Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/19

 that the great similarity of the views held by the two men should not be attributed to accident. The only point on which they were at actual variance was the constitution of the elementary or vernacular school. This Alsted would have restricted to the use of girls, and of boys destined for a handicraft, while Comenius insists on the necessity of giving a distinct primary education to those who are afterwards to enter a learned profession. With the exception of this difference of opinion, a large number of the most striking precepts that figure in the Great Didactic might have been taken direct from Alsted’s Encyclopædia. The man who declared that instruction in the mother tongue should precede the study of Latin, who thought that grammar was the least effective instrument in teaching a language, who proclaimed, almost in Baconian language, the doctrine of “Experience,” and who believed in method to such an extent that he drew up time-tables of the most intricate description for a day, a week, a month, and a year, assuredly played the part of a kindly foster-father to the callow educational zeal of the Herborn student.

That Comenius, while at Herborn, devoted much attention to the study of educational method, we know from his own words. Wolfgang’s Ratke’s essay on the Reformation of schools had been authorised and approved by the Universities of Jena and of Giessen in 1612, and a tractate on the new method, probably that by the Giessen professors Helwig and Jung, rapidly found its way into Comenius’ hands. To this he gratefully acknowledges his debt and attributes his efforts to reform the school at Prerau.

From Herborn he proceeded to Heidelberg, where he matriculated in June 1613. Here he appears to have