378 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



favor of a better education, and in 1524 he addressed a letter to tine 

 councils of all the towns in Germany, begging them to vote money 

 not merely for roads, dikes, guns, and the like, but for schoolmasters, 

 so that all children might be taught; and he states his opinion that 

 if it be the duty of a state to compel the able-bodied to carry arms, 

 it is a fortiori its duty to compel its subjects to send their children 

 to school, and to provide schools for those who without such aid 

 would remain uninstructed. 



Here we have the germ of Germany's position at the present day, 

 not only in scientific instruction but in everything which that instruc- 

 tion brings with it. 



"With the Reformation this idea spread to France. In 1560 

 we find the States-General of Orleans suggesting to Francis II a 

 " levee d'une contribution sur les benefices ecclesiastiques pour 

 raisonablement stipendier des pedagogues et gens lettres, en toutes 

 villes et villages, pour l'instruction de la pauvre jeunesse du plat 

 pays, et soient tenus les peres et meres, a peine d'amende, a, envoyer 

 les dits enfants a, Fecole, et a. ce faire soient contraints par les 

 segnieurs et les juges ordinaires." 



Two years after this suggestion, however, the religious wars 

 broke out; the material interests of the clerical party had predomi- 

 nated, the new spirit was crushed under the iron heel of priestcraft, 

 and the French, in consequence, had to wait for three centuries and a 

 revolution before they could get comparatively free. 



In the universities, or at all events alongside them, Ave find next 

 the introduction not so much yet of science as we now know it, 

 with its experimental side, as of the scientific spirit. 



The history of the College de France, founded in 1531 by 

 Francis I, is of extreme interest. In the fifteenth century the 

 studies were chiefly literary, and except in the case of a few minds 

 they were confined merely to scholastic subtleties, taught (I have it 

 on the authority of the Statistique de l'Enseignement Superieur) 

 in barbarous Latin. This was the result of the teaching of the facul- 

 ties; but even then, outside the faculties, which were immutable, a 

 small number of distinguished men still occupied themselves in a 

 less rigid Avay in investigation; but still these studies were chiefly lit- 

 erary. Among those men may be mentioned Danes, Postel, Dole, 

 Guillaume Bude, Lefevre d'Etaples, and others, who edited with notes 

 and commentaries Greek and Latin authors whom the university 

 scarcely knew by name. Hence the renaissance of the sixteenth 

 century, which gave birth to the College de France, the function of 

 which, at the commencement, was to teach those things which were 

 not in the ordinary curriculum of the faculties. It was called the 

 College des Deux Langues, the languages being Hebrew and Greek. 



