Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/33

 to the world in a pamphlet on education. 'There is invented,' he said, 'an instrument of small bulk and price, easily made and very durable, whereby any man, even at the first handling, may write two resembling copies of the same thing at once, as serviceably and as fast as by the ordinary way.' It was at Hartlib's request in 1644 that Milton had published his 'Tractate on Education,' and to Hartlib in the present pamphlet Petty now dedicated his own views. He begins by suggesting the establishment of 'Ergastula Literaria,' or 'Literary Workhouses,' in which children may be taught as well to do something towards their living as to read and write. To these institutions all children of seven years old might be sent, none being excluded by reason of the poverty or inability of their parents. Anticipating later reformers, he proposed that 'the business of education be not, as now, committed to the worst and unworthiest of men; but that it be seriously studied and practised by the best and ablest persons; and,' he goes on to suggest, 'that since few children have need of reading before they know or can be acquainted with the things they read of; or of writing, before their thoughts are worth the recording, or they are able to put them into any form... those things, being somewhat above their capacity—as being to be obtained by judgment, which is weakest in children—be deferred awhile, and others more needful for them, such as are in the order of nature before those above mentioned, and are attainable by the help of memory—which is either most strong or unpreoccupied in children—be studied before them.' 'We wish, therefore,' he says, 'that the educandi be taught to observe and remember all sensible objects and actions, whether they be natural or artificial, which the educators must on all occasions expound unto them... as it would be more profitable to boys to spend ten or twelve years in the study of things than in a rabble of words... There would not then be so many unworthy fustian preachers in divinity; in the law so many