Page:Comenius and the beginnings of educational reform (IA cu31924014272656).pdf/31



educational reformer owes much, in the way of inspiration and suggestion, to his predecessors, and of none is this more true than of John Amos Comenius. Everywhere in his writings are to be found traces of the movement he championed, in the writings of Vives, Bacon, Ratke, Bateus, Campanella, and others. As Professor Nicholas Murray Butler remarks: “From Ratke he learned something of the way in which language teaching, the whole curriculum of the time, might be reformed; and from Bateus he derived both the title and the plan of his Janua. Campanella suggested to him the necessity of the direct interrogation of nature if knowledge was to progress, and Vives emphasized for him from the same point of view the