PART IV REALISM CHAPTER XIV REALISM Reaction against the extreme positions of humanism was inevitable. Retrospect. The literary beauty which had taken the world of the fifteenth century captive was largely a beauty of structure and style, but the men who were moved by these charms "opened the Bible," and thus helped to produce the sixteenth-century Reformation, in which freedom of conscience and reason were the watchwords of individuality. The new ideals, as we have seen, came into collision with tradition and prescription, and thus produced not only religious wars like those of Philip II of Spain and Ferdinand of Bohemia (the Thirty Years' War) but also educational wars like that of the secondary schools and universities in the training of denominational leaders and teachers. In these rivalries the very watchwords of the Reformation lost their power, and Protestantism, like Catholicism, organized its ideals into rigid formalism. Prescription and repression once more gained the upper hand almost everywhere. Reaction was inevitable. Realism.-The very wars which produced these new prescriptive and repressive denominational "fortresses" also produced new champions of human freedom, and this time, in realism, as the third phase of the Renaissance, truth rather than beauty, and religion in the prescriptive sense became the watchword, so much so that to some extent at least both beauty and religion suffered. Fortunately for the human spirit, this tension, because it is not inherent, did not persist very long, and although it has not disappeared completely from the twentieth century, promises to do so. This third phase of the Renaissance is called "realism," and may be defined as a demand for education that deals with the realities of the present life and prepares for its tasks. There were three stages of realism, namely, humanistic realism, "social realism," as Doctor Monroe calls it, and sense-realism. Humanistic Realism.-Even when humanism began to lose its power over those who dared to think for themselves, they could not at once emancipate themselves from that worship of the past to which the world had become accustomed. When, accordingly, the social fabric of the age, together with ever-present "nature" and its forces, began to attract the attention of these thinkers, they sought mental refuge in compromise. They began to see that current humanism had failed because it had emphasized form, or language, above content, or ideas, but stoutly insisted that if the content rather than the form of the classics were emphasized, they were still the best sources of information in the study of man and nature, and in the adjustment of the one to the other-which adjustment was now assumed to be the great end in view in education. This view, of which Rabelais and Milton were probably the best exponents, is known as "humanistic realism, from the fact that it undertook to understand the present through the past. Social Realism.-The social realists were men of affairs, interested in the public life of the age to which they belonged, and therefore in favor of an education that would answer practical purposes. Accordingly, they deplored the pedantry of humanism, and its divorce from real life, and turned impatiently from the life of the far past to that of the living present. An aristocratic individualism, looking to personal success in public life, dominated all their views. They believed that what the young aristocrat needed was an education in practical wisdom, secured not in the schools but through a tutor who should choose both subject-matter and method, with an eye single to success in life. They emphasized the living languages and travel for contact with living men, and valued history and politics above grammar and rhetoric. A good physique and fine manners, with a little military dash thrown in, was encouraged, and, although religion was not neglected, it was not allowed to handicap worldly wisdom. This class of thinkers was probably best represented by Montaigne and Locke. Sense-Realism.-The sense-realists also turned away from the past to the present, and from ideas handed down in books to ideas ascertained first hand through a study of things, which term included both nature and human nature. This movement was therefore really a later development of that earliest interest in nature which characterized the Italian Renaissance in its first appearance. Men dared to study nature for themselves, caring little for authority, even that of Aristotle. Nature itself was consulted and investigated by experiment, and truth wrested from mystery. Through this courageous interest in nature Copernicus (1473-1543), as a sort of forerunner, discovered that the sun was the centre of the planetary system. Up to the time of the Reformation, however, the church was very unfriendly to such researches, and when the Reformation emancipated reason, it was rather in the service of religious disputes than for the clearing up of mysteries in nature. But the seventeenth century emancipated itself amazingly from this handicap, and bold investigators, in their first overconfidence, sometimes reached conclusions in open conflict with fundamental doctrines of religion, and in flat contradiction to the Greek authorities, venerated many centuries. Galileo invented the telescope (1609), Kepler explained the motions of the planets (1609), and Newton the law of gravitation (1685). Napier invented logarithms (1614), Descartes founded analytical geometry (1637), Leibnitz followed with integral calculus. Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood (1628), Guericke invented the air-pump (1650), about the same time Pascal ascertained that the air has weight, Boyle propounded the theory of the vacuum and of gases (1665), and Malpighi invented the compound microscope in the service of anatomy soon afterward. Literary activity rivalled this scientific activity. The result was a golden age of letters in England and France. England produced Bacon, Shakespeare, and Milton. France produced great dramatists like Molière and Racine; letter-writers like Pascal and Madame de Sévigné; orators like Massillon; and educa tional writers like Fénelon and Rollin. The greatest sense-realists of the seventeenth century were Mulcaster, Bacon, and Comenius. RABELAIS Among the interesting representatives of early realism was François Rabelais (1483-1553). He was the son of a French innkeeper, and a contemporary of Luther. In the Franciscan monastery to which his people had sent him to school, he acquired a knowledge of Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, and undertook a wide course in general reading. When his superiors forbade him to continue his self-selected curriculum, he fled in disgust, nor did he stay long in the Benedictine monastery to which he next obtained admission, but became a sort of itinerant priest, and undertook to study the sciences of his day, giving special attention to medicine. He became a member of the faculty of medicine at Montpelier, in 1530, but remained only two years, when he was made physician to the Lyons Hospital. Nor was his roving at an end even then, but, ever devoted to his studies, he eventually became famous as the writer of "Gargantua" (1535) and "Pantagruel" (1552), two of the most sarcastic satires on education ever written, and far in advance of his age. Ideas. The great theme which Rabelais had in mind was an education that should benefit the whole man. Mind and body were to be nurtured together. In the training of the intellect books and things were to confirm each other. Religion was to make for character, and the pupil taught to fit himself for his place |