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النشر الإلكتروني

OF

EDUCATION.

TO

MR. SAMUEL HARTLIB.

Written about the Year 1650.

Mr. Hartlib,

A M'long fince perfuaded, that to say, or do ought worth memory and imitation, no purpose or refpect should fooner move us, than fimly the love of God, and of mankind. Neverheless to write now the reforming of education, ho' it be one of the greatest and noblest designs hat can be thought on, and for the want whereof this nation perishes, I had not yet at this time been induc'd, but by your earnest intreaties and erious conjurements; as having my mind for he prefent half diverted in the pursuance of fome ther affertions, the knowledge and the use of which cannot but be a great furtherance both to the enlargement of truth, and honeft living, with much more peace. Nor should the laws of any private friendship have prevail'd with me to diide thus, or transpose my former thoughts, but

that I fee those aims, those actions which have won you with me the esteem of a person sent hither by fome good providence from a far country, to be the occafion and the incitement of great good to this island. And, as I hear, you have obtain'd the same repute with men of most approv'd wisdom, and fome of highest authority among us. Not to mention the learned correfpondence which you hold in foreign parts, and the extraordinary pains and diligence which you have us'd in this matter both here, and beyond the feas; either by the definite will of God fo ruling, or the peculiar sway of nature, which also is God's working. Neither can I think that, so reputed, and so valu'd as you are, you would, to the forfeit of your own difcerning ability, impose upon me an unfit and over-ponderous argument, but that the fatisfaction which you profess to have receiv'd from those incidental discourses which we have wander'd into, hath preft and almost constrain'd you into a perfuafion, that what you require from me in this point, I neither ought, nor can in confcience defer beyond this time both of so much need at once, and fo much opportunity to try what God hath deter

min'd. I will not resist therefore, whatever it is, either of divine or human obligement, that you lay upon me; but will forthwith set down in writing, as you request me, that voluntary Idea, which hath long in filence presented itself to me, of a better education, in extent and comprehenfion far more large, and yet of time far shorter, and of attainment far more certain, than hath been yet in practise. Brief I shall endeavour to be; for that which I have to fay, assuredly this nation hath extreme need should be done sooner than spoken. To tell you therefore what I have benefited herein among old renowned authors, I shall spare; and to search what many modern Janua's and didactics, more than ever I shall read, have projected, my inclination leads me not. But if you can accept of these few Observations which have flower'd off, and are, as it were, the burnishing of many studious and contemplative years, altogether spent in the search of religious and civil knowledge, and such as pleas'd you so well in the relating, I here give you them to dispose of.

The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents, by regaining to know

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God aright, and out of that knowledge to lov him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we ma the nearest by possessing our fouls of true virtue which being united to the heavenly grace of fait makes up the highest perfection. But because ou understanding cannot in this body found itsel but on sensible things, nor arrive so clearly t the knowledge of God and things invisible, a by orderly conning over the visible and inferio creature, the fame method is necessarily to be fol low'd in all discreet teaching. And feeing every na tion affords not experience and tradition enougl for all kinds of learning, therefore we are chieff taught the languages of those people who hav at any time been most industrious after wisdom fo that language is but the instrument conveyin to us things useful to be known. And tho'a Lin guist should pride himself to have all the tongue that Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he had not studied the solid things in them as well at the words and lexicons, he were nothing fo much to be esteem'd a learned man, as any yeoman o tradesman competently wife in his mother dia •lect only. Hence appear the many mistakes which have made learning generally so unpleasing and

so unsuccessful; first we do amiss to spend seven yor eight years meerly in scraping together fo much miferable Latin and Greek, as might be learnt otherwise easily and delightfully in one year. And that which cafts our proficiency therein so much behind, is our time lost partly in too oft idle vacancies given both to schools and universities, partly in a preposterous exaction, forcing the empty wits of children to compose themes, verses and orations, which are the acts of ripest judgment and the final work of a head fill'd by long reading and observing, with elegant maxims, and copious invention. These are not matters to be wrung from poor striplings, like blood out of the nose, or the plucking of untimely fruit? Besides the ill habit which they get of wretched barbarizing against the Latin and Greek idiom, with their untutor'd Anglicisms, odious to be read, yet not to be avoided without a well continu'd and judicious converfing among pure authors digested, which they scarce taste; whereas, if after some preparatory grounds of speech by their certain forms got into memory, they were led to the praxis thereof in some chofen short book lesson'd throughly to them, they might then

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