everal treatises, such as a
_History of the Persecutions of the Brotherhood_, an account of the
Moravian Church discipline and order, and polemical tracts against a
contemporary Socinian.

Meanwhile his great didactic treatise, which had been written in his
native Czech tongue, was yet unpublished. He was, it would appear,
stimulated to the publication of it by an invitation he received in
1638, from the authorities in Sweden, to visit their country and
undertake the reformation of their schools. He replied that he was
unwilling to undertake a task at once so onerous and so invidious, but
that he would gladly give the benefit of his advice to anyone of their
own nation whom they might select for the duty. These communications led
him to resume his labor on the _Great Didactic_, and to translate it
into Latin, in which form it finally appeared.

Humanism, which had practically failed in the school, had, apart from
this fact, no attractions for Comenius, and still less had the worldly
wisdom of Montaigne. He was a leading Protestant theologian--a pastor
and bishop of a small but earnest and devoted sect--and it was as such
that he wrote on education. The best results of humanism could, after
all, be only culture, and this not necessarily accompanied by moral
earnestness or personal piety: on the contrary, probably dissociated
from these, and leaning rather to scepticism and intellectual
self-indulgence.

At the same time it must be noted that he never fairly faced the
humanistic question; he rather gave it the cold shoulder from the first.
His whole nature pointed in another direction. When he has to speak of
the great instruments of humanistic education--ancient classical
writers--he exhibits great distrust of them, and, if he does not banish
them from the school altogether, it is simply because the higher
instruction in the Latin and Greek tongues is seen to be impossible
without them. Even in the universities, as his pansophic scheme shows,
he would have Plato and Aristotle taught chiefly by means of analyses
and epitomes. It might be urged in opposition to this view of the
anti-humanism of Comenius, that he contemplated the acquisition of a
good style in Latin in the higher stages of instruction: true, but in so
far as he did so, it was merely with a practical aim--the more
effective, and, if need be, oratorical, enforcement of moral and
religious truth. The beauties and subtleties of artistic expression had
littl