Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/90

 Janson at Amsterdam in 1657. It was a Latin-Latin and not a Latin-Vernacular dictionary, as, by the time he reached the Atrial class, the pupil was supposed to possess a competent knowledge of the language. The Saros-Patak classbooks, with the exception of the grammars for the Vestibulum and the Janua, were all inferior to the first editions previously published at Lissa. In his effort to be scientific Comenius fell into the very trap that he wished to avoid, and became complicated and tedious. But this relapse was more than compensated for by the celebrated Orbis Pictus, or World in Pictures. It was impossible to publish this work at the printing-office of the Patak Gymnasium, as no engraver competent to execute the illustrations could be found, and it was therefore sent to Nuremberg, where it was brought out at the cost of Michael Endter in 1658. In the preface, Comenius states the philosophic principles by which he was guided in the composition of the work. “There is nothing in the intellect that has not first existed in the senses,” says he, with an airy assumption of the materialistic standpoint that he rejects whenever he philosophises about things in general, but which yet plays such a living part in his pedagogy. “It is because schools commonly neglect this truth, and give the pupils things to learn that they do not understand and which have never been properly placed before their organs of sense-perception, that the tasks of the teacher and of the learner are so irksome, and that so little result is produced.” When dealing with objects that are in the school room it is easy enough to point them out to the beginner, but, when the range of the boys’ vocabulary becomes more extended, the “object-lesson” process can only be effected by means of a picture-book. Such a book will serve several purposes. Small boys generally imagine that the operations of the school-room must necessarily be of a most dismal character. “Now it is well known that, from their