Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/117

 have already traced the growth of Comenius’ Educational Theories, and pointed out his debt to contemporary writers, notably in the case of the Janua Linguarum. We will now endeavour to show the general relation in which he stands to his predecessors, to bring into greater relief the condition in which he found schools and school-masters, and to estimate the worth of his school-books for his own age, and of his theoretical writings for all time.

Against Comenius, as against his predecessors and contemporaries, the accusation may be brought that, in spite of professions of a desire to widen the school curriculum and shake off the more binding traditions of the past, he still retained Latin as the concentration-point of his system, and allowed it to usurp more than its fair share of attention. While this charge is to a certain extent justified, a brief consideration of the circumstances will suffice to show that the blame lies less with Comenius than with the strength, born of tradition, that enabled the Latin language to blockade every avenue that led to polite learning or scientific pursuits.

In mediæval times the schools were in the hands of the