Part 2

During four years he here prosecuted his efforts in behalf of education with commendable success, and wrote, among other works, his celebrated Orbis Pictus, which has passed through a great many editions, and survived a multitude of imitations. --SMITH’S HISTORY OF EDUCATION, N.Y., 1842, p. 129.

The most eminent educator of the seventeenth century, however, was John Amos Comenius...... His Orbis Sensualium Pictus, published in 1657, enjoyed a still higher renown. The text was much the same with the Janua, being intended as a kind of elementary encyclopædia; but it differed from all previous text-books, in being illustrated with pictures, on copper and wood, of the various topics discussed in it. This book was universally popular. In those portions of Germany where the schools had been broken up by the “Thirty years’ war,” mothers taught their children from its pages. Corrected and amended by later editors, it continued for nearly two hundred years, to be a text-book of the German schools. --HISTORY AND PROGRESS OF EDUCATION, BY PHILOBIBLIUS, N.Y., 1860, p. 210.

The “Janua” would, therefore, have had but a short-lived popularity with teachers, and a still shorter with learners, if Comenius had not carried out his principle of appealing to the senses, and called in the artist. The result was the “Orbis Pictus,” a book which proved a favorite with young and old, and maintained its ground in many a school for more than a century.... I am sorry I cannot give a specimen of this celebrated book with its quaint pictures. The artist, of course, was wanting in the technical skill which is now commonly displayed even in the cheapest publications, but this renders his delineations none the less entertaining. As a picture of the life and manners of the seventeenthcentury, the work has great historical interest, which will, I hope, secure for it another English edition. --QUICK’S EDUCATIONAL REFORMERS, 1868; Syracuse edition, p. 79.

But the principle on which he most insisted is that the teaching of words and things must go together, hand in hand. When we consider how much time is spent over new languages, what waste of energy is lavished on mere preparation, how it takes so long to lay a foundation that there is no time to lay a building upon it, we must conclude that it is in the acceptance and development of this principle that the improvement of education will in the future consist. Any one who attempts to inculcate this great reform will find that its first principles are contained in the writings of Comenius. --ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, 9th edition, vii. 674.

The first edition of this celebrated book was published at Nuremberg in 1657; soon after a translation was made into English by Charles Hoole. The last English edition appeared in 1777, and this was reprinted in America in 1812. This was the first illustrated school-book, and was the first attempt at what now passes under the name of “object lessons.” --SHORT HISTORY OF EDUCATION, W. H. PAYNE, Syracuse, 1881, p. 103.

Of these, the “Janua” and the “Orbis” were translated into most European and some of the Oriental languages. It is evident that these practices of Comenius contain the germs of things afterwards connected with the names of Pestalozzi and Stow. It also may be safely assumed that many methods that are now in practical use, were then not unknown to earliest teachers. --GILL’S SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION, London, 1876, p. 13.

The more we reflect on the method of Comenius, the more we shall see it is replete with suggestiveness, and we shall feel surprised that so much wisdom can have lain in the path of schoolmasters for two hundred and fifty years, and that they have never stooped to avail themselves of its treasures. --BROWNING’S INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF EDUCATIONAL THEORIES, 1882, New York edition, p. 67.

The “Orbis Pictus,” the first practical application of the intuitive method, had an extraordinary success, and has served as a model for the innumerable illustrated books which for three centuries have invaded the schools. --COMPAYRE’S HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY, Payne’s translation, Boston, 1886, p. 127.

He remained at Patak four years, which were characterized by surprising literary activity. During this short period he produced no less than fifteen different works, among them his “World Illustrated” (Orbis Pictus), the most famous of all his writings. It admirably applied the principle that words and things should be learned together.... The “World Illustrated” had an enormous circulation, and remained for a long time the most popular text-book in Europe. --PAINTER’S HISTORY OF EDUCATION, N.Y., 1886, p. 206.

Or, si ce livre n’est qu’un équivalent se la véritable intuition; si, ensuite, le contenu du tout paraît fort défectueux, au point de vue de la science de nos jours; si, enfin, un effort exagéré pour l’intégrité de la conception de l’enfant a créé, pour les choses modernes, trop de dénominations latines qui paraissent douteuses, l’Orbis pictus était pourtant, pour son temps, une oeuvre très originale et très spirituelle, qui fit faire un grand progrès à la pédagogie et servit longtemps de livre d’école utile et de modèle à d’innombrables livres d’images, souvent pires. --HISTOIRE D’ ÉDUCATION, FREDERICK DITTES, Redolfi’s French translation, Paris, 1880, p. 178.

Here Comenius wrote, among others, his second celebrated work the “Orbis Pictus.” He was not, however, able to finish it in Hungary for want of a skilful engraver on copper. For such a one he carried it to Michael Endter, the bookseller at Nuremberg, but the engraving delayed the publication of the book for three years more. In 1657 Comenius expressed the hope that it would appear during the next autumn. With what great approbation the work was received at its first appearance, is shown by the fact that within two years, in 1659, Endter had published a second enlarged edition. --KARL VON RAUMER, translated in Barnard’s Journal of Education, v. 260.

The “Janua” had an enormous sale, and was published in many languages, but the editions and sale of the “Orbis Pictus” far exceeded those of the “Janua,” and, indeed, for some time it was the most popular text-book in Europe, and deservedly so. --LAURIE’S JOHN AMOS COMENIUS, Boston edition, p. 185.

Joh. Amos Comenii

ORBIS SENSUALIUM PICTUS:

hoc est

Omnium principalium in Mundo Rerum, & in Vita Actionum,

PICTURA & NOMENCLATURA.

Joh. Amos Comenius’s

VISIBLE WORLD:

or, a

NOMENCLATURE, AND PICTURES

of all the

CHIEF THINGS that are in the WORLD, and of MENS EMPLOYMENTS therein;

In above 150 COPPER CUTS.

Written

By the Author in Latin and High Dutch, being one of his last ESSAYS; and the most suitable to Childrens Capacity of any he hath hitherto made.

Translated into English By CHARLES HOOLE, M.A. For the Use of Young Latin Scholars.

The ELEVENTH EDITION Corrected, and the English made to answer Word for Word to the Latin.