Education as a Factor in Civilization. 237 



synonymous terms, and all learning except that of the 

 priests was attributed to the Father of Lies. The mental 

 labor of the ages appeared to have accomplished nothing, 

 for the past was practically obliterated, and in less than four 

 hundred years, under this devastating though conscientious 

 influence, the race reverted to almost its original mental 

 obscurity. But the intellectual torpor of the Middle Ages 

 cannot be wholly attributed to the church. A state of con- 

 tinual conflict is not conducive to study, nor does an 

 enslaved people ever appreciate education. Moreover, 

 where a dead language is supreme, the mass of the people 

 must remain in ignorance. 



In the twelfth century the human mind began to stir un- 

 easily in its heavy slumber, but it was temporarily quieted 

 hy the scholasticism which confused the awakening intellect 

 with the foolish and fantastic speculations of monkish 

 dialecticians. Still, this form of exercise, though merely 

 leading the mind on a monotonous march through jungles 

 of syllogisms and verbal quibbles, did something toward 

 keeping the intellect from relapsing into utter stupor until 

 it could be aroused into real activity. 



But suddenly there came the shining of a great light 

 upon a waiting world, the dawning of that intellectual day 

 which was to make the sixteenth century an epoch in the 

 history of human thought and aspiration. The mind awoke 

 to intuitions concerning development according to natural 

 laws, and to a conception and hope of independence and prog- 

 ress transcending the wildest dreams of the night from 

 which it had emerged. Erasmus, Montaigne, Rabelais, Cal- 

 vin and Melancthon, did much to open the long-blinded eyes, 

 while the ink-stand thrown at the devil by Martin Luther 

 was in reality the challenge hurled by Truth to Falsehood, 

 and the signal for men to take up arms in the holy cause 

 of intellectual liberty. 



The common school has been called " the child of Prot- 

 estantism, whose cradle was the lleformation." Comenius 

 was the prophet without honor of our present educa- 

 tional methods. The laws formulated by him on the art of 

 teaching, and the grades of instruction which he defined, 

 leave little to be desired at the present day. Progressive 

 educators of our time merely echo the words of Comenius, 

 in which he urges the instruction of the young, " not by 

 beating into them a mass of words, sentences, and opinions 



