Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/423

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OF THE FOURFOLD DIVISION OF SCHOOLS
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with their cognate organs, should be trained, and this by reading, writing, painting, singing, counting, measuring, weighing, and committing various things to memory. In the Latin-School the pupil should be trained to understand and pass judgment on the information collected by the senses, and this by means of dialectic, grammar, rhetoric, and the other sciences and arts that are based on principles of causation Finally, to the University belong those subjects that have special relation to the will, namely, the faculties, of which theology teaches us to restore harmony to the soul; philosophy, to the mind; medicine, to the vital functions of the body; and jurisprudence, to our external affairs.

7. Our faculties are best developed in the following manner. The objects should first be placed before the organs of sense on which they act. Then the internal senses should acquire the habit of expressing in their turn the images that result from the external sensation, both internally by means of the faculty of recollection, and externally with the hand and tongue. At this stage the mind can begin to operate, and, by the processes of exact thought, can compare and estimate all objects of knowledge. In this way an acquaintance with nature and a sound judgment may be obtained. Last of all, the will (which is the guiding principle in man) makes its power felt in all directions. To attempt to cultivate the will before the intellect (or the intellect before the imagination, or the imagination before the faculty of sense perception) is mere waste of time. But this is what those do who teach boys logic, poetry, rhetoric, and ethics before they are thoroughly acquainted with the objects that surround them. It would be equally sensible to teach boys of two years old to dance, though they can scarcely walk. Let our maxim be to follow the lead of nature in all things, to observe how the faculties develope one after the other, and to base our method on this principle of succession.

8. A third difference between the schools is this. The Mother-School and the Vernacular-School embrace all the