Page:A history of Bohemian literature.pdf/267

250 began again to attract attention. In the present century the first Bohemian edition of the Didactica Magna was rediscovered, and extracts were made from the almost inaccessible Amsterdam folio of 1657, in which alone some of his educational works are contained. The very great merits of Komenský as an instructor of the young are now recognised by most prominent teachers, who alone are competent to give an opinion on this point.

Recently public opinion has perhaps veered too much in the contrary direction. Not content with declaring, what is undeniable, that Komenský was a learned and original writer on educational matters, and the author of one of the most fascinating allegorical tales that have ever been written, great importance has been attributed to his writings on philosophy, or, as he would have called it, "Pansophy." No one can impartially claim for Komenský high rank as a philosopher, and it is certainly a mistake to speak of Komenský's system of philosophy. There is no philosophical system of Komenský in the sense that there exists a philosophical system of Spinoza. Komenský is not only, when writing on "pansophy," constantly carried away by mystic ideas—the idea of "light," which he interpreted in a mystic manner, seems ever to have pursued him—but his "pansophic" works constantly encroach on the domain of natural history. This is the more to be regretted, as Komenský's views on natural history were very often incorrect, and the fatal credulity which induced him to study the "prophecies" of Kotter, Ponatovská, and Drabik here also led him to accept as true the most absurd statements.

The life of Komenský is a very sad one, and his