Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/173

 any one resolve not only to investigate so weighty a matter, but also to give promises; since this can only have the advantage of others as its object. Secondly, not to lose heart at once, if the first attempt do not succeed on the spot, and the longed-for result be not brought to full completion by us. For in any matter it is necessary that the seed should first sprout, and then raise itself gradually.

However incomplete, therefore, our essay may be, and however much it fall short of the goal at which we aim, the investigation itself will prove that it has reached a higher stage, and one lying nearer the goal than hitherto. Finally, I ask my readers to bring with them to their criticism as much attention and keenness as is befitting in matters of the greatest importance. It will be my first step to touch briefly on the circumstances that led to this essay and to enumerate the chief points that present any novelty; I can then with full confidence entrust the one to my reader’s candour, the other to his further research.

8. This art of teaching and of learning was in former centuries to a great extent unknown, at any rate in that degree of perfection to which it is now wished to raise it, and on that account the world of culture and the schools were so full of toil and weariness, of weakness and deceits, that only those who were gifted with parts beyond the ordinary could obtain a sound education.

9. But recently it has pleased God to let the morning glow of a newly-rising age appear, in which He has inspired some sturdy men in Germany, who, weary of the errors of the present method of instruction, began to think out an easier and shorter way of teaching languages. This they did, the one after the other, and therefore some with greater, others with less success, as may be seen in the didactic works that they gave to the world.

10. I here allude to men like Ratke, Lubin, Helwig, Ritter, Bodin, Glaum, Vogel, Wolfstirn, and he who deserves to be placed before them all, John Valentine Andreæ (who in his golden writings has laid bare the diseases not only of the Church and the state, but also of