Teaches her Children, Pestalozzi, from a slightly different point of view, enunciates principles almost identical with those of the School of Infancy, and, had Pestalozzi been led to study the Great Didactic, he would probably have confined himself to the development, on the subjective side, of the objective principles embodied in that treatise. Subsequent writers were wittier than Comenius, none possessed, in combination, his sympathy with children, his power of analysis, and his breadth of mind.
It is only recently that Comenius has been rediscovered. Von Raumer in his History of Pedagogy (1843) was the first to attract attention to the surpassing merit of the Great Didactic, and since then several translations of that work and a voluminous Comenian literature have appeared in Germany. In 1841 Professor Purkyňe found the manuscript of the Bohemian Didactic at Lissa. It was published at Prague in 1849, and has since been twice reprinted. The School of Infancy was translated into English by D. Benham in 1858, and more recently Professor Laurie has provided the student with an admirable epitome of the Amsterdam Folio of 1657. In the present volume, the Great Didactic is presented to English readers for the first time.
