Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/425



1. is when it first comes into being that a tree puts forth the shoots that are later on to be its principal branches, and it is in this first school that we must plant in a man the seeds of all the knowledge with which we wish him to be equipped in his journey through life. A brief survey of the whole of knowledge will show the possibility of this, and this survey can easily be made if we bring everything under twenty headings.

2. (i) Metaphysic (as it is called) should certainly be our starting-point, since the first conceptions that children have are general and confused. They see, hear, taste, and touch, but are ignorant of the exact object of their sensations. They commence, therefore, by learning the general concepts: something, nothing, it is, it is not, thus, otherwise, where, when, like, unlike, etc., and these are nothing but the prime concepts of metaphysic.

3. (ii) In physics, a boy, during the first six years of his life, can be brought to know what are water, earth, air, fire, rain, snow, frost, stone, iron, trees, grass, birds, fishes, oxen, etc. He may also learn the names and uses of the members of his body, or at any rate of the external ones. At this age these things are easily learned, and pave the way for natural science.

4. (iii) A boy learns the elements of optics when he begins to distinguish and to call by their names light, dark-