries (1662-1870) from the national life." [26]

In German lands the old Latin schools continued largely unchanged until near the middle of the eighteenth century, with Latin, taught as it had been for a century or more, as the chief subject of study. Shortly after the coming of Frederick the Great to the throne (1740) the Latin schools of Prussia, and after them the Latin schools in other German States, were reorganized and given a new life. The influence of Francke's school at Halle (p. 418), and the new types of teaching developed there and by his followers elsewhere, began to be felt. German, French, and mathematics were given recognition, and some science work was here and there introduced. Above all, though, Greek now attained to the place of first importance in the reorganized Latin schools.

It was not until after 1740 that the German people awakened to the possibility of an independent national life. Then, under the new impulse toward nationality, French influence and manners were thrown off, German literature attained its Golden Age, the Ritterakademieen (p. 405) were discarded, and a number of the German Principalities and States revised their school regulations and erected, out of the old Latin schools, a series of humanistic gymnasia in which the study of Greek life and culture occupied the foremost place. New methods in classical study were thought out and applied, and a new pedagogical purpose--culture and discipline--was given to the regenerated Latin schools. A new Renaissance, in a way, took place in German lands, [27] and a knowledge of Greek was proclaimed by German university and gymnasial teachers as indispensable to a liberal education with an earnestness of conviction not exceeded by Battista Guarino (p. 268) four centuries before. To know Greek and to have some familiarity with Greek literature and history now came to be regarded as necessary to the highest culture, [28] and a pedagogical theory for such study was erected, based on the discipline of the mind, [29] which dominated the German classical school throughout the entire nineteenth century. It was in the eighteenth century also that the German States began the development of the scientific secondary school (Realschule), see p. 420, as described in a preceding chapter.

RISE OF THE ACADEMY IN AMERICA. As we have seen (p. 361), the English Latin grammar school was early (1635) carried to New England, and set up there and elsewhere in the Colonies, but after the close of the seventeenth century its continued maintenance was something of a struggle. Particularly in the central and southern colonies, where commercial demands early made themselves felt, the tendency was to teach more practical subjects. This tendency led to the evolution, about the middle of the eighteenth century, of the distinctively American Academy, with a more practical curriculum, and by the close of the century it was rapidly superseding the older Latin grammar school. Franklin's Academy at Philadelphia, which began instruction in 1751, and which later evolved into the University of Pennsylvania, was probably the first American Academy. The first in Massachusetts was founded in 1761, and by 1800 there were seventeen in Massachusetts alone. The great period of academy development was the first half of the nineteenth century. The Phillips Academy, at Andover, Massachusetts, founded in 1788, reveals clearly the newer purpose of these American secondary schools. The foundation grant of this school gives the purpose to be:

to lay the foundation of a public free school or ACADEMY for the purposes of instructing Youth, not only in English and Latin Grammar, Writing, Arithmetic, and those Sciences wherein they are commonly taught; but more especially to learn them the GREAT END AND REAL BUSINESS OF LIVING ... it is again declared that the first and principle object of this Institution is the promotion of TRUE PIETY and VIRTUE; the second, instruction in the English, Latin, and Greek Languages, together with Writing, Arithmetic, Music, and the Art of Speaking; the third, practical Geometry, Logic, and Geography; and the fourth, such other liberal Arts and Sciences or Languages, as opportunity and ability may hereafter admit, and as the TRUSTEES shall direct.

Though still deeply religious, these new schools usually were free from denominationalism. Though retaining the study of Latin, they made most of new subjects of more practical value. A study of real things rather than words about things, and a new emphasis on native English and on science were prominent features of their work. They were also usually open to girls, as well as boys,--an innovation in secondary education before almost wholly unknown. Many were organized later for girls only. These institutions were the precursors of the American public high school, itself a type of the most democratic institution for secondary education the world has ever known.

THE UNIVERSITIES. The condition of the universities by the middle of the eighteenth century we traced in the preceding chapter. They had lost their earlier importance as institutions of learning, but in a few places the sciences were slowly gaining a foothold, and in German lands we noted the appearance of the first two modern universities--institutions destined deeply to influence subsequent university development, as we shall point out in a later chapter.

END OF THE TRANSITION PERIOD. We have now reached, in our study of the history of educational progress, the end of the transition period which marked the change in thinking from mediaeval to modern attitudes. The period was ushered in with the beginnings of the Revival of Learning in Italy in the fourteenth century, and it may fittingly close about the middle of the eighteenth.

We now stand on the threshold of a new era in world history. The same questioning spirit that animated the scholars of the Revival of Learning, now full-grown and become bold and self-confident, is about to be applied to affairs of politics and government, and we are soon to see absolutism and mediaeval attitudes in both Church and State questioned and overthrown. New political theories are to be advanced, and the divine right of the people is to be asserted and established in England, the American Colonies, and in France, and ultimately, early in the twentieth century, we are to witness the final overthrow of the divine-right-of- kings idea and a world-wide sweep of the democratic spirit. A new human and political theory as to education is to be evolved; the school is to be taken over from the Church, vastly expanded in scope, and made a constructive instrument of the State; and the wonderful nineteenth century is to witness a degree of human, scientific, political, and educational progress not seen before in all the days from the time of the Crusades to the opening of the nineteenth century. It is to this wonderful new era in world history that we now turn.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Contrast a religious elementary school, with the Catechism as its chief textbook, with a modern public elementary school.

2. Contrast the elementary schools of Mulcaster and Comenius.

3. To what extent did the religious teachings of the time support Locke's ideas as to the disciplinary conception of education?

4. Do we to-day place as much emphasis on habit formation as did Locke? On character? On good breeding?

5. State some of the reasons for the noticeable weakening of the hold of the old religious theory as to education, in Protestant lands, by the middle of the eighteenth century.

6. How do you explain the slow evolution of the elementary teacher into a position of some importance? Is the evolution still in process? Illustrate.

7. What were the motives behind the organization of the religious charity- schools?

8. Show how tax-supported workhouse schools represented, for England, the first step in public-school maintenance.

9. Show that teaching under the individual method of instruction was school keeping, rather than school teaching.

10. How do you explain the general prevalence of harsh discipline well into the nineteenth century?

11. Did any other country have, in the eighteenth century, so mixed a type of elementary education as did England? Why was it so badly mixed there?

12. Show how the English Act of Conformity, of 1662, stifled the English Latin grammar schools.

13. What reasons were there for the development of the more practical Academy in America, rather than in England?

14. Compare the American Academy with the German Realschule.

SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying Book of Readings the following selections, illustrative of the contents of this chapter, are reproduced:

226. Mulcaster: Table of Contents of his Positions. 227. Locke: On the Teaching of Latin. 228. Locke: On the Bible as a Reading Book. 229. Coote-Dilworth: Two early "Spelling Books." 230. Webster: Description of Pre-Revolutionary Schools. 231. Raumer: Teachers in Gotha in 1741. 232. Raumer: An 18th Century Swedish People's School. 233. Raumer: Schools of Frankfurt-am-Main during the Eighteenth Century. 234. Krüsi: A Swiss Teacher's Examination in 1793. 235. Crabbe; White; Shenstone: The English Dame School described. 236. Newburgh: A Parochial-School Teacher's Agreement. 237. Saint Anne: Beginnings of an English Charity School. 238. Regulations: Charity-School Organization and Instruction. (a) Qualifications for the Master. (b) Purpose and Instruction. 239. Allen and McClure: Textbooks used in English Charity-Schools. 240. England: A Charity-School Subscription Form. 241. Southwark: The Charity-School of Saint John's Parish. 242. Gorsham: An Eighteenth-Century Indenture of Apprenticeship. 243. Indenture: Learning the Trade of a Schoolmaster. 244. Diesterweg: The Schools of Germany before Pestalozzi. 245. England: Free School Rules, 1734. 246. Murray: A New Jersey School Lottery.

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. State the main points in Mulcaster's scheme (226) for education.

2. Characterize Locke's criticism (227) on the teaching of Latin.

3. State Locke's ideas as to the use of the Bible (228).

4. Characterize the nature and contents of the so-called "Spellers" by Coote and Dilworth (229).

5. Compare the Connecticut common school, as described by Webster (230), with an English charity-school (238 b), or a Swedish popular school (232) of the time.

6. Just what state of vernacular education in Teutonic lands is indicated by the three selections (231, 232, 233)?

7. Compare the proprietary right of the teachers at Frankfort (233) with the right of control claimed over song schools by the Precentor of a mediaeval cathedral (83).

8. Do such conditions as Krüsi describes (234) exist anywhere to day?

9. Characterize the Dame School of England, as to instruction and control, from the descriptions given in the selections (235) reproduced.

10. State the relationship of teacher and minister at Newburgh (236), and indicate the nature and probable extent of his income.

11. State the purpose of the founders of Saint Anne of Soho (237), and characterize the type of school they created.

12. What does the qualification for a charity-school teacher (238 a) indicate as to the nature of the teacher's calling in such schools? Outline the instruction (238 b) in such a school.

13. What instruction did the textbooks as printed (239) provide for?

14. Show the voluntary and benevolent character of the charity-school by comparing the subscription form (240) with some voluntary subscription form used to day.

15. How did the school in Saint John's parish (241) differ from apprenticeship training?

16. What changes do you note between the mediaeval Indenture of Apprenticeship (99) and the eighteenth-century English form (242)?

17. Compare Readings 201 and 242 on apprenticeship.

18. Compare conditions described in 244 with 231-233.

19. What do the Free School Rules of 1734 (245) indicate as to duties and discipline?

20. What does the use of the lottery for school support (246) indicate as to the conception and scope of education at the time?

SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

Allen, W. O. B., and McClure, E. _Two Hundred Years; History of the S.P.C.K., 1698-1808_. Barnard, Henry. English Pedagogy, Part II, The Teacher in English Literature. * Birchenough, C. _History of Elementary Education in England and Wales_. Brown, E. E. The Making of our Middle Schools. Cardwell, J. F. The Story of a Charity School. Davidson, Thos. Rousseau. * Earle, Alice M. Child Life in Colonial Days. Field, Mrs. E. M. The Child and his Book. Ford, Paul L. The New England Primer. Godfrey, Elizabeth. English Children in the Olden Time. * Johnson, Clifton. Old Time Schools and School Books. * Kemp, W. W. _The Support of Schools in Colonial New York by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts_. Kilpatrick, Wm. H. _Dutch Schools of New Netherlands and Colonial New York_. Locke, John. Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693). * Montmorency, J. E. G. de. Progress of Education in England. Montmorency, J. E. G. de. _State Intervention in English Education_. Mulcaster, Richard. Positions. (London, 1581.) * Paulsen, Friedrich. German Education, Past and Present. * Salmon, David. "The Education of the Poor in the Eighteenth Century"; reprinted from the Educational Record. (London, 1908.) * Scott, J. F. _Historic Essays on Apprenticeship and Vocational Education_. (Ann Arbor, 1914.)

IV. MODERN TIMES

THE ABOLITION OF PRIVILEGE THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY A NEW THEORY FOR EDUCATION EVOLVED THE STATE TAKES OVER THE SCHOOL

XIX. THE EIGHTEENTH A TRANSITION CENTURY

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY A TURNING-POINT. The eighteenth century, in human thinking and progress, marks for most western nations the end of mediaevalism and the ushering-in of modern forms of intellectual liberty. The indifference to the old religious problems, which was clearly manifest in all countries at the beginning of the century, steadily grew and culminated in a revolt against ecclesiastical control over human affairs. This change in attitude toward the old problems permitted the rise of new types of intellectual inquiry, a rapid development of scientific thinking and discovery, the growth of a consciousness of national problems and national welfare, and the bringing to the front of secular interests to a degree practically unknown since the days of ancient Rome. In a sense the general rise of these new interests in the eighteenth century was but a culmination of a long series of movements looking toward greater intellectual freedom and needed human progress which had been under way since the days when studia generalia and guilds first arose in western Europe. The rise of the universities in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Revival of Learning in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Protestant Revolts in the sixteenth, the rise of modern scientific inquiry in the sixteenth and seventeenth, and Puritanism in England and Pietism in Germany in the seventeenth, had all been in the nature of protests against the mediaeval tendency to confine and limit and enslave the intellect. In the eighteenth century the culmination of this rising tide of protest came in a general and determined revolt against despotism in either Church or State, which, at the close of the century, swept away ancient privileges, abuses, and barriers, and prepared the way for the marked intellectual and human and political progress which characterized the nineteenth century.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CHANGE IN ATTITUDE. The new spirit and interests and attitudes which came to characterize the eighteenth century in the more progressive western nations meant the ultimate overthrow of the tyranny of mediaeval supernatural theology, the evolution of a new theory as to moral action which should be independent of theology, the freeing of the new scientific spirit from the fetters of church control, the substituting of new philosophical and scientific and economic interests for the old theological problems which had for so long dominated human thinking, the substitution of natural political organization for the older ecclesiastical foundations of the State, the destruction of what remained of the old feudal political system, the freeing of the serf and the evolution of the citizen, and the rise of a modern society interested in problems of national welfare--government in the interest of the governed, commerce, industry, science, economics, education, and social welfare. The evolution of such modern-type governments inevitably meant the creation of entirely new demands for the education of the people and for far-reaching political and social reforms.

This new eighteenth-century spirit, which so characterized the mid- eighteenth century that it is often spoken of as the "Period of the Enlightenment," [1] expressed itself in many new directions, a few of the more important of which will be considered here as of fundamental concern for the student of the history of educational progress. In a very real sense the development of state educational systems, in both European and American States, has been an outgrowth of the great liberalizing forces which first made themselves felt in a really determined way during this important transition century. In this chapter we shall consider briefly five important phases of this new eighteenth-century liberalism, as follows:

1. The work of the benevolent despots of continental Europe in trying to shape their governments to harmonize them with the new spirit of the century.

2. The unsatisfied demand for reform in France.

3. The rise of democratic government and liberalism in England.

4. The institution of constitutional government and religious freedom in America.

5. The sweeping away of mediaeval abuses in the great Revolution in France.

I. WORK OF THE BENEVOLENT DESPOTS OF CONTINENTAL EUROPE

THE NEW NATIONALISM LEADS TO INTERESTED GOVERNMENT. In England, as we shall trace a little further on, a democratic form of government had for long been developing, but this democratic life had made but little headway on the continent of Europe. There, instead, the democratic tendencies which showed some slight signs of development during the sixteenth century had been stamped out in the period of warfare and the ensuing hatreds of the seventeenth, and in the eighteenth century we find autocratic government at its height. National governments to succeed the earlier government of the Church had developed and grown strong, the kingly power had everywhere been consolidated, Church and State were in close working alliance, and the new spirit of nationality--in government, foreign policy, languages, literature, and culture--was being energetically developed by those responsible for the welfare of the States. Everywhere, almost, on the continent of Europe, the theory of the divine right of kings to rule and the divine duty of subjects to obey seemed to have become fixed, and this theory of government the Church now most assiduously supported. Unlike in England and the American Colonies, the people of the larger countries of continental Europe had not as yet advanced far enough in personal liberty or political thinking to make any demand of consequence for the right to govern themselves. The new spirit of nationality abroad in Europe, though, as well as the new humanitarian ideas beginning to stir thinking men, alike tended to awaken a new interest on the part of many rulers in the welfare of the people they governed. In consequence, during the eighteenth century, we find a number of nations in which the rulers, putting themselves in harmony with the new spirit of the time, made earnest attempts to improve the condition of their peoples as a means of advancing the national welfare. We shall here mention the four nations in which the most conspicuous reform work was attempted.

THE RULERS OF PRUSSIA. Three kings, to whom the nineteenth-century greatness of Prussia was largely due, ruled the country during nearly the whole of the eighteenth century. They were fully as despotic as the kings of France, but, unlike the French kings, they were keenly alive to the needs of the people, anxious to advance the welfare of the State, tolerant in religion, and in sympathy with the new scientific studies. The first, Frederick William I (1713-40), labored earnestly to develop the resources of the country, trained a large army, ordered elementary education made compulsory, and made the beginnings in the royal provinces of the transformation of the schools from the control of the Church to the control of the State. His son, known to history as Frederick the Great, ruled from 1740 to 1786. During his long reign he labored continually to curtail ancient privileges, abolish old abuses, and improve the condition of his people. During the first week of his reign he abolished torture in trials, made the administration of law more equitable, instituted a limited freedom for the press, [2] and extended religious toleration. [3] He also partially abolished serfdom on the royal domains, and tried to uplift the peasantry and citizen classes, but in this he met with bitter opposition from the nobles of his realm. He built roads, canals, and bridges, encouraged skilled artisans to settle in his dominions, developed agriculture and industry, encouraged scientific workers, extended an asylum to thousands of Huguenots fleeing from religious persecution in France, [4] and did more than any previous ruler to provide common schools throughout his kingdom. By the general regulation of education in his kingdom (chapter xxii) he laid the foundations upon which the nineteenth- century Prussian school system was later built.

His rule, though, was thoroughly autocratic. "Every thing for the people, but nothing by the people", was the keynote of his policies. He had no confidence in the ability of the people to rule, and gave them no opportunity to learn the art. He employed the strong army his father built up to wage wars of conquest, seize territory that did not belong to him, and in consequence made himself a great German hero. [5] He may be said to have laid the foundations of modern militarized, socialized, obediently educated, and subject Germany, and also to have begun the "grand-larceny" and "scrap-of-paper" policy which has characterized Prussian international relationships ever since. Frederick William II, who reigned from 1786 to 1797, continued in large measure the enlightened policies of his uncle, reformed the tax system, lightened the burdens of his people, encouraged trade, emphasized the German tongue, quickened the national spirit, actively encouraged schools and universities, and began that centralization of authority over the developing educational system which resulted in the creation in Prussia of the first modern state school system in Europe. The educational work of these three Prussian kings was indeed important, and we shall study it more in detail in a later chapter (Chapter XXII).

THE AUSTRIAN REFORMERS. Two notably benevolent rulers occupied the Austrian throne for half a century, and did much to improve the condition of the Austrian people. A very remarkable woman, Maria Theresa, came to the throne in 1740, and was followed by her son, Joseph II, in 1780. He ruled until 1790. To Maria Theresa the Austria of the nineteenth century owed most of its development and power. She worked with seemingly tireless energy for the advancement of the welfare of her subjects, and toward the close of her reign laid, as we shall see in a later chapter, the beginnings of Austrian school reform.

Joseph II carried still further his mother's benevolent work, and strove to introduce "enlightenment and reason" into the administration of his realm. A student of the writings of the eighteenth-century reform philosophers, and deeply imbued with the reform spirit of his time, he attempted to abolish ancient privileges, establish a uniform code of justice, encourage education, free the serfs, abolish feudal tenure, grant religious toleration, curb the power of the Pope and the Church, break the power of the local Diets, centralize the State, and "introduce a uniform level of democratic simplicity under his own absolute sway." He attempted to alter the organization of the Church, abolished six hundred monasteries, [6] and reduced the number of monastic persons in his dominion from 63,000 to 27,000. Attempting too much, he brought down upon his head the wrath of both priest and noble and died a disappointed man. The abolition of feudal tenure and serfdom on the distinctively Austrian lands, of all his attempted reforms, alone was permanent. His work stands as an interesting commentary on the temporary character of the results which follow attempts rapidly to improve the conditions surrounding the lives of people, without at the same time educating the people to improve themselves.

THE SPANISH REFORMERS. A very similar result attended the reform efforts of a succession of benevolent rulers thrust upon Spain, during the eighteenth century, by the complications of foreign politics. Over a period of nearly ninety years, extending from the accession of Philip V (1700) to the death of Charles III (1788), remarkable political progress was imposed by a succession of able ministers and with the consent of the kings. [7] The power of the Church, always the crying evil of Spain, was restricted in many ways; the Inquisition was curbed; the Jesuits were driven from the kingdom; the burning of heretics was stopped; prosecution for heresy was reduced and discouraged; the monastic orders were taught to fear the law and curb their passions; evils in public administration were removed; national grievances were redressed; the civil service was improved; science and literature were encouraged, in place of barren theological speculations; and an earnest effort was made to regenerate the national life and improve the lot of the common people.

All these reforms, though, were imposed from above, and no attempt was made to introduce schools or to educate the people in the arts of self- government. The result was that the reforms never went beneath the surface, and the national life of the people remained largely untouched. Within five years of the death of Charles III all had been lost. Under a native Spanish king, thoroughly orthodox, devout, and lacking in any broad national outlook, the Church easily restored itself to power, the priests resumed their earlier importance, the nobles again began to exact their full toll, free discussion was forbidden, scientific studies were abandoned, the universities were ordered to discontinue the study of moral philosophy, and the political and social reforms which had required three generations to build up were lost in half a decade. Not meeting any well- expressed need of the people, and with no schools provided to show to the people the desirable nature of the reforms introduced, it was easy to sweep them aside. In this relapse to mediaevalism, the chance for Spain-- a country rich in possibilities and natural resources--to evolve early into a progressive modern nation was lost. So Spain has remained ever since, and only in the last quarter of a century has reform from within begun to be evident in this until recently priest-ridden and benighted land.

THE INTELLIGENT DESPOTS OF RUSSIA. The greatest of these were Peter the Great, who ruled from 1689 to 1725, and Catherine II, who ruled from 1762 to 1796. Catching something of the new eighteenth-century western spirit, these rulers tried to introduce some western enlightenment into their as yet almost barbarous land. Each tried earnestly to lift their people to a higher level of living, and to start them on the road toward civilization and learning. By a series of edicts, despotically enforced, Peter tried to introduce the civilization of the western world into his country. He brought in numbers of skilled artisans, doctors, merchants, teachers, printers, and soldiers; introduced many western skills and trades; and made the beginnings of western secondary education for the governing classes by the establishment in the cities of a number of German-type gymnasia. [8] Later Catherine II had the French philosopher Diderot (p. 482) draw up a plan for her for the organization of a state system of higher schools, but the plan was never put into effect. The beginnings of Russian higher civilization really date from this eighteenth-century work. The power of the formidable Greek or Eastern Church remained, however, untouched, and this continued, until after the Russian revolution of 1917, as one of the most serious obstacles to Russian intellectual and educational progress. The serfs, too, remained serfs--tied to the land, ignorant, superstitious, and obedient.

By the close of the eighteenth century Russia, largely under Prussian training, had become a very formidable military power, and by the close of the nineteenth century was beginning to make some progress of importance in the arts of peace. Just at present Russia is going through a stage of national evolution quite comparable to that which took place in France a century and a quarter ago, and the educational importance of this great people, as we shall point out further on, lies in their future evolution rather than in any contribution they have as yet made to western development.

II. THE UNSATISFIED DEMAND FOR REFORM IN FRANCE

THE SETTING OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE. Eighteenth-century France, on the contrary, developed no benevolent despot to mitigate abuses, reform the laws, abolish privileges, temper the rule of the Church, [9] (R. 247), curb the monastic orders, develop the natural resources, begin the establishment of schools, and alleviate the hard lot of the serf and the peasant. There, instead, absolute monarchy in Europe reached its most complete triumph during the long reigns of Louis XIV (1643-1715) and Louis XV (1715-74), and the splendor of the court life of France captivated all Europe and served to hide the misery which made the splendor possible. There the power of the nobles had been completely broken, and the power of the parliaments completely destroyed. "I am the State," exclaimed Louis XIV, and the almost unlimited despotism of the King and his ministers and favorites fully supported the statement. Local liberties had been suppressed, and the lot of the common people--ignorant, hard-working, downtrodden, but intensely patriotic--was wretched in the extreme. Approximately 140,000 nobles [10] and 130,000 monks, nuns, and clergy owned two fifths of the landed property of France, and controlled the destinies of a nation of approximately 25,000,000 people. Agriculture was the great industry of the time, but this was so taxed by the agents of King and Church that over one half of the net profits from farming were taken for taxation.

CHURCH AND STATE WERE IN CLOSE WORKING ALLIANCE. The higher offices of the Church were commonly held by appointed noblemen, who drew large incomes [11] led worldly lives, and neglected their priestly functions much as the Italian appointees in German lands had done before the Reformation. Between the nobles and upper clergy on the one hand and the peasant-born lower clergy and the masses of the people on the other a great gulf existed. The real brains of France were to be found among a small bourgeois class of bankers, merchants, shopkeepers, minor officials, lawyers, and skilled artisans, who lived in the cities and who, ambitious and discontented, did much to stimulate the increasing unrest and demand for reform which in time pervaded the whole nation. A king, constantly in need of increasing sums of money; an idle, selfish, corrupt, and discredited nobility and upper clergy, incapable of aiding the king, many of whom, too, had been influenced by the new philosophic and scientific thinking and were willing to help destroy their own orders; an aggressive, discontented, and patriotic bourgeoisie, full of new political and social ideas, and patriotically anxious to reform France; and a vast unorganized peasantry and city rabble, suffering much and resisting little, but capable of a terrible fury and senseless destruction, once they were aroused and their suppressed rage let loose;--these were the main elements in the setting of eighteenth-century France.

THE FRENCH REFORM PHILOSOPHERS. During the middle decades of the eighteenth century a small but very influential group of reform philosophers in France attacked with their pens the ancient abuses in Church and State, and did much to pave the way for genuine political and religious reform. In a series of widely read articles and books, characterized for the most part by clear reasoning and telling arguments, these political philosophers attacked the power of the absolute monarchy on the one hand, and the existing privileges of the nobles and clergy on the other, as both unjust and inimical to the welfare of society (R. 248). The leaders in the reform movement were Montesquieu (1689-1755), Turgot (1727-81), Voltaire (1694-1778), Diderot (1713-84), and Rousseau (1712- 78).

Montesquieu. In 1748 appeared Montesquieu's famous book, the Spirit of Laws. In this he pointed out the many excellent features of the constitutional government which the English had developed, and compared English conditions with the many abuses to which the French people were subject. He argued that laws should be expressive of the wishes and needs of the people governed, and that the education of a people "ought to be relative to the principles of good government." Montesquieu also stands, with Turgot as the founder of the sciences of comparative politics [12] and the philosophy of history--new studies which helped to shape the political thinking of eighteenth-century France.

Turgot. Two years after the publication of Montesquieu's book, Turgot delivered (1750) a series of lectures at the Sorbonne, in Paris, in which he virtually created the science of history. Looking at human history comprehensively, seeing clearly that there had been a hitherto unrecognized regularity of march amid the confusion of the past, and that it was possible to grasp the history of the progress of man as a whole, he saw and stated the possibility of society to improve itself through intelligent government, and the need for wise laws and general education to enable it to do so. [13]

In 1774 Turgot was appointed Minister of Finance by the new King, Louis XVI, and during the two years before he was removed from office he attempted to carry out many needed political and social reforms. Duruy [14] has summarized his suggested reforms as follows:

1. Gradual introduction of a complete system of local self-government.

2. Imposition of a land tax on nobility and clergy.

3. Suppression of the greater part of the monasteries.

4. Amelioration of the condition of the minor clergy.

5. Equalization of the burdens of taxation.

6. Liberty of conscience, and the recall of the Protestants to France.

7. A uniform system of weights and measures.

8. Freedom for commerce and industry.

9. A single and uniform code of laws.

10. A vast plan for the organization of a system of public instruction throughout France.

This list is indicative of the reform philosophy in the light of which he worked. Arousing the natural hostility of the nobility and higher clergy, he was soon dismissed, and the reforms he had proposed were abandoned by the King.

Voltaire. The keenest and most unsparing critic of the old order was Voltaire. In clear and forceful French he exposed existing conditions in society and government, and particularly the control of affairs exercised by the most ancient and most powerful organization of his day--the Church. For this he was execrated and hated by the clergy, and in return he made it the chief task of his life to destroy the reign of the priest. Having lived for a time in England, he appreciated the vast difference between the English and French forms of government. With a keen and unsparing pen he exposed the scholasticism, despotism, dogmatism, superstition, hypocrisy, servility, and deep injustice of his age, and poured out the vials of his scorn upon the grubbing pedantry of the Academicians who doted upon the past because ignorant of the present. In particular he stood for the abolition of that relic of feudalism--serfdom--which still seriously oppressed the peasantry of France; for liberty in thought and action for the individual; for curbing the powers and privileges of both State and Church; for an equalization of the burdens of taxation between the different classes in French society; and for the organization of a system of public education throughout the nation. He died before the outbreak of the Revolution he had done so much to bring about, but by the time he died the "Ancient Régime" of privilege and corruption and oppression was already tottering to its fall. His conception of the relations that should exist between Church and State are well set forth in a short article from his pen on the subject (R. 248) reprinted from the Encyclopaedia of Diderot.

Diderot. Another able thinker and writer was Diderot. Besides other works of importance, he gave twenty years of his life (1751-72) to the editing (with D'Alembert) of an Encyclopaedia of seventeen volumes of text and eleven of plates. Many of the articles were written by himself, and were expressive of his ideas as to reform. Many were frankly critical of existing privileges, abuses, and pretensions. Many interpreted to the French the science of Newton and the discoveries of the age, and awakened a new interest in scientific study. Because of its reform ideas the publication was suppressed, in 1759, after the publication of the seventh volume, and had to be carried on surreptitiously thereafter. Viscount Morley, writing recently on Diderot, summarizes the nature and influence of the Encyclopaedia in the following words:

The ecclesiastical party detested the Encyclopaedia, in which they saw a rising stronghold for their philosophical enemies. To any one who turns over the pages of these redoubtable volumes now, it seems surprising that their doctrine should have stirred such portentous alarm. There is no atheism, no overt attack on any of the cardinal mysteries of the faith, no direct denunciation even of the notorious abuses of the Church. Yet we feel that the atmosphere of the book may well have been displeasing to authorities who had not yet learnt to encounter the modern spirit on equal terms. The Encyclopaedia takes for granted the justice of religious toleration and speculative freedom. It asserts in distinct tones the democratic doctrine that it is the common people in a nation whose lot ought to be the chief concern of the nation's government. From beginning to end it is one unbroken process of exaltation of scientific knowledge on the one hand, and pacific industry on the other. All these things were odious to the old governing classes of France. [15]

Rousseau. The fifth reform writer mentioned as exercising a large influence was Rousseau. In 1749 the Academy at Dijon offered a prize for the best essay on the subject: Has the progress of the sciences and arts contributed to corrupt or to purify morals? Rousseau took the negative side and won the prize. His essay attracted widespread attention. In 1753 he competed for a second prize on The Origin of Inequality among Men, in which he took the same negative attitude. In 1762 appeared both his Social Contract and Émile. In the former he contended that early men had given to selected leaders the right to conduct their government for them, and that these had in time become autocratic and had virtually enslaved the people (R. 249 a). He held that men were not bound to submit to government against their wills, and to remedy existing abuses he advocated the overthrow of the usurping government and the establishment of a republic, with universal suffrage based on "liberty, fraternity, and equality." The ideal State lay in a society controlled by the people, where artificiality and aristocracy and the tyranny of society over man did not exist. Nor could Rousseau distinguish between political and ecclesiastical tyranny, holding that the former inevitably followed from the latter (R. 249 b).

Crude as were his theories, and impractical as were many of his ideas, to an age tired of absurdities and pretensions and injustice, and suffering deeply from the abuses of both Church and State, his attractively written book seemed almost inspired. The Social Contract virtually became the Bible of the French Revolutionists. In the Émile, a book which will be referred to more at length in chapter XXI, Rousseau held that we should revert, in education, to a state of nature to secure the needed educational reforms, and that education to prepare for life in the existing society was both wrong and useless.

A REVOLUTION IN FRENCH THINKING. These five men--Montesquieu, Turgot, Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau--and many other less influential followers, portrayed the abuses of the time in Church and State and pointed out the lines of political and ecclesiastical reform. Those who read their writings understood better why the existing privileges of the nobility and clergy were no longer right, and the need for reform in matters of taxation and government. Their writings added to the spirit of unrest of the century, and were deeply influential, not only in France, but in the American Colonies as well. Though the attack was at first against the evils in Church and State, the new critical philosophy soon led to intellectual developments of importance in many other directions.

At the death of Louis XIV (1715) France was intellectually prostrate. Great as was his long reign from the point of view of the splendor of his court, and large as was the quantity of literature produced, his age was nevertheless an age of misery, religious intolerance, political oppression, and intellectual decline. It was a reign of centralized and highly personal government. Men no longer dared to think for themselves, or to discuss with any freedom questions either of politics or religion. "There was no popular liberty; there were no great men; there was no science; there was no literature; there were no arts. The largest intellects lost their energy; the national spirit died away." Between the death of Louis XIV and the outbreak of the French Revolution (1789) an intellectual revolution took place in France, and for this revolution English political progress and political and scientific thinking were largely responsible.

GREAT ENGLISH INFLUENCE ON FRANCE. In 1715 the English language was almost unspoken in France, English science and political progress were unknown there, and the English were looked down upon and hated. Half a century later English was spoken everywhere by the scholars of the time; the English were looked upon as the political and scientific leaders of Europe; and the scholars of France visited England to study English political, economic, and scientific progress. Locke, an uncompromising advocate of political and religious liberty; Hobbes, the speculative moral philosopher; and the great scientist Newton were the teachers of Voltaire. More than any other single man, Voltaire moulded and redirected eighteenth-century thought in France. [16] Numerous French writers of importance--Helvetius, Diderot, Morellet, Voltaire, Rousseau, to mention but a few--drew their inspiration from English writers. In the eighteenth century England became the school for political liberty for France. [17]

The effect of the work of Isaac Newton (p. 388), as popularized by the writings of Voltaire, was revolutionary on a people who had been so tyrannized over by the clergy as had the French during the reign of Louis XIV. An interest in scientific studies before unknown in France now flamed up, and a new generation of French scientists arose. Physics, chemistry, zoölogy, and anatomy received a great new impetus, while botany, geology, and mineralogy were raised to the rank of sciences. Popular scientific lectures became very common. The classics were almost abandoned for the new studies.

Economic questions now also began to be discussed, such as questions of money, food, finance, and government expenditure. In 1776 the Englishman, Adam Smith, laid the foundations of the new science of political economy by the publication of his Wealth of Nations, and this was at once translated into French and eagerly read. In 1781 a French banker by the name of Necker published his Compte Rendu, a statistical report on the finances of France. So feverishly eager were men to study problems of government that six thousand copies were sold the day it was published, and eighty thousand had to be printed before the demand for it was satisfied. A half-century earlier it would have been read scarcely at all.

In the meantime taxes piled up, reforms were refused, the power and arrogance of the clergy and nobility showed no signs of diminution, the nation was burdened with debt, commerce and agriculture declined, the lot of the common people became ever more hard to bear, and the masses grew increasingly resentful and rebellious. As national affairs continued to drift from bad to worse in France, a series of important happenings on the American continent helped to bring matters more rapidly to a crisis. Before describing these events, however, we wish to sketch briefly the rise of government by the people and the extension of liberalism in England--the first great democratic nation of the western world.

III. ENGLAND THE FIRST DEMOCRATIC NATION

EARLY BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH LIBERTY. The first western nation created from the wreck of the Roman Empire to achieve a measurement of self-government was England. Better civilized than most of the other wandering tribes, at the time of their coming to English shores, the invading Angles, Saxons, and Jutes early accepted Christianity (p. 120) and settled down to an agricultural life. On English shores they soon built up a for-the-time substantial civilization. This was later largely destroyed by the pillaging Danes, but with characteristic energy the English set to work to assimilate the newcomers and build up civilization anew. The work of Alfred (p. 146) in reëstablishing law and order, at a time when law and order scarcely existed anywhere in western Europe, will long remain famous. Later on, and at a time when German and Hun and Slav had only recently accepted Christianity in name and had begun to settle down into rude tribal governments, and when the Prussians in their original home along the eastern Baltic were still offering human sacrifices to their heathen gods (p. 120), the English barons were extorting Magna Charta from King John and laying the firm foundations of English constitutional liberty. In the meadow at Runnymede, on that justly celebrated June day, in 1215, government under law and based on the consent of the governed began to shape itself once more in the western world. Of the sixty-three articles of this Charter of Liberties, three possess imperishable value. These provided:

1. That no free man shall be imprisoned or proceeded against except by his peers, or the law of the land, which secured trial by jury.

2. That justice should neither be sold, denied, nor delayed.

3. That dues from the people to the king could be imposed only with the consent of the National Council (after 1246 known as Parliament).

So important was this charter to such a liberty-loving people as the English have always been, and so bitterly did kings resent its hampering provisions, that within the next two centuries kings had been forced to confirm it no less than thirty-seven times.

By 1295 the first complete Parliament, representative of the three orders of society--Lords, Clergy, and Commons--assembled, and in 1333 the Commons gained the right to sit by itself. From that time to the present the Commons, representing the people, has gradually broadened its powers, working, as Tennyson has said, [18] "from precedent to precedent," until to-day it rules the English nation. In 1376 the Commons gained the right to impeach the King's ministers, and in 1407 the exclusive right to make grants of money for any governmental purpose. Centuries ahead of other nations, this insured an almost continual meeting of the national assembly and a close scrutiny of the acts of both kings and ministers.

In 1604 King James I, imitating continental European precedents, proclaimed his theory as to the "divine right of kings" to rule, [19] and a struggle at once set in which carried the English into Civil War (1642- 49); led to the beheading of Charles I (1649); the overthrow and banishment of James II (1688); and the ultimate firm establishment, instead, of the "divine right of the common people." [20] In an age when the autocratic power and the divine right of kings to rule was almost unquestioned elsewhere in Europe, the English people compelled their king to recognize that he could rule over them only when he ruled in their interests and as they wished him to do. Though there was a period of struggle later on with the German Georges (I, II, and III), and especially with the honest but stupid George III, England has, since 1688, been a government of and by the people. [21] France did not rid itself of the "divine-right" conception until the French Revolution (1789), and Germany, Austria, and Russia not until 1918.

GROWTH OF TOLERANCE AMONG THE ENGLISH. The results of the long struggle of the English for liberty under law showed itself in many ways in the growth of tolerance among the people of the English nation. At a time when other nations were bound down in blind obedience to king and priest, and when dissenting minorities were driven from the land, the English people had become accustomed to the idea of individual liberty, regulated by law, and to the toleration of opinions with which they did not agree. These characteristically English conceptions of liberty under law and of the toleration of minorities have found expression in many important ways in the life and government of the people (R. 250), and have been elements of great strength in England's colonial policy. One of the important ways in which this growth of tolerance among the English showed itself was in the extension of a larger freedom to those unable to subscribe to the state religion.

Though the Reformation movement had stirred up bitter hatreds in England, as on the Continent, the English were among the first of European peoples to show tolerance of opposition in religious matters. The high English State Church, which had succeeded the Roman, had made but small appeal to many Englishmen. The Puritans had early struggled to secure a simplification of the church service and the introduction of more preaching (p. 359), and in the seventeenth century the organization of three additional dissenting sects, which became known as Unitarians, Baptists, and Quakers, took place. These sects divided off rather quietly, and their separation resulted only in the enactment of new laws regarding conformity, prayers, and teaching.

During the latter half of the seventeenth century, after the execution of Charles I (1649), the Puritans had temporarily risen to power, and during their control of affairs had imposed their strict Calvinistic standards as to Sabbath observance and piety on the nation. This was very distasteful to many, and from such strict observances the people in time rebelled. The standards of the English in personal morality, temperance, amusements, and manners at the beginning of the eighteenth century were not especially high, and in the reaction from Puritan control and strict religious observances the great mass of the people degenerated into positive irreligion and gross immorality. Drunkenness, rowdyism, robbery, blasphemy, brutality, lewdness, and prostitution became very common. This moral decline of the people the Church of England seemed powerless to arrest.

About 1730 a reform movement was begun under the able leadership of a young Oxford student by the name of John Wesley, ably seconded by George Whitefield (1714-70), with a view to reaching the classes so completely untouched by the high State Church. By traveling over the country and preaching a gospel of repentance, personal faith, and better living, these two young men made a deep emotional appeal, and soon gained a strong hold on the poorer and more ignorant classes of the people. Forbidden to preach in Anglican churches, and at times threatened with personal violence, these two men were in time forced into open rebellion against the Established Church. Finally they founded a new Church, which became known as the Methodist. [22] This new organization bore the same relation to the Church of England that the Anglican Church two hundred years before had borne to the Church of Rome. Thus was accomplished a second spiritual reformation in England, and one destined in time to spread to the colonies and deeply affect the lives of a large portion of the English people. [23] That such a well-organized sect could arise, such a moral reformation be preached, and the power of the Established Church be challenged so openly and without serious persecution, speaks much for the growth of religious tolerance among the English people since the days of the great Elizabeth. In 1778 the Roman Catholic Relief Act was adopted, and in 1779 dissenting ministers and schoolmasters were relieved from the disabilities under which they had so long remained. These acts indicate a further marked growth in religious tolerance on the part of the English nation. [24]

NEW EMANCIPATING AND EDUCATIVE INFLUENCES. In 1662 the first regular newspaper outside of Italy was established in England, and in 1702 the first daily paper. Small in size, printed on but one side of the sheet, and dealing wholly with local matters, these nevertheless marked the beginnings of that daily expression of popular opinion with which we are now so familiar. [25] After about 1705 the cheap political pamphlet made its appearance, and after 1710, instead of merely communicating news, the papers began the discussion of political questions.

By 1735 a revolution had been effected in England, and papers and presses began to be established in the chief cities and towns outside of London; the freedom of the press was in a large way completed, and newspapers, for the first time in the history of the world, were made the exponents of public opinion. The press in England in consequence became an educative force of great intellectual and political importance, and did much to compensate for the lack of a general system of schools for the people. In 1772 the right to publish the debates in Parliament was finally won, over the strenuous objections [26] of George III. In 1780 the first Sunday newspaper appeared, "on the only day the lower orders had time to read a paper at all," and, despite the efforts of religious bodies to suppress it, the Sunday paper has continued to the present and has contributed its quota to the education and enlightenment of mankind. In 1785 the famous London Times began to appear. In the middle of the eighteenth century debating societies for the consideration of public questions arose, and in 1769 "the first public meeting ever assembled in England, in which it was attempted to enlighten Englishmen respecting their political rights" was held, and such meetings soon became of almost daily occurrence. All these influences stimulated political thinking to a high degree, and contributed not only to a desire for still larger political freedom but for the more general diffusion of the ability to read as well (R. 250).

Still other important new influences arose during the early part of the eighteenth century, each of which tended to awaken new desires for schools and learning. In 1678 the first modern printed story to appeal to the masses, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, appeared from the press. Written, as it had been, by a man of the people, its simple narrative form, its passionate religious feeling, its picture of the journey of a pilgrim through a world of sin and temptation and trial, and its Biblical language with which the common people had now become familiar--all these elements combined to make it a book that appealed strongly to all who read or heard it read, and stimulated among the masses a desire to read comparable to that awakened by the chaining of the English Bible in the churches a century before (R. 170). In 1719 the first great English novel, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, and in 1726 Gulliver's Travels, added new stimulus to the desires awakened by Bunyan's book. All three were books of the common people, whereas the dramas, plays, essays, and scholarly works previously produced had appealed only to a small educated class. In 1751 what was probably the first circulating library of modern times was opened at Birmingham, and soon thereafter similar institutions were established in other English cities.

SCIENCE AND MANUFACTURING; THE NEW ERA. England, too, from the first, showed an interest in and a tolerance toward the new scientific thinking scarcely found in any other land. This in itself is indicative of the great intellectual progress which the English people had by this time made. [27] At a time when Galileo, in Italy, was fighting, almost alone, for the right to think along the lines of the new scientific method and being imprisoned for his pains, Englishmen were reading with deep interest the epoch-making scientific writings of Lord Francis Bacon, Earlier than in other lands, too, the Newtonian philosophy found a place in the instruction of the national universities, and English scholars began to employ the new scientific method in their search for new truths. The British Royal (Scientific) Society [28] had begun to meet as early as 1645, and ever since has published in its proceedings the best of English scientific thinking. By the reign of George I (1714-27) scientific work began to be popularized, and the first little booklets on scientific subjects began to appear. These popular presentations of what had been worked out were sold at the book stalls and by peddlers and were eagerly read; by the beginning of the reign of George III (1760) they had become very common. In 1704-10 the first "Dictionary of Arts and Sciences" was printed, and in 1768-71 the first edition (three volumes) of the now famous Encyclopedia Britannica appeared. In 1755 the famous British Museum was founded.

As early as 1698 a rude form of steam engine had been patented in England, and by 1712 this had been perfected sufficiently to be used in pumping water from the coal mines. In 1765 James Watt made the real beginning of the application of steam to industry by patenting his steam engine; in 1760 Wedgwood established the pottery industry in England; in 1767 Hargreaves devised the spinning-jenny, which banished the spindle and distaff and the old spinning-wheel; in 1769 Arkwright evolved his spinning-frame; and in 1785 Cartwright completed the process by inventing the power loom for weaving. In 1784 a great improvement in the smelting of iron ores (puddling) was worked out. These inventions, all English, were revolutionary in their effect on manufacturing. They meant the displacement of hand power by machine labor, the breakdown of home industry through the concentration of labor in factories, the rise of great manufacturing cities, [29] and the ultimate collapse of the age-old apprenticeship system of training, where the master workman with a few apprentices in his shop prepared goods for sale. They also meant the ultimate transformation of England from an agricultural into a great manufacturing and exporting nation, whose manufactured products would be sold in every corner of the globe.

By 1750 a change in attitude toward all the old intellectual problems had become marked in England, and by 1775 attention before unknown was being given there to social, political, economic, and educational questions. Religious intolerance was dying out, the harsh laws of earlier days had begun to be modified, new social and political interests [30] were everywhere attracting attention, and the great commercial expansion of England was rapidly taking shape. With England and France leading in the new scientific studies; England in the van in the development of manufacturing and the French to the fore in social influences and polite literature; England and the new American Colonies setting new standards in government by the people; the French theorists and economists giving the world new ideas as to the function of the State; enlightened despots on the thrones of Prussia, Austria, Spain, and Russia; and the hatreds of the hundred years of religious warfare dying out; the world seemed to many, about 1775, as on the verge of some great and far-reaching change in methods of living and in government, and about ready to enter a new era and make rapid advances in nearly all lines of human activity. The change came, but not in quite the manner expected.

IV. INSTITUTION OF CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN AMERICA

ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA ESTABLISH A REPUBLIC. Though the early settlement of America, as was pointed out in chapter xv, was made from among those people and from those lands which had embraced some form of the Protestant faith, and represented a number of nationalities and several religious sects, the thirteen colonies, nevertheless, were essentially English in origin, speech, habits, observances, and political and religious conceptions. This is well shown for the white population by the results of the first Federal census, taken in 1790, as given in the adjoining figure. This shows that of all the people in the thirteen original States, 83.5 per cent possessed names indicating pure English origin, and that 91.8 per cent had names which pointed to their having come from the British Isles. The largest non-British name nationality was the German, with 5.6 per cent of the whole, and these were found chiefly in Pennsylvania where they constituted 26.1 per cent of the State's population. Next were those having Dutch names, who constituted but 2 per cent of the total population, and but 16.1 per cent of the population of New York. No other name-nationality constituted over one half of one per cent of the total. The New England States were almost as English as England itself, 93 to 96 per cent of the names being pure English, and 98.5 to 99.8 per cent being from the British Isles.

We thus see that it was from England, the nation which had done most in the development of individual and religious liberty, that the great bulk of the early settlers of America came, and in the New World the English traditions as to constitutional government and liberty under law were early and firmly established. The centuries of struggle for representative government in England at once bore fruit here. Colony charters, charters of rights and liberties, public discussion, legislative assemblies, and liberty under law were from the first made the foundation stones upon which self-government in America was built up.

From an early date the American Colonies showed an independence to which even Englishmen were scarcely accustomed, and when the home government attempted to make the colonists pay some of the expenses of the Seven Years' War, and a larger share of the expenses of colonial administration, there was determined opposition. Having no representation in Parliament and no voice in levying the tax, the colonists declared that taxation without representation was tyranny, and refused to pay the taxes assessed. Standing squarely on their rights as Englishmen, the colonists were gradually forced into open rebellion. In 1765, and again in 1774, Declarations of Rights were drawn up and adopted by representatives from the Colonies, and were forwarded to the King. In 1774 the first Continental Congress met and formed a union of the Colonies; in 1776 the Colonies declared their independence. This was confirmed, in 1783, by the Treaty of Paris; in 1787, the Constitution of the United States was drafted; and in 1789, the American government began. In the preamble to the twenty-seven charges of tyranny and oppression made against the King in the Declaration of Independence, we find a statement of political philosophy [31] which is a combination of the results of the long English struggle for liberty and the French eighteenth-century reform philosophy and revolutionary demands. [32] This preamble declared:

We hold these truths to be self-evident--that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

AMERICAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO WORLD HISTORY. The American Revolution and its results were fraught with great importance for the future political and educational progress of mankind. Before the close of the eighteenth century the new American government had made at least four important contributions to world liberty and progress which were certain to be of large political and educational value for the future.

In the first place, the people of the Colonies had erected independent governments and had shown the possibility of the self-government of peoples on a large scale, and not merely in little city-states or communities, as had previously been the case where self-government had been tried. Democratic government was here worked out and applied to large areas, and to peoples of diverse nationalities and embracing different religious faiths. The possibility of States selecting their rulers and successfully governing themselves was demonstrated.

In the second place, the new American government which was formed did something new in world history when it united thirteen independent and autonomous States into a single federated Nation, and without destroying the independence of the States. What was formed was not a league, or confederacy, as had existed at different times among differing groups of the Greek City-States, and from time to time in the case of later Swiss and temporary European national groupings, but the union into a substantial and permanent Federal State of a number of separate States which still retained their independence, and with provision for the expansion of this national Union by the addition of new States. This federal principle in government is probably the greatest political contribution of the American Union to world development. In the twentieth- century conception of a League of Nations it has borne still further fruit.

In the third place, the different American States changed their old Colonial Charters into definite written Constitutions, each of which contained a Preamble or Bill of Rights which affirmed the fundamental principles of democratic liberty (R. 251). These now became the fundamental law for each of the separate States, and the same idea was later worked out in the Constitution of the United States. These were the first written constitutions of history, and have since served as a type for the creation of constitutional government throughout the world. In such documents to-day free peoples everywhere define the rights and duties and obligations which they regard as necessary to their safety and happiness and welfare.

Finally, the Federal Constitution provided for the inestimable boon of religious liberty, and in a way that was both revolutionary and wholesome. At the beginning of the War for Independence the Anglican (Episcopal) faith had been declared "the established religion" in seven of the Colonies, and the Congregational was the established religion in three of the New England Colonies, while but three Colonies had declared for religious freedom and refused to give a preference to any special creed. This religious problem had to be met by the Constitutional Convention, and this body handled it in the only way it could have been intelligently handled in a nation composed of so many different religious sects as was ours. It simply incorporated into the Federal Constitution provisions which guaranteed the free exercise of their religious faith to all, and forbade the establishment by Congress of any state religion, or the requirement of any religious test as a prerequisite to holding any office under the control of the Federal Government. The American people thus took a stand for religious liberty at a time when the hatreds of the Reformation still burned fiercely, and when tolerance in religious matters was as yet but little known.

IMPORTANCE OF THE RELIGIOUS-LIBERTY CONTRIBUTION. The solution of the religious question arrived at was only second in importance for us to the establishment of the Federal Union, and the far-reaching significance to our future national life of the sane and for-the-time extraordinary provisions incorporated into our National Constitution can hardly be overestimated. This action led to the early abandonment of state religions, religious tests, and public taxation for religion in the old States, and to the prohibition of these in the new. The importance of this solution of the religious question for the future of popular education in the United States was great, for it laid the foundations upon which our systems of free, common, public, tax-supported, non-sectarian schools have since been built up. How we could have erected a common public-school system on a religious basis, with the many religious sects among us, it is impossible to conceive. Instead, we should have had a series of feeble, jealous, antagonistic, and utterly inefficient church-school systems, chiefly confined to elementary education, and each largely intent on teaching its peculiar church doctrines and struggling for an increasing share of public funds.

How much the American people owe to the Fathers of the Republic for this most enlightened and intelligent provision, few who have not thought carefully on the matter can appreciate. To it we must trace not only the great blessing of religious liberty, which we have so long enjoyed, but also the final establishment of our common, free, public-school systems. The beginning of the new state motive for education, which was soon to supersede the religious motive, dates from the establishment with us of republican governments; and the beginning of the emancipation of education from church domination goes back to this wise provision inserted in our National Constitution.

This national attitude was later copied in the state constitutions, and as a preamble to practically all we find a Bill of Rights, which in almost every case included a provision for freedom of religious worship (Rs. 251, 260). After the middle of the nineteenth century a further provision prohibiting sectarian teaching or state aid to sectarian schools was everywhere added.

V. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION SWEEPS AWAY ANCIENT ABUSES

NEW DEMANDS FOR REFORM THAT COULD NOT BE RESISTED. More than in any other continental European country France had, by 1783, become a united nation, conscious of a modern national feeling. Yet in France mediaeval abuses in both State and Church had survived, as we have seen, to as great an extent almost as in any European nation. So determined were the clergy and nobility to retain their old powers, not only in France but throughout the continent of Europe as well, that progressive reform seemed well-nigh impossible. The work of the benevolent despots had, after all, been superficial. By the last quarter of the eighteenth, though, a progressive change was under way which was certain to produce either evolution or revolution. The influence of the American experiment in nation-building now became pronounced. In 1779 Franklin took a copy of the new Pennsylvania Constitution with him to Paris, and in 1780 John Adams did the same with the Massachusetts Constitution. Frenchmen instantly recognized here, in concrete form, the ideas with which their own heads were filled. In 1783 Franklin published in France a French translation of all the American Constitutions, and the National Constitution of 1787 was as eagerly read and discussed in Paris as in New York or Philadelphia or Boston. America appeared to the French of that stormy period as an ideal land; where the dreams of Rousseau about the social contract had been transformed into realities. Two years later the cahiers of the Third Estate demanded a written constitution for France. The French, too, had aided the American Colonies in their struggle for liberty, and French soldiers returning home carried back new political ideas drawn from the remarkable political progress of the new American Nation. By 1788 the demand for reform in France had become so insistent, and the condition of the treasury of the State was so bad, that it was finally felt necessary to summon a meeting of the States-General--a sort of national parliament consisting of representatives of the three great Estates: clergy, nobility, and commons--which had not met in France since 1614.

Besides electing its representatives, each locality and order was allowed to draw up a series of instructions, or cahiers (+R. 252+), for the guidance of its delegates. These cahiers are a mine of information as to the demands and hopes and interests of the French people, [33] and it is interesting to know that the cahiers of nobility, clergy, and commons alike included, among their demands, the organization of a comprehensive plan of education for France. [34]

FRANCE ESTABLISHES CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT. The States-General met May 5, 1789, and soon (June 20) resolved itself into the National or Constituent Assembly. Terrified by the uprisings and burnings of châteaux throughout France, on the night of August fourth, in a few hours, it adopted a series of decrees which virtually abolished the Ancien Régime of privileges for France. The nobility gave up most of their old rights, the serfs [35] were freed, and the special privileges of towns were surrendered. Later the Assembly adopted a "Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen" (R. 253), much like the American Declaration of Independence. This declared, among other things, that all men were born free and have equal rights, that taxes should be proportional to wealth, that all citizens were equal before the law and have a right to help make the laws, and that the people of the nation were sovereign. These principles struck at the very foundations of the old system.

Soon a Constitution for France, the first ever promulgated in modern Europe, was prepared and adopted (1791). This abolished the ancient privileges and reorganized France as a self-governing nation, much after the American plan. Local government was created, and the absolute monarchy was changed to a limited constitutional one. Next the property of the Church was taken over by the State, the monasteries were suppressed, and the priests and bishops were made state officials and paid a fixed state salary. The Jesuits had been expelled from France in 1764; and in 1792 the Brothers of the Christian Schools were not allowed longer to teach. Among other important matters, the Constitution of 1791 declared that:

There shall be created and organized a system of public instruction common to all citizens, and gratuitous, with respect to those branches of instruction which are indispensable for all men.

Up to this point the Revolution in France had proceeded relatively peacefully, considering the nature of the long-standing abuses which were to be remedied. In August, 1792, the King was imprisoned, and in January, 1793, he was executed and a Republic proclaimed. [36] Then followed a reign of terror, which we do not need to follow, and which ended only when Napoleon became master of France.

BENEFICENT RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION. The French Revolution was not an accident or a product of chance, but rather the inevitable result of an attempt to dam up the stream of human progress and prevent its orderly onward flow. The Protestant Revolts were the first great revolutionary wave, the Puritan revolution in England was another, the formation of the American Republic and the institution of constitutional government and religious freedom another, while the French Revolution brought the rising movement to a head and swept away, in a deluge of blood, the very foundations of the mediaeval system. Along with much that was disastrous, the French Revolution accomplished after all much that was of greatest importance for human progress. The world at times seems to be in need of such a great catharsis. Progress was made in a decade that could hardly have been made in a century by peaceful evolution. The old order of privilege came to an end, mediaevalism was swept away, and the serf was evolved into the free farmer and citizen. One fifth of the soil of France was restored to the use of the people from the monasteries, and an additional one third from the Church and nobility. The new principles of citizenship--Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity--were for France revolutionary in the extreme, while the assertion that the sovereignty of a nation rests with the people rather than with the king, here successfully promulgated, ended for all time the "divine-right-of-kings" idea for France. After political theory had for a time run mad, the organizing genius of Napoleon consolidated the gains, gave France a strong government, a uniform code of laws, [37] and began that organization of schools for the nation which ultimately meant the taking over of education from the Church and its provision at the expense of and in the interests of the nation.

THE NATIONAL IDEA EXTENDS TO OTHER LANDS. The reform work in France, together with the examples of English and American liberty, soon began to have their influence in other lands as well. People everywhere began to see that the old régime of privilege and misgovernment ought to be replaced. Other countries abolished serfdom, introduced better laws, and made reforms in the abuses of both Church and State. French armies and rulers carried the best of French ideas to other lands, and, where the French rule continued long enough, these ideas became fixed. In particular was the Code Napoléon copied in the Netherlands, the Italian States, and the States of southern and western Germany. The national spirit of Italy was awakened, and the Italian liberals began to look forward to the day when the small Italian States might be reunited into an Italian Nation, with Rome as its capital. This became the work of nineteenth-century Italian statesmen. For the first time in Spanish history, too, the people became conscious, under French occupation, of a feeling of national unity, and similarly the national spirit of German lands was stirred by the conquests of Napoleon.

A constitution was obtained in Spain, in 1812, and between 1815 and 1821 all of Spain's South American colonies--Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela--revolted, became independent, and set up republics with constitutional governments, some of the larger ones based on the federal principle, as in the United States. Brazil similarly freed itself from Portugal and set up a constitutional and federated monarchy, in 1822. The Kingdom of Naples obtained constitutional government in 1820, and Sardinia in 1821. In 1823, when Spain with Austria's aid prepared to reconquer the Spanish South American Republics, President Monroe transmitted to the American Congress his message in which he declared that any attempt on the part of European nations to suppress republicanism on the American continent would be considered by the United States as an unfriendly act. This has since been known as the Monroe Doctrine. In 1829 Greece obtained her independence from Turkey, and in 1843 a constitutional form of government was obtained.

IMPORTANT CONSEQUENCES OF THE DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT. Since the closing decades of the eighteenth century, when democratic government and written constitutions began, the sweep of democratic government has become almost world wide. Nation after nation has changed to democratic and constitutional forms of government, the latest additions being Portugal (1911), China (1912), Russia (1917), and Germany (1918). New English colonies, too, have carried English self-government into almost every continent. The World War of 1914-18 gave a new emphasis to democracy, and there is good reason to believe that government of and by and for the people is ultimately destined to prevail among all the intelligent nations and races of the earth.

With the development of democratic government there has everywhere been a softening of old laws, the growth of humanitarianism, the wider and wider extension of the suffrage, important legislation as to labor, a previously unknown attention to the poor and the dependents of society, a vast extension of educational advantages, and the taking over of education from the Church by the State and the erection of the school into an important institution for the preservation and advancement of the national welfare. These consequences of the onward sweep of new-world ideas we shall trace more in detail in the chapters which follow.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Show the importance, for human progress, of each of the meanings of the new eighteenth-century liberalism, as enumerated on pages 471-72.

2. How do you explain the lack of any permanent influence on Spanish life of the work of the benevolent despots in Spain?

3. Show the liberalizing influence of the rise of scientific investigation and economic studies, for a nation still oppressed by mediaevalism and bad government.

4. Enumerate the new sciences which arose in the eighteenth century.

5. Indicate the importance of the freedom of the press in the development of English political liberty.

6. Explain how the religious-freedom attitude of the American national constitution conferred an inestimable boon on the States in the matter of public education.

SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying Book of Readings the following illustrative selections are reproduced:

247. Dabney: Ecclesiastical Tyranny in France. 248. Voltaire: On the Relation of Church and State. 249. Rousseau: Extract from the Social Contract. 250. Buckle: Changes in English Thinking in the Eighteenth Century, 251. Pennsylvania Constitution: Bill of Rights in. 252. Clergy of Blois: Cahier of 1779. 253. France: Declaration of the Rights of Man.

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. Explain why ecclesiastical tyranny should have awakened such a spirit of rebellion in France (247), and not in Spain or in Italian lands.

2. Just what attitude toward religion is shown in the extract from Voltaire (248)?

3. Bolshevists in Russia and in America talk to-day as did Rousseau in the Social Contract (249). Compare the justification of each with the eighteenth-century France of Rousseau.

4. What do all the changes enumerated by Buckle (250) indicate as to the spread of general education, irrespective of schools, among the English people?

5. Compare the Pennsylvania Bill of Rights of 1776 (251) with that of your own present-day state constitution,

6. Just what type of educational provisions, and what administrative organization, did the recommendations of the Clergy of Blois (252) contemplate? Indicate its shortcomings for eighteenth-century France.

7. Compare the main ideas of 251 and 253.

SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

Dabney, R. H. The Causes of the French Revolution. Taine, H. A. The Ancient Regime.