Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/53

 the desire for the true good. Thus the art of moulding our fortunes consists in depending not on circumstances but on reason, and not on the reason of another but on our own; that is to say, on the reason of God that works in us.

It is impossible to say how much time was devoted to the Janua Rerum during the last few years of Comenius’ stay in Lissa. Apart from his work as a schoolmaster, his other literary productions were sufficient to fill up any ordinary man’s time, and the claims made on him by admirers in other towns and countries increased daily. In 1637 a request was addressed to him from Breslau asking him to write some hints on school-teaching for the Gymnasium in that town. With this demand he complied in his De sermonis Latini studio dissertatio. It is interesting as being the first published work of Comenius that dealt with school organisation in a philosophic spirit.

The treatise opens with a dedicatory verse by George Bechner, in which the author is ranked above Epictetus. After some general remarks on the importance of a knowledge of facts—“Verba sine rebus, putamina sunt sine nucleo, vagina sine gladio, umbra sine corpore, corpus sine anima”—Comenius proceeds to divide the Latin School into four classes, each of which is to have its own book. The first and second classes are to be provided with the Vestibulum and the Janua, whose acquaintance we have already made; while for the two more advanced classes he suggests the compilation of two other books, The Palatium and The Thesaurus. The Palace is to be divided into four parts—“The Palace of Letter-writing,” “The Palace of History,” “The Palace of Oratory,” and “The Palace of Poetry.” “The Palace of Letter-writing” is to contain a hundred letters corresponding to the hundred divisions of the Janua. The style is to be varied, and a few general remarks on letter-writing are to be added. “The Palace of History” is to consist of dialogues embodying historical information about the objects mentioned in the Janua.