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 visited England after the completion of his studies at Rostock; and it is altogether likely that while there he became a convert to induction and the philosophy of Bacon.

In most particulars Ratke and Comenius were in harmony. Both urged that the study of things should precede or be united with the study of words; that knowledge should be communicated through appeals to the senses; that all linguistic study should begin with the mother-tongue; that methods of teaching should be in accordance with the laws of nature; and that progress in studies should be based not on compulsion, but on the interest aroused in the pupils.

Comenius derived many of his philosophie concepts from the Dominican reformer, Thomas Campanella, whose writings influenced him powerfully, at least during his student years at Herborn and Heidelberg. The writings of Campanella convinced him of the unwisdom of the study of nature from the works of Aristotle. Books, Campanella had declared, are but dead copies of life, and are full of error and deception. We must ourselves explore nature and write down our own thoughts, the living mirror which shows the reflection of God’s countenance. These protests against scholasticism found a responsive chord in the thoughts of the young Comenius.

In the preface to the Prodromus Comenius is unreserved in his expression of obligations to his predecessors. “Who, indeed, should have the first place,” he says, “but John Valentine Andreæ, a man of nimble