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Here it was that he first began to study and practise new methods of teaching, and especially of grammatical teaching, induced, as he himself tells us, by the fame of certain speculations on that subject which had recently been put forth by Wolfgang Ratich, an Educational Reformer then very active in Germany.
He read, he tells us, all the works he could find on the subject of Didactics by predecessors or contemporaries, such as Ratich, Ritter, Glaumius, Wolfstirn, Caecilius, and Joannes Valentinus Andreae, and also the philosophical works of Campanella and Lord Bacon; but he combined the information so obtained with his own ideas and experience.
And, when I had heard that Wolfgang Ratich was toiling at an amended Method, I had no rest of mind till I had got that gentleman into my presence; who, however, instead of a talk on the subject, offered me a big volume in quarto to read.
He had learned his new ideas about education, not from the Brethren, but at the University of Herborn. He had studied there the theories of Wolfgang Ratich; he had tried to carry out these theories in the Brethren's schools at Prerau and Fulneck; and now at Lissa, where he soon became director, he introduced reforms which spread his fame throughout the civilized world.
In spite of the failure of such men as Comenius, Ratich, Basedow, and Rousseau to secure the introduction of these studies in a liberal degree, in spite of the enormous influence of custom and prejudice in favor of Latin and other traditional studies, the natural sciences have made recently such surprising advances and have so penetrated and transformed our modern life that we are simply compelled, even in the common school, to take heed of these great, living educational forces already at work.
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