§ 1. to great geniuses it is given to think themselves in a measure free from the ordinary notions of their time and often to anticipate the discoveries of a future age. in all literature there is perhaps hardly a more striking instance of this “detached” thinking than we find in rabelais’ account of the education of gargantua.
§ 2. we see in rabelais an enthusiasm for learning and a tendency to verbal realism; that is, he turned to the old writers for instruction about things. so far he was a child of the renascence. but in other respects he advanced far beyond it.
§ 3. after a scornful account of the ordinary school books and methods by which gargantua “though he studied hard, did nevertheless profit nothing, but only grew thereby foolish, simple, dolted, and blockish,” rabelais decides that “it were better for him to learn nothing at all than to be taught suchlike books under suchlike schoolmasters.” all this old lumber must be swept away, and in two years a youth may acquire a better judgment, a better[64] manner, and more command of language than could ever have been obtained by the old method.
we are then introduced to the model pupil. the end of education has been declared to be sapiens et eloquens pietas; and we find that though rabelais might have substituted knowledge for piety, he did care for piety, and valued very highly both wisdom and eloquence. the eloquent roman was the ideal of the renascence, and rabelais’ model pupil expresses himself “with gestures so proper, pronunciation so distinct, a voice so eloquent, language so well turned and in such good latin that he seemed rather a gracchus, a cicero, an ?milius of the time past than a youth of the present age.”
§ 4. so a renascence tutor is appointed for gargantua and administers to him a potion that makes him forget all he has ever learned. he then puts him through a very different course. like all wise instructors he first endeavours to secure the will of the pupil. he allows gargantua to go the accustomed road till he can convince him it is the wrong one. this seems to me a remarkable proof of wisdom. how often does the “new master” break abruptly with the past, and raise the opposition of the pupil by dispraise of all he has already done! by degrees ponocrates, the model tutor, inspired in his pupil a great desire for improvement. this he did by bringing him into the society of learned men, who filled him with ambition to be like them. thereupon gargantua “put himself into such a train of study that he lost not any hour in the day, but employed all his time in learning and honest knowledge.” the day was to begin at 4 a.m., with reading of “some chapter of the holy scripture, and oftentimes he gave himself to revere, adore, pray, and send up his supplications[65] to that good god, whose word did show his majesty and marvellous judgments.” this is the only hint we get in this part of the book on the subject of religious or moral education: the training is directed to the intellect and the body.
§ 5. the remarkable feature in rabelais’ curriculum is this, that it is concerned mainly with things. of the seven liberal arts of the middle ages, the first three were purely formal: grammar, logic, rhetoric; while the following course: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, were not. the effect of the renascence was to cause increasing neglect of the quadrivium, but rabelais cares for the quadrivium only; gargantua studies arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, and the trivium is not mentioned. great use is made of books and gargantua learned them by heart; but all that he learned he at once “applied to practical cases concerning the estate of man.” it was the substance of the reading, not the form, that was thought of. at dinner “if they thought good they continued reading or began to discourse merrily together; speaking first of the virtue, propriety, efficacy, and nature of all that was served in at that table; of bread, of wine, of water, of salt, of flesh, fish, fruits, herbs, roots, and of their dressing. by means whereof he learned in a little time all the passages that on these subjects are to be found in pliny, athen?us, &c. whilst they talked of these things, many times to be more certain they caused the very books to be brought to the table; and so well and perfectly did he in his memory retain the things above said, that in that time there was not a physician that knew half so much as he did.” again, out of doors he was to observe trees and plants, and “compare them with what is written of them in the books of the ancients, such as theophrastus,[66] dioscorides, &c.” here again, actual realism was to be joined with verbal realism, for gargantua was to carry home with him great handfuls for herborising. rabelais even recommends studying the face of the heavens at night, and then observing the change that has taken place at 4 in the morning. so he seems to have been the first writer on education (and the first by a long interval), who would teach about things by observing the things themselves. it was this anschauungs-prinzip—use of sense-impressions—that pestalozzi extended and claimed as his invention two centuries and a half later. rabelais also gives a hint of the use of hand-work as well as head-work. gargantua and his fellows “did recreate themselves in bottling hay, in cleaving and sawing wood, and in threshing sheaves of corn in the barn. they also studied the art of painting or carving.” the course was further connected with life by visits to the various handicraftsmen, in whose workshops “they did learn and consider the industry and invention of the trader.”
thus, even in the time of the renascence, rabelais saw that the life of the intellect might be nourished by many things besides books. but books were still kept in the highest place. even on a holiday, which occurred on some fine and clear day once a month, “though spent without books or lecture, yet was the day not without profit; for in the meadows they repeated certain pleasant verses of virgil’s agriculture, of hesiod, of politian’s husbandry.” they also turned latin epigrams into french rondeaux.
this course of study, “although at first it seemed difficult, yet soon became so sweet, so easy, and so delightful, that it seemed rather the recreation of a king than the study of a scholar.”
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in preferring the quadrivial studies to the trivial, and still more in his use of actual things, rabelais separates himself from all the teachers of his time.
§ 6. very remarkable too is the attention he pays to physical education. a day does not pass on which gargantua does not gallantly exercise his body as he has already exercised his mind. the exercises prescribed are very various, and include running, jumping, swimming, with practice on the horizontal bar and with dumb-bells, &c. but in one respect rabelais seems behind our own writer, richard mulcaster. mulcaster trained the body simply with a view to health. rabelais is thinking of the gentleman, and all his physical exercises are to prepare him for the gentleman’s occupation, war. the constant preparation for war had a strong and in some respects a very beneficial influence on the education of gentlemen in the fifteen and sixteen hundreds, as it has had on that of the germans in the eighteen hundreds. but to be ready to slaughter one’s fellow creatures is not an ideal aim in education; and besides this, one half of the human race can never (as far as we can judge at present) be affected by it. we therefore prefer the physical training recommended by the englishman.
mr. walter besant by his readings in rabelais (blackwood, 1883), has put rabelais’ wit and wisdom where we can get at most of it without searching in the dung-hill. but he has unfortunately omitted gargantua’s letter to pantagruel at paris (book ij, chap. 8), where we get the curriculum as proposed by rabelais, a chapter in which no scavenger is needed.
i will give some extracts from it:—
“although my deceased father of happy memory, grangousier, had bent his best endeavours to make me profit in all perfection and political knowledge, and that my labour and study was fully correspondent to, yea, went beyond his desire; nevertheless, the time then was not[68] so proper and fit for learning as it is at present, neither had i plenty of such good masters as thou hast had; for that time was darksome, obscured with clouds of ignorance and savouring a little of the infelicity and calamity of the goths, who had, wherever they set footing, destroyed all good literature, which in my age hath by the divine goodness been restored unto its former light and dignity, and that with such amendment and increase of knowledge that now hardly should i be admitted unto the first form of the little grammar school boys (des petits grimaulx): i say, i, who in my youthful days was (and that justly) reputed the most learned of that age. now it is that the old knowledges (disciplines) are restored, the languages revived. greek (without which it is a shame for any one to call himself learned), hebrew, chaldee, latin. printing (des impressions) too, so elegant and exact, is in use, which in my day was invented by divine inspiration, as cannon were by suggestion of the devil. all the world is full of men of knowledge, of very learned teachers, of large libraries; so that it seems to me that neither in the age of plato, nor of cicero, nor of papinian was there such convenience for studying as there is now. i see the robbers, hangmen, adventurers, ostlers of to-day more learned then the doctors and the preachers of my youth. why, women and girls have aspired to the heavenly manna of good learning ... i mean you to learn the languages perfectly first of all, the greek as quintilian wishes, then the latin, then hebrew for the scriptures, and chaldee and arabic at the same time; and that thou form thy style in greek on plato, in latin on cicero. let there be no history which thou hast not ready in thy memory, in which cosmography will aid thee. of the liberal arts, geometry, arithmetic, music, i have given thee a taste when thou wast still a child, at the age of five or six [pantagruel was a giant, we must remember]; carry them on; and know’st thou all the rules of astronomy? don’t touch astrology for divination and the art of lullius, which are mere vanity. in the civil law thou must know the five texts by heart.
“ ... as for knowledge of the works of nature, i would have thee devote thyself to them so that there may be no sea, river, or spring of which thou knowest not the fishes; all the birds of the air, all the trees, forest or orchard, all the herbs of the field, all the metals hid in the bowels of the earth, all the precious stones of the east and the south, let nothing be unknown to thee.
“then turn again with diligence to the books of the greek physicians,[69] and the arabs, and the latin, without despising the talmudists and the cabalists; and by frequent dissections acquire a perfect knowledge of the other world, which is man. and some hours a-day begin to read the sacred writings, first in greek the new testament and epistles of the apostles; then in hebrew the old testament. in brief, let me see thee an abyss and bottomless pit of knowledge, for from henceforth as thou growest great and becomest a man thou must part from this tranquillity and rest of study ... and because, as solomon saith, wisdom entereth not into a malicious mind, and science without conscience is but the ruin of the soul, thou shouldst serve, love, and fear god, and in him centre all thy thoughts, all thy hope; and by faith rooted in charity be joined to him, so as never to be separated from him by sin.”
the influence of rabelais on montaigne, locke, and rousseau has been well traced by dr. f. a. arnst?dt. (fran?ois rabelais, leipzig, barth, 1872.)
