old beldam witch, a true and perfect sorceress, both by
her ugliness and deformity, and such a one as long
before was most famous in that profession. I saw both
proofs, witnesses, voluntary confessions, and some
insensible marks about this miserable old woman; I enquired
and talked with her a long time, with the greatest heed
and attention I could, and I am not easily carried away
by preconceived opinion. In the end and in my
conscience I should rather have appointed them hellebore
than hemlock. It was rather a disease than a crime.

Montaigne goes on to argue that even when we cannot get an
explanation--and any explanation is more probable than magic--it is safe
to disbelieve: "Fear sometimes representeth strange apparitions to the
vulgar sort, as ghosts . . . larves, hobgoblins, Robbin-good-fellows and
such other bugbears and chimaeras." For Montaigne the evil spell upon
the mind of the race had been broken; alas! that it took so long for
other men to throw it off!

[1] Erikoenig.

SECTION 3. EDUCATION

[Sidenote: Education]

From the most terrible superstition let us turn to the noblest, most
inspiring and most important work of {662} humanity. With each
generation the process of handing on to posterity the full heritage of
the race has become longer and more complex.

[Sidenote: Schools]

It was, therefore, upon a very definite and highly developed course of
instruction that the contemporary of Erasmus entered. There were a few
great endowed schools, like Eton and Winchester and Deventer, in which
the small boy might begin to learn his "grammar"--Latin, of course.
Some of the buildings at Winchester and Eton are the same now as they
were then, the quite beautiful chapel and dormitories of red brick at
Eton, for example. Each of these two English schools had, at this
time, less than 150 pupils, and but two masters, but the great Dutch
school, Deventer, under the renowned tuition of Hegius, boasted 2200
scholars, divided into eight forms. Many an old woodcut shows us the
pupils gathered around the master as thick as flies, sitting
cross-legged on the floor, some intent on their books and others
playing pranks, while there seldom fails to be one undergoing the
chastisement so highly recommended by Solomon. These great schools did
not suffice for all would-be scholars. In many villages there was some
poor priest or master who would teach the boys what he knew and prepare