The most permanent influence exerted by Comenins was in the practical educational work. Few men since his day have had a greater in fluence, though for the greater part of the eigh teenth century and the earls part of the nine teenth there was little recognition of his relationship to the current advance in educa tional thought and practice. The practical edu cational influence of Comenins was threefold. He was first a teacher and an organizer of schools, not only among his own people, but later in Sweden, and to a slight extent in Holland. In his Great Didactic he outlines a system of schools that is the exact counterpart of the existing American system of kindergarten, ele mentary school, secondary school, college, and university. In the second place, the influence of Comenius was in formulating the general theory of education. In this respect he is the fore runner of Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, etc., and is the first to formulate that idea of 'education according to nature' so influential during the latter part of the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth century. The influence of Comenius on educational thought is com parable with that of his contemporaries, Bacon and Descartes, on science and philosophy. In fact, he was largely influenced by the thought of these two; and his importance is largely due to the fact that he first applied or attempted to apply in a systematic manner the prin ciples of thought and of investigation, newly formulated by those philosophers, to the organ ization of education in all its aspects. The sum mary of this attempt is given in the Didactica Magna, completed about 1631, though not pub lished until several years later. The third aspect of his educational influence was that on the sub ject matter and method of education, exerted through a series of text-books of an entirely new nature. The first-published of these was the Janua Linguaritm Rescrata • (The Gate of Lan guages Unlocked), issued in 1031. This was
followed later by a more elementary text, the Vestibulam, and a more advanced one, the Atrium, and other texts. In 1657 was published the Orbis 8cnsitaliam Pictus, probably the most renowned and most widely circulated of _school text-books. It also the first successful ap plication of illustrations to the work of teaching, though not, as often stated, the first illustrated book for children.
These texts were all based on the same funda mental ideas: (1) learning foreign languages through the vernacular; (2) obtaining ideas through objects rather than words; (3) starting with objects most familiar to the child to duce him to both the new language and the more remote world of objects; (4) giving the child a comprehensive knowledge of his environment. physical and social, as well as instruction in religious, moral, and classical subjects; (5) making this acquisition of a compendium of knowledge a pleasure rather than a task; and (61 making instruction universal. While the formulation of many of these ideas is open to criticism from more recent points of view, and while the naturalistic conception of education is one based on crude analogies, the importance of the Comenian influence in education has now been recognized for half a century. The educa tional writings of Comcnius comprise more than forty titles. In 1892 the three-hundredth anni versary of Comenius was very generally cele brated by educators, and at that time the Comenian Society for the study and publication of his works was formed. Consult: Laurie, John Amos Comenius, Bishop of the Moravians: H is Life and Educational Works (London, 1884) ; Quick, Essays on Educational Reformers (London, 1868) ; Ranmer, (;csehichte der Piida gogik, vols. i.-iv. (Gtitersloh, 1S74-SO) ; Muller, ins, ell) Sy.stcmuatiker in der Padagogik (Dresden, 1887) ; Loscher, Comenins, der Pada gag and Bischof (Leipzig. 1SS9).