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The influence of Rabelais on Montaigne, Locke, and Rousseau has been well traced by Dr. F. A. Arnstädt. (François Rabelais, Leipzig, Barth, 1872.)

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§ 1. The learned ideal established by the Renascence was accepted by Rabelais, though he made some suggestions about Realien[39] that seem to us much in advance of it. When he quotes the saying “Magis magnos clericos non sunt magis magnos sapientes” (“the greatest clerks are not the greatest sages”), this singular piece of Latinity is appropriately put into the mouth of a monk, who represents everything the Renascence scholars despised. In Montaigne we strike into a new vein of thought, and we find that what the monk alleges in defence of his ignorance the cultured gentleman adopts as the expression of an important truth.

§ 2. We ordinary people see truths indeed, but we see them indistinctly, and are not completely guided by them. It is reserved for men of genius to see truths, some truths that is, often a very few, with intense clearness. Some of these men have no great talent for speech or writing, and they try to express the truths they see, not so much by books as by action. Such men in education were Comenius, Pestalozzi, and Froebel. But sometimes the man of genius has a great power over language, and then he finds for the truths he has seen, fitting expression, which becomes almost as lasting as the truths themselves. Such men were Montaigne and Rousseau. If the historian of education is asked “What did Montaigne do?” he will answer “Nothing.” “What did Froebel say?” “He said a great deal, but very few people can read him and still fewer understand him.” Both, however, are and must remain forces in education. Montaigne has given to some truths imperishable form in his Essays, and Froebel’s ideas come home to all the world in the Kindergarten.