Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/159

 9. By way of recreation the pupils are advised to ask one another hard questions.

10. A dramatic performance, illustrating the contest between grammar, logic, and metaphysic, and their final reconciliation, may complete the year’s work.

I. Over the door is the inscription:

2. The pictures on the wall should illustrate the necessity of order and limitation. With this in view, the human body may be represented in four ways: (a) Lacking certain limbs. (b) Supplied with superfluous limbs. (c) With its limbs wrongly put together. (d) A perfect body, properly constructed and shapely.

3. In theology the whole Bible is to be read.

4. The class-book is to be a work dealing with human society and the laws of economics.

5. In arithmetic Logistic, and in geometry Architectonic may be learned. Special attention should be given to geography and to that part of astronomy that deals with the theory of the planets and the laws of eclipses.

6. The history should be that of ritual.

7. For the sake of style Sallust, Cicero, Virgil, and Horace may be read.

Compositions in verse are not to be insisted upon. They are extremely difficult, aptitude for them is rare, and the time devoted to them might be more profitably employed on other things. But if a boy shows very great aptitude for verse-writing, he is not to be dissuaded from it.

8. As an accessory study, Thucydides or Hesiod may be read.

9. Suitable recreations may be chosen according to inclination. They should not be dangerous or excessive.

10. A dramatic performance may be given representing the degeneration of Solomon and his moral downfall.