Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/244

 which form the most important element in education, were neglected more than anything else. In all the schools (and even in the universities, which ought to embody the greatest advances of human culture) these subjects held only a secondary place, so that for the most part, instead of tractable lambs, fiery wild asses and restive mules were produced; and instead of characters moulded to virtue, nothing issued from the schools but a spurious veneer of morality, a fastidious and exotic clothing of culture, and eyes, hands, and feet trained to worldly vanities. How few of these mannikins, who had for so long been polished by such a training in the languages and in the arts, realised that to the rest of the world they ought to be an example of temperance, charity, humility, humanity, gravity, patience, and continence!

The reason of this evidently is that the question of “virtuous living” is never raised in the schools. This is shown by the wretched discipline in nearly all schools, by the dissolute morals of all classes, and by the never-ceasing complaints, sighs, and tears of pious men. Can any one defend the condition in which our schools have been? An hereditary disease, sprung from our first parents, pervades all classes, so that, shut out from the tree of life, we direct our desires inordinately towards the tree of knowledge, and our schools also, permeated by this insatiable appetite, have hitherto pursued nothing but intellectual progress.

9. But with what method or with what success have they done even this? In truth, the only result achieved was the following. For five, ten, or more years they detained the mind over matters that could be mastered in one. What could have been gently instilled into the intellect, was violently impressed upon it, nay rather stuffed and flogged into it. What might have been placed before the mind plainly and lucidly, was treated of obscurely, perplexedly, and intricately, as if it were a complicated riddle.

10. In addition, though for the present we will pass