Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/315

 dissect them; and no vulgary gives any assistance towards joining the phrases skilfully together in conversation, or towards ringing changes on them, but only provides a haphazard collection of sentences. Scarcely any one teaches physics by ocular demonstration and by experiment, but only by quoting the works of Aristotle and of others. No one seeks to form the morals by working on the inward sources of action, but by purely external explanations and analysis of the virtues a superficial veneer of morality is given. This will be more evident when I come to the special methods of the arts and languages, but still more so, please God, when I give the outline of my Pansophia.

26. It is really to be wondered at that the men of former times did not understand this better, or that this error has not long since been rectified by those of the present day; since it is certain that we have here the actual reason why such slow progress has hitherto been made. Does the builder teach his apprentice the art of building by pulling down a house? Oh no; it is during the process of building a house that he shows him how to select his materials, how to fit each stone into its proper place, how to prepare them, raise them, lay them and join them together. For he who understands how to build will not need to be shown how to pull down, and he who can sew a garment together will be able to unrip it without any instruction. But it is not by pulling down houses or by unripping garments that the arts of building or of tailoring can be learned.

27. It is only too evident that the methods which are so faulty in this respect have not been rectified (1) since the education of many, if not of most men, consists of nothing but a string of names; that is to say, they can repeat the technical terms and the rules of the arts, but do not know how to apply them practically; (2) since the education of no man attains the position of universal knowledge that can give itself support, strength, and breadth, but is a heterogeneous compound of which one part is borrowed from one source and another from