Читать книгу Essays on Educational Reformers онлайн

61 страница из 91

§ 3. The ideal set up by the Renascence attached the highest importance to learning. Montaigne maintained that the resulting training even at its best was not suited to a gentleman or man of action. Virtue, wisdom, and intellectual activity should be thought of before learning. Education should be first and foremost the development and exercise of faculties. And even if the acquirement of knowledge is thought of, Montaigne maintains that the pedants do not understand the first conditions of knowledge and give a semblance not the true thing.—“Il ne faut pas attacher le savoir à l’âme, il faut l’incorporer.—Knowledge cannot be fastened on to the mind; it must become part and parcel of the mind itself.”[40]

Here then we have two separate counts against the Renascence education:

1st.—Knowledge is not the main thing.

2nd.—True knowledge is something very different from knowing by heart.

§ 4. It is a pity Montaigne’s utterances about education are to be found in English only in the complete translation of his essays. Seeing that a good many millions of people read English, and are most of them concerned in education, one may hope that some day the sayings of the shrewd old Frenchman may be offered them in a convenient form.