tion would
be very far astray. If the ancient tongues are to be learned simply with
a view to the sum of knowledge they contain, it would be absurd to waste
the time of our youth over them. It would be better to impose on our
universities the duty of furnishing guaranteed translations for the use
of the public. We shall not, however, involve ourselves in controversy
here, as our object is merely to point out, generally, the strong and
weak points of our author.

Next in importance to pansophy or encyclopaedism, and closely connected
with it, is the principle that a knowledge of words and of things should
go hand in hand. Words are to be learned through things. Properly
interpreted, and under due limitations, this principle will, we presume,
be now generally accepted. We say, under due limitations, because it is
manifest that the converse preposition, that "things are learned through
words," is easily capable of proof, and is indeed, in our opinion, the
stronghold of humanistic teaching in its earlier or school stages.

It is in the department of method, however, that we recognize the chief
contribution of Comenius to education. The mere attempt to systematize
was a great advance. In seeking, however, for foundations on which to
erect a coherent system, he had had to content himself with first
principles which were vague and unscientific.

Modern psychology was in its infancy, and Comenius had little more than
the generalizations of Plato and Aristotle, and those not strictly
investigated by him, for his guide. In training to virtue, moral truth
and the various moralities were assumed as if they emerged full-blown in
the consciousness of man. In training to godliness, again, Christian
dogma was ready to his hand. In the department of knowledge, that is to
say, knowledge of the outer world, Comenius rested his method on the
scholastic maxim, _"Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in
sensu_." This maxim he enriched with the Baconian induction,
comprehended by him, however, only in a general way. It was chiefly,
however, the imagined harmony of physical and mental process that
yielded his method. He believed that the process of the growth of
external things had a close resemblance to the growth of the mind. Had
he lived in these days he would doubtless have endeavored to work out
the details of his method on a purely psychological basis; but in the
then state of psychology he had to find another thread through th