[121. Analytical Summary.—1. The dominant characteristic of education during the Renaissance period is the reaction which it exhibits against certain errors in Middle Age education.
2. A second characteristic is a disposition to conciliate or harmonize principles and methods whose fault is exaggeration.
3. Against instruction based almost wholly on authority, there is a reaction in favor of free inquiry.
4. Opposed to an education of the professional or technical type, there is proposed an education of the general or liberal type.
5. From being almost exclusively ethical and religious, education tends to become secular.
6. Didactic, formal instruction out of books, dealing in second-hand knowledge, is succeeded by informal, intuitive instruction from natural objects, dealing in knowledge at first hand.
7. The conception that education is a process of manufacture begins to give place to the conception that it is a process of growth.
8. Teaching whose purpose was information is succeeded by teaching whose purpose is formation, discipline, or training.
9. A discipline that was harsh and cruel is succeeded by a discipline comparatively mild and humane; and manners that were rude and coarse, are followed by a finer code of civility.]
[71] See especially the following chapters: Book I. chaps. XIV., XV., XXI., XXII., XXIV.; Book II. chaps. V., VI., VII., VIII.
[72] The contrast between the general system of education that culminated with the Reformation, and the system that had its rise at the same period, is so marked that there is an historical propriety in calling the first the old education, and the second, or later, the new education. Recollecting the tendency of the human mind to pass from one extreme to an opposite extreme, we may suspect that the final state of educational thought and practice will represent a mean between these two contrasted systems: it is inconceivable that the old was wholly wrong, or that the new is wholly right. (P.)
[73] Book I. chap. XXIV.
[74] Rabelais recommends the study of Hebrew, so that the sacred books may be known in their original form. In some place he says: “I love much more to hear the Gospel than to hear the life of Saint Margaret or some other cant.”
[75] Book II. chap. VIII.
[76] This pansophic scheme of Rabelais has been revived in later times by Bentham, in his Chrestomathia, and still later by Spencer, in his Education. It seems to have been forgotten that the division of labor affects education in much the same way as it affects all other departments of human activity: that there is no more need of having as a personal possession all the knowledge we need for guidance, than for owning all the agencies we need for locomotion or communication. (P.)
[77] “I was above six years of age before I understood either French or Perigordian any more than Arabic, and without art, book, grammar, or precept, whipping, or the experience of a tear, had by that time learned to speak as pure Latin as my master himself.” Essays, Book I. chap. XXV. In this chapter I have several times quoted from Cotton’s translation. (London: 1711.) (P.)
[78] Book I. chap. XXV.
[79] Book I. chap. XXV.
[80] See particularly Chap. XXIV. of Book I., Of Pedantry; Chap. XXV. Book I., Of the Education of Children; Chap. VIII. Book II., Of the Affection of Fathers to their Children.
[81] Book I. chap. XXV.
[82] Book I. chap. XXIV.
[83] Book I. chap. XXIV.
[84] Book I. chap. XXV.
[85] Book I. chap. XXV.
[86] Has not this extravagant preference for things, as distinguished from words, become a new superstition in educational theory? Considering the misuse made of words by Scholasticism, it was time for Montaigne to summon the attention outwards to sensible realities; but it is more than doubtful whether there is any valid ground for the absolute rule of modern pedagogy, “first the idea, then the term.” In actual experience, there is no invariable sequence. The really important thing is, that terms be made significant. (P.)
[87] Book I. chap. XXV.
[88] Book I. chap. XXV.
[89] Book II. chap. VIII.
[90] I am not sure that this remark does not do Montaigne injustice, especially when we consider the connection in which the original remark is made: “I am of opinion that what is not to be done by reason, prudence, and address, is never to be effected by force. I myself was brought up after that manner; and they tell me that, in all my first age, I never felt the rod but twice, and then very easily. I have practised the same method with my children, who all of them dy’d at nurse; but Leonora, my only daughter, is arrived to the age of six years and upwards without other correction for her childish faults than words only, and those very gentle.” Book II. chap. VIII. (P.)
[91] Book III. chap. XIII.
[92] Book III. chap. III.
[93] Book III. chap. III.
[94] See particularly Chap. XIV. of Book III.