be carefully defined. These general terms of Pansophia are, as it were, axioms of physics; ultimate truths that do not admit of demonstration or analysis, but only need to be illustrated by examples. They are given us from heaven; but in selecting from them great care must be taken to avoid error. The particular cases that are brought forward in the system should not introduce any new truth, but should merely consist of a special application of the general conceptions that have preceded. In this way physical investigation is to be conducted on the analogy of geometry, and developed deductively from axioms. It will be seen that Comenius, in spite of his constant praise of Bacon and his sympathy with the more fantastic conceptions of that thinker, has but little in common with his inductive philosophy. His “idea” is an echo of Plato; his “ratio” is a reincarnation of Aristotle’s logos; while his general axioms are obtained by intuition and not by any definitely planned method of induction. While granting that Bacon’s “artificial induction” may be of use for the investigation of natural objects, he distinctly repudiates it for the purposes of Pansophia, since this deals with the universe, in which the supernatural is included. With the exception of the steam-engine, there are few civilising agencies of the present day that have not been ascribed to Comenius’ fertile brain by his continental admirers,[1] and the attempt to link his name with that of Bacon as an inductive philosopher is backed by equally scanty evidence. As a natural philosopher he belongs to the century that preceded him and not to the age of experiment that was to follow, and his didactic principles were due rather to an extraordinary intuition of what was necessary than to patient reasoning on inductive lines.[2]
It is on the conception of the universe as ordered, and of the relations that exist between phenomena as rational,
