are
made vicious by being punished before they become so. Pay a visit there
when they are at their work; you will hear nothing but cries,--children
under execution, and masters drunk with fury. What a mode of creating in
these tender and timid souls an appetite for their lessons, to conduct
them to their tasks with a furious countenance, rod in hand!--it is an
iniquitous and pernicious fashion. How much more becoming it would be
to see the classroom strewed with leaves and flowers than with
blood-stained stumps of birch rods! I would have painted up there scenes
of joy and merriment, Flora and the Graces, as Speusippus had his school
of philosophy: where they are to gain profit, there let them find
happiness too. One ought to sweeten all food that is wholesome, and put
bitter into what is dangerous."[82]

Here we find a strong plea for humane forms of punishment and a severe
criticism of the prevailing practice of flogging, a practice which did
not cease until long after Montaigne's time. It is an equally forcible
plea for beautiful and pleasant schoolrooms, decorated with works of art
intended to awaken and cultivate the aesthetic sense of the children,
while contributing to their happiness. It has been left to the educators
of the end of the nineteenth century to take up and seriously act upon
this suggestion made over three hundred years ago. "The purpose of
education," said Montaigne, "is the training, not of a grammarian, or a
logician, but of a complete gentleman." Education should be of a
practical nature. The child must become familiar with the things about
him. He must learn his own language first and then that of his
neighbors, and languages should all be learned by conversation.

A decided weakness in his system is found in his ideas concerning women.
He made no provision for their education, and, indeed, expressed great
contempt for their abilities of either mind or heart.

Montaigne's chief literary work is his "Essays." Compayre pronounces
Montaigne's pedagogy, "a pedagogy of good sense," and further adds that
he has "remained, after three centuries, a sure guide in the matter of
intellectual education."

Observation and experience were to be abundantly employed, and visits to
other lands, together with intercourse with intelligent men everywhere,
were to "sharpen our wits by rubbing them upon those of others."

To sum up, we may say that the pedagogy of Montaigne teaches the
training and use of the