§ 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 thereby1 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 lumber2 must be swept away, and in two years a youth may acquire a better judgment3, 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 piety4, he did care for piety, and valued very highly both wisdom and eloquence5. The eloquent6 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 instructors7 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 remarkable8 proof of wisdom. How often does the “new master” break abruptly9 with the past, and raise the opposition10 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 Scripture11, and oftentimes he gave himself to revere12, adore, pray, and send up his supplications[65] to that good God, whose word did show His majesty13 and marvellous judgments14.” 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 purely15 formal: grammar, logic16, rhetoric17; 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 discourse18 merrily together; speaking first of the virtue19, propriety20, 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 dressing21. 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 perfectly22 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 cleaving23 and sawing wood, and in threshing sheaves of corn in the barn. They also studied the art of painting or carving24.” 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 delightful25, that it seemed rather the recreation of a king than the study of a scholar.”
[67]
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 gallantly26 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 slaughter27 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 affected28 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 scavenger29 is needed.
I will give some extracts from it:—
“Although my deceased father of happy memory, Grangousier, had bent30 his best endeavours to make me profit in all perfection and political knowledge, and that my labour and study was fully31 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 calamity32 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 amendment33 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 cannon34 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 aspired35 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 Scriptures36, 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 divination37 and the art of Lullius, which are mere38 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 orchard39, all the herbs of the field, all the metals hid in the bowels40 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 Testament41 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 tranquillity42 and rest of study ... And because, as Solomon saith, wisdom entereth not into a malicious43 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.)
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thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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lumber
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| n.木材，木料；v.以破旧东西堆满；伐木；笨重移动 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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piety
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| n.虔诚，虔敬 | |
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eloquence
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| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
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eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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instructors
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| 指导者，教师( instructor的名词复数 ) | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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abruptly
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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scripture
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| n.经文，圣书，手稿；Scripture:(常用复数)《圣经》，《圣经》中的一段 | |
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revere
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| vt.尊崇，崇敬，敬畏 | |
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majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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judgments
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| 判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判 | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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rhetoric
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| n.修辞学，浮夸之言语 | |
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discourse
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| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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propriety
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| n.正当行为；正当；适当 | |
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dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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cleaving
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| v.劈开，剁开，割开( cleave的现在分词 ) | |
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carving
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| n.雕刻品，雕花 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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gallantly
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| adv. 漂亮地，勇敢地，献殷勤地 | |
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slaughter
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| n.屠杀，屠宰；vt.屠杀，宰杀 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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scavenger
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| n.以腐尸为食的动物，清扫工 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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calamity
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| n.灾害，祸患，不幸事件 | |
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amendment
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| n.改正，修正，改善，修正案 | |
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cannon
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| n.大炮，火炮；飞机上的机关炮 | |
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aspired
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| v.渴望，追求( aspire的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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scriptures
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| 经文，圣典( scripture的名词复数 )； 经典 | |
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divination
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| n.占卜，预测 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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orchard
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| n.果园，果园里的全部果树，(美俚)棒球场 | |
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bowels
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| n.肠，内脏，内部；肠( bowel的名词复数 )；内部，最深处 | |
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testament
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| n.遗嘱；证明 | |
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tranquillity
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| n. 平静, 安静 | |
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malicious
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| adj.有恶意的，心怀恶意的 | |
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