slums; no, he moves where culture is highest, not because good teachers are not obtainable for the slum district, but because of all the other contributory factors. While many seek these conditions, few realize their duty in creating them.

CHAPTER XVII

SENSORY EDUCATION

The Doctrine of Innate Ideas.-"Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu." Wise words of Comenius written so long ago, but so tardily understood by the world! The psychological doctrine maintaining that all ideas are innate, which was held by most people down to the time of John Locke in the seventeenth century, led to its pedagogical corollary, that the purpose of education is not to supply ideas at all, but merely to draw out those already possessed by the individual. We read Socrates's proclamation that the science of teaching is a science of maieutics, or the science of giving birth to ideas. This view of the origin of ideas led men to seek knowledge of all things within themselves, and the final tribunal of the validity of all knowledge was the reason. Hence the Middle Age scholasticism was characterized by acuity of dialectical, deductive reasoning and extreme deference to authority. No experimental investigation was carried on, nature was not interrogated to give up her secrets, but premises, often fantastic, absurd, untrue, were set up, and conclusions deduced therefrom. The schoolmen spun exceedingly delicate webs of beautiful logic, but only to become hopelessly entangled in retarding, benighting veils of ignorance, superstition, and misdeed. Then followed the Renaissance, which was characterized by the assertion of individual, spiritual independence, and the severance of bonds of authority. Post-Renaissance teachers turned to the study of nature, but they studied it by proxy, i. e., through the medium of books. They have been denominated in the history of education as verbal realists. Unfortunately, the verbal realists are not all dead yet. Verbal realists of the wordiest kind still exist, who, for example,

teach geography as a matter of definitions and book descriptions, who teach physics without laboratory and experiment, who read about chemical action instead of producing it and observing it, who teach civil government by requiring pupils to memorize the Constitution verbatim and never to see a concrete illustration of its workings.

Change from Utilitarian to Disciplinary Views.—Subject-matter in early schools was chosen because of its immediate utility in furthering the ecclesiastical ideal. With the Revival of Learning a new ideal appeared along with the old. The subjects which had been regarded as instruments then came to be considered as the sole ends of instruction. A blind worship of antiquity developed a fetichism for the means of ancient culture and expression. Dittes writes that "education in the form that it had assumed in the sixteenth century, could not furnish a complete human culture. In the higher institutions, and even in the wretched town schools, Latin was the Moloch to which countless minds fell an offering, in return for the blessing granted to a few. A dead knowledge of words took the place of a living knowledge of things. Latin school-books supplanted the book of nature, the book of life, the book of mankind. And in the popular schools youthful minds were tortured over the spellingbook and catechism. The method of teaching was almost everywhere, in the primary as well as in the higher schools, a mechanical and compulsory drill in unintelligible formulas; the pupils were obliged to learn, but they were not educated to see and hear, to think and prove, and were not led to a true independence and personal perfection."

Beginnings of Realism.-Painter has aptly summarized the beginnings of the new movement in the following words: "By the side of narrow theological and humanistic tendencies, there was developed a liberal progressive spirit, in which lay the hope of the future. It freed itself from traditional opinions, and pushed its investigations everywhere in search of new truth. In England Bacon set forth his inductive method, by which he 1 History of Education, p. 173.

1

gave an immense impulse to the study of nature; in France Descartes laid a solid foundation for intellectual science; and in Germany Leibnitz quickly reached the bound and farthest limit of human wisdom, to overleap that line and push onward into regions hitherto unexplored, and dwell among yet undiscovered truths. Great progress was made in the natural sciences. Galileo invented the telescope, and discovered the moons of Jupiter. Newton discovered the law of gravitation, and explained the theory of colors. Harvey found out the circulation of the blood. Torricelli invented the barometer, Guericke the airpump, Napier logarithms. Pascal ascertained that the air has weight, and Roemer measured the velocity of light. Kepler announced the laws of planetary motion. Louis XIV established the French Academy of Sciences, and Charles II the Royal Society of England."

Karl Schmidt wrote of the time: "Books, words had been the subjects of instruction during the period of abstract theological education. The knowledge of things was wanting. Instead of the things themselves, words about the things were taught― and these taken from the books of the 'ancients' about stars, the forces of nature, stones, plants, animals-astronomy without observations, anatomy without dissection of the human body, physics without experiments, etc. Then appeared in the most different countries of Europe an intellectual league of men who made it their work to turn away from dead words to living nature, and from mechanical to organic instruction. They were, indeed, only preachers in the wilderness, but they were the pioneers of a new age."

Rabelais (1483-1553) introduced the first note of realism in his pedagogical writings as opposed to the formalism of scholasticism. The great Erasmus had even deemed it nonsense to wash more than once a day. But Rabelais, a physician, urged physical education and enjoined personal hygiene. An active life in the open air is the best antidote to paleness from book work. Lessons are to be followed by play. Of his hypothetical ideal pupil, Gargantua, he said: "He exercises his body just

as vigorously as he had before exercised his mind." Tennis, ball, riding, wrestling, swimming, and all known recreative exercises entered into the desired educational activities. He also wished to have his pupil secure his knowledge through personal observation and experience. The Georgics of Vergil are to be read while in the meadows and woods. Excursions are to be made, botany and geology are to be studied while "passing through meadows or other grassy places, observing trees and plants, comparing them with ancient books where they are described and taking handfuls of them home."

Compayré, commenting upon Gargantua's training, writes:' "There are but few didactic lessons: intuitive instruction, given in the presence of the objects themselves, such is the method of Rabelais. It is in the same spirit that he sends his pupil to visit the stores of the silversmiths, the foundries, the alchemists' laboratories, and shops of all kinds-real scientific excursions such as are in vogue to-day." Montaigne joined in the reaction against empty scholasticism. He cared little whether the pupil learned to write in Latin. "If his soul be not put into better rhythm, if the judgment be not better settled, I would rather have him spend his time at tennis." He argued that things should precede words, saying: "Let our pupil be provided with things; words will follow only too fast." 3

.

Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) stands out pre-eminently among the pioneer exponents of the new doctrine of sense realism in education. The formulator of a new method, that of induction, he made men aware of an instrument of thinking of which they had not been conscious. Bound down to the methods of deduction as men had been for centuries, they had helplessly relied upon authority and tradition for all the knowledge handed down to them. During the period of scholasticism investigation proceeded only as necromancy, astrology, or alchemy, and was generally branded as a black art. Many like Roger Bacon, Bruno, Kepler, and Galileo paid dearly for their temerity in

1 The History of Pedagogy, p. 97. 2 Book I, chap. 24.

3 Book I, chap. 25.