Europe: A History (124 page)
Education was the sphere to which the ideas of the Enlightenment were most readily applicable. The Church held a virtual monopoly in the curricula of schools and universities. The influence of Renaissance humanism was long since diluted. In the Catholic world, Jesuit and Piarist schools for boys, and Ursuline schools for girls, were set in their ways. In France, pedagogy had ossified following the closure of both Huguenot and Jansenist schools. In the Protestant world, too, if Gibbon’s memoirs of Oxford are to be believed, lethargy prevailed. ‘The five years spent at Magdalen College’, he recalled, ‘were the five most idle and unprofitable years of my whole life.’ Scotland’s schools and universities were in much better shape, as were those in Prussia. The foundations of August Hermann Francke (1664–1727) at Halle and the
Realschule
in Berlin were laying the foundations both of vernacular and of technical schooling. None the less, the Enlightenment was pitted almost everywhere against a strongly entrenched religious tradition in education. D’Alembert’s article in the
Encyclopédie
under ‘College’ raised an uproar:
All this means, is that a young man… leaves the college after ten years, with an imperfect knowledge of a dead language, with precepts of rhetoric and philosophy which he should endeavour to forget: often with impaired health … and more frequently with such a superficial knowledge of religion that he succumbs to the first blasphemous conversation …
14
In the long run, under the influence of the Enlightenment religious teaching was separated from general education; modern subjects were introduced to supplement the classics; and, as in Bentham’s long campaign for the University of London, higher education was divorced from ecclesiastical patronage,
[
COMENIUS
]
Nothing, however, could rival the impact of
Êmile
. Rousseau was not impressed by the methods of his fellow
philosophes
. ‘Locke’s great maxim was to reason with children, and that is the current vogue,’ he wrote; ‘but… I see no more stupid children than those who have been reasoned with’ (Êmile, bk. 11). Instead, he advocated ‘natural education’ from birth to maturity, with book learning forbidden before adolescence. He exploded current assumptions about child development. The first educational manual in the Rousseauian spirit, J. B. Basedow’s
Elementarwerk
, appeared in 1770–2; his first school, the Phil-anthropinium at Dessau, opened its doors two years later.
One of the boldest educational projects of the day, however, took place in Poland, where in 1772–3 very special circumstances gave rise to the National Education Commission, Europe’s earliest ministry of state education. It coincided both with the political crisis of the First Partition, which provided the motivation, and with the dissolution of the Jesuits, who supplied much of the brain-power. Some years earlier the Polish reformers, desperate to escape from the Russian stranglehold on Poland, had approached Rousseau for his views; and his sympathetic
Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne
(1769) contained an all-important chapter on education. Rousseau recommended the creation of a single unified educational system in place of all existing institutions. He was taken at his word; and the last King of Poland, Stanislaw August Poniatowski, put it forward as the condition for submitting to the Partition. Poland’s political prospects were sinking; but its cultural survival could still be won. Over the next twenty years the National Education Commission created some 200 secular schools, many of which were to outlast the destruction of the Republic. New teachers were trained. Textbooks in Polish language and literature, scientific subjects, and modern languages were written by ex-Jesuits. ‘If in 200 years from now’, the King wrote in his diary, ‘there are still people who call themselves Poles, my work will not have been in vain.’ Poland was indeed destroyed (see pp. 661–4,719, 721–2), but its culture was not. The National Educational Commission was closed down; but its ideals were carried over into the educational board of what became the western region of the Russian Empire. Under the enlightened management of Prince Czartoryski it survived until 1825, and educated the brightest generation of Polish patriots and literati that ever learned poetry or pushed pen.
15
COMENIUS
W
HEN
Jan Amos Komensky died in Amsterdam on 15 November 1670, he was generally thought to have been the chief crank of a totally lost cause. He was the last bishop of the sect of Czech Brethren; he had been an exile for nearly fifty years; and his
grande œuvre
, setting forth a pansophic vision of universal peace and culture, remained unfinished. His prophecies regarding the overthrow of the pope, or the end of the world in 1672, had only excited ridicule.
Born in Moravia in 1592, Komenský had spent a lifetime fighting the tide. Widely travelled, and educated at Heidelberg, he had hoped to remain headmaster of the Brethren’s school at Fulnek. But the Habsburg triumph in Bohemia drove him in 1621 to Poland; and the persecution of pro-Swedish Protestants in Poland in 1657–8 drove him on to the Netherlands. He spent much of his energies publicizing the fate of Bohemia, writing on pedagogics, or acting as an itinerant educational consultant. In this latter capacity, he paid extended visits to England, Sweden, and Transylvania.
1
He was even invited to be president of Harvard.
Yet Komenský’s views were rather more coherent than his critics allowed. His passion for reforming education grew straight from the principles of the Czech Brethren, who nourished the Hussite tradition of reading the Bible in the vernacular. The need for language-teaching was obvious to someone from a multilingual province like Moravia, who had lived in a dozen countries. The obsession with a pacifist utopia was the natural product of a life hounded by war and religious conflict.
As a polyglot author, Comenius (as he was best known) established an international reputation. His early
Labyrinth ofthe World and Paradise of the Heart
, a sort of spiritual pilgrimage, was written in Czech. His
Janua Linguarum
or ‘Gate of Languages’, which started asa trilingual textbook in Latin, Czech, and German, ran to hundreds of versions, including Persian and Turkish. His
Orbis sensualium pictus
(1658) or ‘World in Pictures’, which pioneered the subject of visual learning, was equally popular. His collected pedagogical works,
Opera didáctica omnia
(also 1658) far outweighed his ephemeral political publications. Komenský’s legacy grew in stature with time, and attracted four distinct categories of admirer.
In religious matters, his name was honoured by those in the following century who revived the old sect of the Czech Brethren in the new form of the ‘Moravian Church’ (see p. 594 above).
In the era of the Czech revival, he was raised to the status of national saint. Palacký compiled his biography; Count Lützow popularized
The Labyrinth
round the world; and T. G. Masaryk saw him as the key figure in the history of Czech democracy and humanism. The first part of Masaryk’s memoirs was entitled ‘The Testament of Komenský’.
2
Modern educational theorists have seen Comenius as one of the founding fathers of their discipline. His pupil-friendly textbooks inspired the progressive methods of child-centred learning developed by Froebel, Pestalozzi, or Montessori
[BAMBINI]
.
Advocates of universal education have quoted his texts as models before their time:
Not the children of the rich and powerful only, but boys and girls alike, rich and poor, in all cities and … villages should be sent to school…. If any ask, ‘What will be the result if artisans, rustics, porters, and even women become lettered? I answer: none of these will lack the material for thinking, choosing, following and doing good things Nor is it an obstacle that some seem to be naturally dull and stupid … The slower and weaker the disposition of any man, the more he needs assistance… .
3
Every child who reads a comic, consults an illustrated textbook, or watches a lesson on television, film, or video should hail Komenský as his mentor.
From this one can see that the ideas of the Enlightenment were being used for different purposes in different countries. In the Netherlands and in Britain, they formed part of the repertoire of the liberal wing of the Establishment. They found expression in the British Parliament in the speeches of C. J. Fox and Edmund Burke. In the American colonies they were invoked by ‘rebels’ who defied that British Establishment. In France, and to a lesser extent in Spain and Italy, they inspired the intellectual circles who were opposing the Ancien Régime without having the legal means to do so. In many parts of central and eastern Europe, they were selectively adopted by the ‘enlightened despots’ who sought to improve their empires much as private gentlemen sought to improve their serf-run estates. Frederick II of Prussia or the Empress Catherine II in Russia certainly thought of themselves as rational and enlightened, as did Charles III of Spain or Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, or his brother, Joseph II of Austria. But their relations with their
philosophe
consultants was often that of absolute master and deferential
cliënt. In this regard, Voltaire’s sycophancy was no less developed than his wit. He rarely said what he must have thought about Frederick’s warmongering or Catherine’s persecutions. Only Rousseau spoke his mind to Frederick,
[GOOSE-STEP]
One can also see that the ideals of the Enlightenment survived the upheavals of the revolutionary crisis. Enlightened reformers of the pre-revolutionary era— such as the Baron von Stein (1757–1831) in Prussia, the Jewish convert Baron J. von Sonnenfels (1732–1817) in Austria, Stanistaw Staszic (1755–1828) in Poland, or the Count von Montgelas (1759–1838) in Bavaria—were still active in 1815. Yet few of the revolutionaries who made their mark after 1789—Mirabeau, Danton, Condorcet, Robespierre, Saint-Just—had gained much prominence earlier. In this, Tom Paine was an exception, as in most things (see Chapter IX).
None the less, by 1778, when both Voltaire and Rousseau died, the Enlightenment was starting to run out of breath. Its influence was to be strong for many decades. Indeed, it had assured itself a place as a permanent pillar of modern European thought. Yet the rationalism which originally inspired it was losing its force of persuasion. Pure reason was felt to be inadequate to the task of understanding the world and of reading the auguries of upheaval.
Romanticism
is a label which covers a multitude of sins. For the theoreticians of culture, the problem is so complex that some maintain there was not one Romanticism but several. But it refers to the titanic cultural movement which set in during the late eighteenth century in reaction to the waning Enlightenment. It was not associated in any way with formal religion. Indeed, it contained many features which may be considered at the very least non-Christian, if not actively anti-Christian. Yet its prime concerns were often directed to those spiritual and supernatural spheres of human experience which Religion also addressed and which the Enlightenment had neglected. In this sense, it is sometimes regarded as a reaction against the Enlightenment’s overreaction against the preoccupations of the preceding Reformation and Counter-Reformation period. It may perhaps be better seen as the continuation and extension of certain strands of fashion and thought which, though always present, had little in common with the Enlightenment’s ideals. These strands are often brought together under the headings of the ‘Anti-Enlightenment’ and of ‘Pre-Romanticism’.
Discussions about the Anti-Enlightenment centre on philosophical themes leading from the Neapolitan G. B. Vico (1668–1744) to the three East Prussians Hamann, Kant, and Herder. Apart from its cyclical theory of history Vico’s
Scienza nuova
(1725) paid great attention to mythology, and to the symbolic forms of expression used by primitive societies. These were subjects which most of the
philosophes
would have rejected as simply untutored. Both Vico and Herder grappled with the problem of how the human mind sifts and interprets the colossal mass of data which is required for establishing our knowledge of the past and present world. Both stressed the role of historical perspective. Both ‘perceived … that the task of synthesising such heterogeneous material into a coherent picture demands gifts very different from those required for rational methods of investigation… above all, the gift… of a creative imagination’.
16
GOOSE-STEP
T
HE
Paradeschritt
or ‘Parade March’ of the Prussian Army was one of the most unnatural and expressive movements ever invented for the human body. Its foreign critics called it the goose-step. The lines of jack-booted soldiers were trained to point their toes on every upward beat, raising their legs to a high horizontal position. In order to keep their balance, they had to lean forward, swinging their arms like cantilevers, and holding their chins in a characteristic jutting posture. Since every step required enormous effort, the musical tempo had to be moderate to slow; and the march was performed with a grim, deliberate air of latent menace. Fierce facial expressions were an essential adjunct to the soldiers’ exertions.
The body language of the goose-step transmitted a clear set of messages. To Prussia’s generals, it said that the discipline and athleticism of their men would withstand all orders, no matter how painful or ludicrous. To Prussia’s civilians, it said that all insubordination would be ruthlessly crushed. To Prussia’s enemies, it said that the Prussian Army was not made up just of lads in uniform, but of regimented supermen. To the world at large, it announced that Prussia was not just strong, but arrogant. Here, quite literally, was the embodiment of Prussian militarism.
1
The ethos of the goose-step contrasted very sharply with the parade-ground traditions of other armies. The French Army, for example, took great pride in the highly accelerated marching tempo of its light infantry, which, with bugles blaring, exuded the spirit of
élan
or ‘dash’ that was so much cultivated. The headlong charge of the Polish cavalry, who used to stop one foot short of the commander’s saluting base, demonstrates an exhilarating mixture of horsemanship and showmanship. In London, the magnificently slow Slow March of the royal Foot Guards, with its instant of frozen motion in the middle of each stride, exuded a temper of serenity, confidence, and self-control that was quintessential^ British.
The career of the goose-step has been a long one. It was recorded in the seventeenth century, and was still alive at the end of the twentieth. It was a standard feature of all military parades in Prussia and Germany until 1945. It was exported to all the armies of the world which were trained by Prussian officers, or which admired the Prussian model. In Europe, it was adopted by the Russian Army, later by the Red Army and by all the Soviet satellites. It was rejected by West Germany’s Bundeswehr, but was kept in being by the army of the German Democratic Republic until one month before the DDR’s collapse in November 1990. In 1994 it was still being performed in Moscow by the special squads of KGB troops who had been high-stepping in slow motion round Lenin’s mausoleum for the past 70 years.
