*The teacher must do nothing but teach. To maintain discipline so that the pupil can

belongs to the school officials,

* *

*

*

not contract a repugnance to his teacher, but may love him more and more; which has much efficiency in learning."

These doctrines again are forerunners of the later pedagogy. If the children learn nothing, the teacher must take all the blame; for according to Ratich's method they must make progress, without any doubt at all; a Mercury can be carved out of any block. If the earlier pedagogy was hard-hearted and Orbilian, here there appeared a tendency diametrically opposite; a fear of losing the children's love, even by the conscientious enforcement of justice. To make up for this, it is not the teacher, but the school officer, who is to administer punishment-as the Jesuits used to inflict bodily punishment not by a Jesuit, but by some one not a member of the order.

6. "Nothing must be learned by rote. Reason: such is the indication of nature; otherwise violence is done to the understanding; and accordingly, experience shows us that any one who applies himself much to learning by rote, loses much in understanding and intellectual keenness. For if the understanding is occupied with the words, it has not room rightly to consider the things. It is unnecessary, too, and can be accomplished by better means; that is, when a thing has been well impressed upon the mind by frequent repetition, the memory of it will follow of itself without any pains."S

Here is an indication of the origin and tendency of the method. Earlier pedagogues base every thing upon learning by rote, without regard to the understanding of what they learned; but now the understanding is to be substituted for the memory. Ratich's school had as little regard as many of the later pedagogues, for the intimate connection between imagination and the memory, by which the former grasps the images which the latter retains and either purposely or arbitrarily reproduces.||

Praxis, p. 200. The Praxis recommends the same. p. 167. "All should be done with judicious words and a countenance pleasant, yet grave; not with blows and harshness. If any case demands severe discipline, it should be put into the hands of the school authorities.

+ We have observed above that the complaint was made in Köthen, that Ratich's schools were deficient in discipline.

P. 185. The Praxis, p. 169, says, "Examine your scholars, whether they are ready in the conjugations and declensions, but always from the book, and not from memory; neither must the pupil be allowed to recite the inflections from memory."(!)

"For the real memory of an object depends immediately upon the knowledge of it." Methodus, 146, "The proceeding should be from the intellect to the memory; and never the contrary." Praxis, 164. "Nature has been constrained in this; that the boys have been made to learn by rote, and entirely by themselves, without the aid of the preceptor, what they do not understand." Grawer, 29. He also says, "The localis memoria is entirely forbidden; that is, remembering any thing by means of certain figures set in a certain order and so retained." I P. 186.

Connected with this rule is another one, that the children are to have their hours of recreation; indeed that no two lessons are to come immediately together. Chiefly because "this method of teaching depends upon reading, and the hearing becomes wearied more easily than the other senses ;" and because "each scholar must listen and remain silent."* During the lesson he must not speak nor ask questions, in order not to disturb his fellow scholars, and because the lesson can not otherwise be finished in time. If he has any thing to ask, he must ask it after the lesson.

That such a continued silent listening to reading was a most unnatural constraint upon the boys, is indirectly here confessed by the Ratichians themselves in recognizing this fatigue. Comenius, who gives us a short description of Ratich's method,f mentions, that if the scholars are made to observe a Pythagorean silence, the teacher must labor in vain, for all power of attention is destroyed in the former. 7. "Mutual conformity in all things.

"In all languages, arts, and sciences, there must be a conformity, both as to the method of teaching, books used, and precepts given, as far as possible. The German grammar, for instance, must agree with the Hebrew and the Greek, as far as the idioms of the languages will permit. For this is a valuable help to the understanding, and gives perspicacity, when one sees how one language agrees with others and differs from them."

*

This points toward a general grammar, by teaching that the grammar of each language is to be divided into two portions, the universal and the particular. This is certainly right in part. In learning a new language, we very soon distinguish its agreements with, and differences from, the mother tongue.

8. §"First a thing by itself, and afterward the explanation of the thing.

No rule can be given before the material for it-the author or the language has been given. This appears entirely absurd, but experience shows that it is entirely true. For what can one understand in any language, who has read nothing in any author of it, though he be all stuffed full of rules? He must at last come to this, that either in one author or in many, one after another, and with frequent repetition, he learns to understand the rules and make them useful.

P. 197. "In the disciple a Pythagorean silence." P. 176.

† Opp. did. 2, 80, 100. "This maxim imposes upon the teacher an asinine, useless, vexatious labor." "A human being is not a mere passive log from which you are to carve out a statue; it is a living figure, forming, reforming, deforming itself."

P. 187.

§ P. 188, etc.

What need, therefore, had he to plague himself in vain beforehand with the rules? Rules without material confuse the mind. Let any one remember for himself whether all his life long he has found in his reading all the examples which he was obliged to learn with great pains in the grammar. As, for instance, the patronymics; how they martyr the poor boys, and yet are seldom used; therefore it is an absurd thing that the grammar should first be beaten into them and that they should learn the language for the first time afterward. Get your corn before you trouble yourself about a sack. Get money before you buy a purse to put it in. Rules are not of use for a preparation, nor for a guide; but for the fixation of what has been learned. Whatever may have been the other uses of rules, nobody can remember that they gave him any help at the beginning, and prepared him to acquire the language more rapidly. Practice and experience teach us that any such speculation is empty."

"A basis of material must have been laid in the mind, before the rules can be applied to it." To the observation that in the grammar the rules are furnished with examples, Ratich answers, that, notwithstanding, the rules are useless; because they are insufficiently scraped together out of the most various authors, and are uninteresting. And in the "Articles" he says: "All sorts of examples come together from all sorts of authors, like mixed fodder in a manger; but no such means, with no connection within itself, can lay a good foundation and lead into the peculiarities of a language."*

These are the grounds upon which Ratich and his followers require the reading of some select author, and that the grammar shall be developed out of that author. At the first it may seem strange that Ratich should cite here the instance of geometry. Oral instruction, he says, would be of little use in this study, if the teacher should not display before his scholars some actual body or drawing on the blackboard, an obtuse or acute angle, a circle, etc. But this illustration will be found, upon nearer examination, quite correct. He expresses himself entirely in agreement with our eighth "Article," thus, "that it is unnatural to occupy oneself with the accidentals of the thing before the thing itself." This principle admits of a wide application in teaching, and is of great importance and truth, if it is not pushed to caricature. 9. "Every thing by experience, and investigation of parts." The Latin aphorism is neater: Per inductionem et experimentum omnia.||

'p. 193.

Et omnino, accidentem rei prius quam rem ipsam quaereré prorsus absonum et absurdum esse videtur. And in the Praxis, p. 175, Ne modus rei ante rem.

+ p. 194.

I p. 178.

No rule or idea is admissible which is not based upon new investigation and founded upon good proof, whether or not many, or all, have written, or believed so or so about it. For it is assured certainty which is needed, and this can by no means be founded upon authority. In this way there is no possibility of failure. No authority is admissible, therefore, unless traced to its original reasons. Neither has established prescription any validity; for it gives no certainty.

*

The Latin phrase, "Per inductionem et experimentum omnia," shows almost conclusively that Bacon had had an influence upon Ratich. Whether or not the latter was in England when Bacon's first work appeared, "induction" was Bacon's shibboleth. Ratich's radicalism appears most strongly in this; and the motto of his school books, "Vetustas cessit, ratio vicit," proves the same—as if vetustas and ratio were opposite! In combating the prevailing servile regard for antiquity, however, he threw away the good with the bad. It is the past which must be the foundation of the future.

The later Methodians became infected with a stupid self-esteem and undervaluation of the ancients. In fact, however, the ancients bad full authority, with both Ratich and the Ratichians; which is shown by the important part which Terence played in their schemes.

The above quoted report of Jungius and Helwig agrees with this statement. Jungius was born in 1587 at Lubeck, and was in turn professor of philosophy, mathematics, and medicine, at Giessen, Rostock, and Helmstadt; and died in 1657, at Hamburg, while rector of the gymnasium there, and professor of physics and logic. Among his numerous writings I find nothing except this report, of a peda gogical character.

With Helwig it is otherwise. He was born in 1581, at Sprendlingen, south of Frankfort-on-the-Main, and studied at Marburg, where he took the degree of master in 1599, in his eighteenth year. In 1605 he was established at Geissen, and was appointed professor of theology there in 1610. He died as early as 1617, in his thirty-sixth year, apparently in consequence of overwork. Helwig was an extraordinarily learned man. He spoke Hebrew as well as his mother tongue wrote grammars of Greek, Hebrew, Chaldean, and Syrian; • Non igitur auctoritas destituta rationibus valeat, neque vetustas quicquam praescribat. Praxis, 178.

The same motto stands before his universal system in German: "prescription yields, reason overcomes, truth is recognized." (Gewohnheit verschwind, Vernunft überwind, Wahrheit platzfind.)

* Buxtorf wrote, "If I were with you, Helwig, I would lick the dust off your feet." Thus says Schuppius, Helwig's son-in-law.

a Hebrew and Greek school lexicon, and many other works. He was considered one of the most skillful teachers of languages of his day ;* and had a new method for teaching languages easily, which brought upon him much derision and enmity. It was said of him that he "had contrived a funnel through which he could pour learning into the heads of youth as they pour wine into a cask in the autumn." Helwig's report upon Ratich's method appeared only three years before his death. This learned man had adopted Ratich's views with great enthusiasm, and had developed them with remarkable skill.

I shall give the most important parts of this report. In the beginning he remarks, that Ratich has, "by diligent reflection and long practice, discovered a valuable method by which good arts and languages can be taught and studied more easily, quickly and correctly, than has been usual in the schools; and that he has been for thirteen years pursuing this Christian purpose."

According to Ratich's method it is possible, "if the proper books are provided first, as well for the old as well as the young, to teach or to learn any language, with pleasure and love, better than the mother tongue, at most in a year, and, with industry, in half a year, in three or four hours daily."

"Ratich's method is more practicable in arts and sciences, than in language; since arts and sciences are, by their nature, consistent with themselves, while the languages, on the contrary, by long use, have contracted many incorrectnesses."

Helwig seems to consider any departure from his general principles of language as much of an incorrectness as any maimed or distorted Latin word introduced into German.

We will now consider, continues Helwig, not only the knowledge of objects of instruction, but the gift of teaching likewise; but not this only, however.

"For nature," he says, " does much, it is true; but when art assists her, her work as much more certain and complete. Therefore it is necessary that there should be an especial art to which any one who desires to teach can adhere, so that he shall not teach by mere opinion and guess, nor by native instinct alone, but by the rules of his

* Bayle, Helvicus.

† Schuppius," on schools," p. 129. His epitaph, on the contrary, calls him," Novae didac ticae autor et informator felicissimus."

Grawer's report, (p. 21,) says that Ratich's method does not dispense with labor, but that it requires less than heretofore. He says, "If one, in going from Jena to Leipzig, goes to Weida, then to Altenburg, then to Weissenfels, and thence to Leipzig, he will get there. But if another comes to him and says, 'I will show you a surer way, that is, by Naumberg and Weissenfels to Leipzig,' he does not mean that the traveler can go to Leipzig without labor, but only without superfluous and unnecessary labor."