Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/152

 able to classify the dispositions of his pupils Unless he pays great attention to differences of disposition he will but waste all the effort that he expends in teaching.” This is the one point of which Comenius sometimes appears to lose sight. He relies too much on the class-book and too little on the class-master. The class becomes a machine, flawless it is true, but lacking spontaneity-the spontaneity that a teacher can only supply if left free to employ his trained faculties according to the dictates of a trained judgment.

The foregoing sketch, brief though it is, will suffice to show in outline the position in which Comenius found the problem of education. His contribution to the material of the school-room we have already discussed in treating of his Janua Linguarum, his grammars, his dictionaries, and his other class-books; while the philosophical principles on which his educational precepts are based will be found in the Great Didactic. It remains to give, as a pendant to the school programmes of Sturm and Calvin, the scheme, only half carried out, that he drew up for the Pansophic school at Saros-Patak; a scheme which is none the less interesting because it differs in certain details of classification from that contained in the Great Didactic.

The most cursory glance at the Patak scheme will suffice to show that Comenius is more than two centuries ahead of his immediate predecessors. His programme is essentially modern, and, even at the present day, is extremely suggestive for those engaged in the practical work of school organisation.

The Outline of the Pansophic School is divided into two parts. The first prescribes general rules, while the second takes the classes one by one and gives a detailed description of each. To a large extent Part I. does but reiterate the general positions with which the reader is already familiar. The scheme of instruction is to be universal, and as much