humanities was narrowed to indicate merely the languages and literatures of the two peoples, so the term humanistic was narrowed to indicate the type of education corresponding to it. Though not quite exact, since the term contains the original broader significance as well, we are forced to adopt, as following popular practice, the term humanistic education to indicate the narrow linguistic education that dominated European schools from the sixteenth to the middle nineteenth century.

Elimina

tion of the physical element; of

the social;

Elimination of Elements from the Conception of Education. At its best the narrow humanistic education gave little place to the physical and to the social or institutional elements. It had little thought of broad preparation for social activity through familiarity with the life of the ancients. It gave no place to the study of nature or of society (history) and, at first, little even to mathematics. The individualism of this education was not of the sciso much a training in the exercise of personal judgment and of entific personal taste and discrimination, as it was a preparation for a career which would be successful in the formal life of the times from the purely personal point of view. This end was gained through an education so formal and stereotyped that in time it eliminated most of the choicer results of the early humanistic education. The only phase of the æsthetic element preserved The aesthet limited to was the study of rhetoric. Education again became reduced to literary the work of the school and that work became of the most appreciatio formal character, relating solely to the study of language and literature. Since the child began with the study of a synthetic language through the mastery of grammatical constructions, and since few children have much power of literary appreciation, the work of schooling must be prolonged for years in its attention to the structural side of language only. Even literary appreciation could not be a general attainment. Hence for the rank and file of children, educational work became a drill of the most formal and laborious character. In the universities the same tendencies prevailed that controlled in the lower schools. By the seventeenth century the study of the humanities was almost as formal

This possib

of attainment by fe

Cicero re-
›laces Aris-
otle as the

ducation

and profitless as had been the narrow routine of scholastic discussion of the fourteenth. Cicero now had become master in place of the dethroned Aristotle.

Ciceronianism. This humanistic education at its worst became almost inconceivably narrow and boldly asserted itself, even Luthority in as early as the first half of the sixteenth century, under the name of Ciceronianism. The Ciceronians, arguing that the aim of education was to impart a perfect Latin style and that Cicero was the admitted master of that style, held that all work in the school should be confined to the study of the writings of Cicero or his imitators and that all conversation and all writing should be in Ciceronian phrase. In the words of the Ciceronian controversialist, "they would discard all subjects that do not admit of being discussed in Cicero's recorded words." Against these views, as represented by numerous Italian and French humanists, Erasmus carried on a long controversy and wrote his dialogue on The Ciceronians. In this satire the Ciceronian describes his ideal education. For seven years the child is to read Cicero and not a single other author, until he has practically committed to memory the whole of the master's writing and has acquired a Ciceronian vocabulary. In order to accomplish this, huge lexicons of words are arranged; others of phrases; others of the forms of introductions and of terminations of periods; others of comparative tables of the various uses of words. Letters, declamations, conversations, orations, are composed with infinite pains, in the effort to make a living language of that which even at the time of its creation was no more the spoken language than was that of Shakespeare during the sixteenth century or that of Browning in the nineteenth. Ciceronianism was an extreme. But substituting the classical writers in general for Cicero, their master, the whole tenor, purpose and method of the schools of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were but little broader than the spirit of the Ciceronians.

nterest

iefly in

rm

Character of the Narrow Humanistic Education. In the

and speaking knowl

edge of

Latin the

sole aim in

of formal

narrow humanistic education a familiarity with the classical A writing literature, or with that portion of it superior from a rhetorical point of view, and a writing and speaking knowledge of Latin constituted the sole aim of education. The content of education and the subject-matter of school work became a prolonged education drill in Latin grammar; a detailed grammatical and rhetorical study of selected Latin texts, especially of Cicero, Ovid, Terence, with less attention to Vergil and some of the historians; with some study of portions of the Scriptures, of catechisms and creeds in Latin or of the Epistles in Greek. This command of Latin was Dominance perfected through frequent exercise in declamation and the pres-forms entation of the comedies of Plautus and Terence. This was supplemented by some attention to Greek and possibly to elementary mathematics and, as a final accomplishment, a training in oratory. Oratory meant a speaking knowledge of Latin as nearly classical or Ciceronian as possible. Methods followed the most formal grammatical lines, with no appreciation of the child's nature. He was considered to be a miniature man whose interests and powers of mind differed from those of the adult only in degree, not in kind. Consequently, the child on coming to school was given the task of acquiring a foreign language, usually before he had acquired the ability to read or write his own. He must acquire this through a formal study of grammar and of rhetoric, and, for the most part, until late in the seventeenth century, must get this formal knowledge through text-books written in the same foreign tongue. There resulted a tremendous emphasis upon the memorizing powers and upon the power to discriminate forms. All this produced a dialectic ability little inferior in subtlety and "hair-splitting" acumen to that of the Schoolmen. The disciplinary spirit of such an education was of the harshest, because of the most formal, and harsh character. Corporal punishment furnished the incentive to study discipline as well as to moral conduct — not a very secure basis for either. This education, formal in its spirit as in its subject-matter, accompanied the return to the emphasis upon the formal in

Educational

arly Renais

ance were 'ften outside f schools

life. This is seen in the intellectual, the political, the religious and the moral life of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. (See Ch. X.)

SOME RENAISSANCE EDUCATORS.-The great educaeaders in the tors of the Renaissance movement were not necessarily teachers, though many of them were. Leadership in education was quite as frequently exerted by general treatises on the new learning or even by stimulation of appreciation for literature. It was thus quite outside the pale of university or school that the early Italian leaders wrought. In any educational sketch of the Renaissance, some of the more prominent of those who reduced the new learning to the methods and the purposes of the schools must find recognition.

he first odern hoolmaster

In Italy the advanced position occupied by Petrarch, Boccaccio, Barzizza, Vergerius and other humanists has been noticed previously. Many of these early humanists, whether attached to courts or to universities, possessed but a meager income. Consequently, it was their custom to supplement this by receiving private students into their homes. Through such work, rather than through university lectures, these men reduced the new learning to definite educational procedure and exercised their greatest influence on their times and on education. Both Barzizza and Chrysoloras, leaders respectively in the Latin and the Greek revival, conformed to this custom, and Guarino of Verona was one of the most successful and most famous. A somewhat more detailed statement of the work of one of these must answer for that of all.

Vittorino da Feltra (1378-1446) has been considered as the most famous of all these Italian educators, both by his own and succeeding generations. Since none of his writings have survived, his reputation depends on the influence of his pupils and the traditions of his school. Vittorino was a product of the earlier generation of humanists, and had been associated with the three scholars just mentioned. He taught privately at Padua and Venice and publicly at the University of Padua before

organizing the school which was to be the means of his great influence. In 1428 he was called to establish such a school by the Prince of Mantua, who wished to have the dignity of a school of the new learning at his court to rival those of the neighboring courts. Here he continued until his death. This institution represented the first thorough organization of the new learning for school purposes as distinct from university lectures. The master here gave to the Greek idea of a liberal education its first modern embodiment, and taught for the first time the Literature, history and civilization of the Romans instead of the mere form of their language. Later ages have given Vittorino the title of "the first modern schoolmaster." In time, he associated children of his friends and of the neighboring nobility with the children of the court, until the school occupied an entire palace. His aim was to make the life of the pupils as pleasant and active as possible, so that the schoolhouse was made,

as it was termed, "The Pleasant House." Sport and games were "Interest" joined with study, æsthetic appreciation was cultivated, and, in education above all, moral and Christian influences were strongly emphasized. While the curriculum still retained the organization of the seven liberal arts, literature dominated, and dialectic and grammar were wholly subordinated. The new purpose represented a change even more radical. Education now became a direct preparation for a useful and balanced life in leadership in State or Church, for a citizenship based upon knowledge of and Moral and sympathy for the best in the life of the Greeks and Romans. Practical Self-government by the boys of the school, a dependence upon the natural interests of the pupil, use of the natural activities of the child as a basis for much of the work, and a strong emphasis upon activity and upon the constructive side of the work as furnishing an immediate introduction into a useful life, were some of the features exemplified in this school at Mantua.

aim

the German

Early German Humanists. Among the early German Leaders of humanists, John Wessel (1420-1489), Rudolph Agricola Renaissance (1443-1485), Alexander Hegius (1420-1495), John Reuchlin