§ 1. we are now by degrees becoming convinced that teachers, like everyone else who undertakes skilled labour, should be trained before they seek an engagement. this has led to a great increase in the number of normal schools. in some of these schools it has already been discovered that while the study of principles requires much time and the application of much intellectual force, the study of methods is a far simpler matter and can be knocked off in a short time and with no intellectual force at all. methods are special ways of doing things, and when it has been settled what is to be done and why, a knowledge of the methods available adds greatly to a teacher’s power; but the what and the why demand our attention before the how, and the study of methods disconnected from principles leads straight to the prison-house of all the teachers’ higher faculties—routine.
§ 2. i have called jacotot a methodizer because he invented a special method and wished everything to be taught by it. but in advocating this method he appeals to principles; and his principles are so important that at least[415] one man great in educational science, joseph payne, always spoke of him as his master.
§ 3. in the following summary of jacotot’s system i am largely indebted to joseph payne’s lectures, which he published in the educational times in 1867, and which i believe dr. j. f. payne has lately reprinted in a volume of his father’s collected papers.
§ 4. jacotot was born at dijon, of humble parentage, in 1770. even as a boy he showed his preference for “self-teaching.” we are told that he rejoiced greatly in the acquisition of all kinds of knowledge that could be gained by his own efforts, while he steadily resisted what was imposed on him by authority. he was, however, early distinguished by his acquirements, and at the age of twenty-five was appointed sub-director of the polytechnic school. some years afterwards he became professor of “the method of sciences” at dijon, and it was here that his method of instruction first attracted attention. “instead of pouring forth a flood of information on the subject under attention from his own ample stores—explaining everything, and thus too frequently superseding in a great degree the pupil’s own investigation of it—jacotot, after a simple statement of the subject, with its leading divisions, boldly started it as a quarry for the class to hunt down, and invited every member of it to take part in the chase.” all were free to ask questions, to raise objections, to suggest answers. the professor himself did little more than by leading questions put them on the right scent. he was afterwards professor of ancient and oriental languages, of mathematics, and of roman law; and he pursued the same method, we are told, with uniform success. being compelled to leave france as an enemy of the bourbons, he was appointed, in 1818, when he was forty-eight years old,[416] to the professorship of the french language and literature at the university of louvain. the celebrated teacher was received with enthusiasm, but he soon met with an unexpected difficulty. many members of his large class knew no language but the flemish and dutch, and of these he himself was totally ignorant. he was, therefore, forced to consider how to teach without talking to his pupils. the plan he adopted was as follows:—he gave the young flemings copies of fénelon’s “télémaque,” with the french on one side, and a dutch translation on the other. this they had to study for themselves, comparing the two languages, and learning the french by heart. they were to go over the same ground again and again, and as soon as possible they were to give in french, however bad, the substance of those parts which they had not yet committed to memory. this method was found to succeed marvellously. jacotot attributed its success to the fact that the students had learnt entirely by the efforts of their own minds, and that, though working under his superintendence, they had been, in fact, their own teachers. hence he proceeded to generalise, and by degrees arrived at a series of astounding paradoxes. these paradoxes at first did their work well, and made noise enough in the world; but jacotot seems to me like a captain who in his eagerness to astonish his opponents takes on board guns much too heavy for his own safety.
§ 5. “all human beings are equally capable of learning,” said jacotot.
the truth which jacotot chose to throw into this more than doubtful form, may perhaps be expressed by saying that the student’s power of learning depends, in a great measure, on his will, and that where there is no will there is no capacity.
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§ 6. “everyone can teach; and, moreover, can teach that which he does not know himself.”
let us ask ourselves what is the meaning of this. first of all, we have to get rid of some ambiguity in the meaning of the word teach. to teach, according to jacotot’s idea, is to cause to learn. teaching and learning are therefore correlatives: where there is no learning there can be no teaching. but this meaning of the word only coincides partially with the ordinary meaning. we speak of the lecturer or preacher as teaching when he gives his hearers an opportunity of learning, and do not say that his teaching ceases the instant they cease to attend. on the other hand, we do not call a parent a teacher because he sends his boy to school, and so causes him to learn. the notion of teaching, then, in the minds of most of us, includes giving information, or showing how an art is to be performed, and we look upon jacotot’s assertion as absurd, because we feel that no one can give information which he does not possess, or show how anything is to be done if he does not himself know. but let us take the jacototian definition of teaching—causing to learn—and then see how far a person can cause another to learn that of which he himself is ignorant.
§ 7. subjects which are taught may be divided into three great classes:—1, facts; 2, reasonings, or generalisation from facts, i.e., science; 3, actions which have to be performed by the learner, i.e., arts.
1. we learn some facts by “intuition,” i.e., by direct experience. it may be as well to make the number of them as large as possible. no doubt there are no facts which are known so perfectly as these. for instance, a boy who has tried to smoke knows the fact that tobacco is apt to produce nausea much better than another who has picked up[418] the information second-hand. an intelligent master may suggest experiments, even in matters about which he himself is ignorant, and thus, in jacotot’s sense, he teaches things which he does not know. but some facts cannot be learnt in this way, and then a newton is helpless either to find them out for himself, or to teach them to others without knowing them. if the teacher does not know in what county tavistock is, he can only learn from those who do, and the pupils will be no cleverer than their master. here, then, i consider that jacotot’s pretensions utterly break down. “no,” the answer is; “the teacher may give his pupil an atlas, and direct the boy to find out for himself: thus the master will teach what he does not know.” but, in this case, he is a teacher only so far as he knows. for what he does not know, he hands over the pupil to the maker of the map, who communicates with him, not orally, but by ink and paper. the master’s ignorance is simply an obstacle to the boy’s learning; for the boy would learn sooner the position of tavistock if it were shown him on the map. “that’s the very point,” says the disciple of jacotot. “if the boy gets the knowledge without any trouble, he is likely to forget it again directly. ‘lightly come, lightly go.’ moreover, his faculty of observation will not have been exercised.” it is indeed well not to allow the knowledge even of facts to come too easily; though the difficulties which arise from the master’s ignorance will not be found the most advantageous. still there is obviously a limit. if we gave boys their lessons in cipher, and offered a prize to the first decipherer, one would probably be found at last, and meantime all the boys’ powers of observation, &c., would have been cultivated by comparing like signs in different positions, and guessing at their meaning;[419] but the boys’ time might have been better employed. jacotot’s plan of teaching a language which the master did not know, was to put a book with, say, “arma virumque cano,” &c., on one side, and “i sing arms and the man, &c.” on the other, and to require the pupil to puzzle over it till he found out which word answered to which. in this case the teacher was the translator; and though from the roundabout way in which the knowledge was communicated the pupil derived some benefit, the benefit was hardly sufficient to make up for the expenditure of time involved.
jacotot, then, did not teach facts of which he was ignorant, except in the sense in which the parent who sends his boy to school may be said to teach him. all jacotot did was to direct the pupil to learn, sometimes in a very awkward fashion, from somebody else.[180]
§ 8. 2. when we come to science, we find all the best authorities agree that the pupil should be led to principles if possible, and not have the principles brought to him. men like tyndall, huxley, h. spencer, j. m. wilson have spoken eloquently on this subject, and shown how valuable scientific teaching is, when thus conducted, in drawing out the faculties of the mind. but although a schoolboy may be led to great scientific discoveries by anyone who knows the road, he will have no more chance of making them with an ignorant teacher than he would have had in the days of the ptolemies. here again, then, i cannot understand how the teacher can teach what he does not know. he may, indeed, join his pupil in investigating principles, but he[420] must either keep with the pupil or go in advance of him. in the first case he is only a fellow-pupil; in the second, he teaches only that which he knows.
§ 9. finally, we come to arts, and we are told that jacotot taught drawing and music, without being either a draughtsman or a musician. in art everything depends on rightly directed practice. the most consummate artist cannot communicate his skill, and, except for inspiration may be inferior as a teacher to one whose attention is more concentrated on the mechanism of the art. perhaps it is not even necessary that the teacher should be able to do the exercises himself, if only he knows how they should be done; but he seldom gets credit for this knowledge, unless he can show that he knows how the thing should be done, by doing it. lessing tells us that raphael would have been a great painter even if he had been born without hands. he would not, however, have succeeded in getting mankind to believe it. i grant, then, that the teacher of art need not be a first-rate artist, and, in some very exceptional cases, need not be an artist at all; but, if he cannot perform the exercises he gives his pupil, he must at least know how they should be done. but jacotot claims perfect ignorance. we are told that he “taught” drawing by setting objects before his pupils, and making them imitate them on paper as best they could. of course the art originated in this way, and a person with great perseverance, and (i must say, in spite of jacotot) with more than average ability, would make considerable progress with no proper instruction; but he would lose much by the ignorance of the person calling himself his teacher. an awkward habit of holding the pencil will make skill doubly difficult to acquire, and thus half his time might be wasted. then, again, he would hardly have a better eye[421] than the early painters, so the drawing of his landscape would not be less faulty than theirs. to consider music i am told that a person who is ignorant of music can teach, say, the piano or the violin. this seems to go beyond the region of paradox into that of utter nonsense. talent often surmounts all kinds of difficulties; but in the case of self-taught, and ill-taught musicians, it is often painful to see what time and talent have been wasted for want of proper instruction.
i have thus carefully examined jacotot’s pretensions to teach what he did not know, because i am anxious that what seems to me the rubbish should be cleared away from his principles, and should no longer conceal those parts of his system which are worthy of general attention.
§ 10. at the root of jacotot’s paradox lay a truth of very great importance. the highest and best teaching is not that which makes the pupils passive recipients of other peoples’ ideas (not to speak of the teaching which conveys mere words without any ideas at all), but that which guides and encourages the pupils in working for themselves and thinking for themselves. the master, as joseph payne well says, can no more think, or practise, or see for his pupil, than he can digest for him, or walk for him. the pupil must owe everything to his own exertions, which it is the function of the master to encourage and direct. perhaps this may seem very obvious truth, but obvious or not it has been very generally neglected. the old system of lecturing which found favour with the jesuits, has indeed now passed away, and boys are left to acquire facts from school-books instead of from the master. but this change is merely accidental. the essence of the teaching still remains. even where the master does not confine himself to hearing what the scholars[422] have learnt by heart, he seldom does more than offer explanations. he measures the teaching rather by the amount which has been put before the scholars—by what he has done for them and shown them—than by what they have learned. but this is not teaching of the highest type. when the votary of dulness in the “dunciad” is rendering an account of his services, he arrives at this climax,
“for thee explain a thing till all men doubt it,
and write about it, goddess, and about it.”
and in the same spirit mr. j. m. wilson stigmatises as synonymous “the most stupid and most didactic teaching.”
§ 11. all the eminent authorities on education have a very different theory of the teachers function. according to them the master’s attention is not to be fixed on his own mind and his own store of knowledge, but on his pupil’s mind and on its gradual expansion. he must, in fact, be not so much a teacher as a trainer. here we have the view which jacotot intended to enforce by his paradox; for we may possibly train faculties which we do not ourselves possess, just as the sportsman trains his pointer and his hunter to perform feats which are altogether out of the range of his own capacities. now, “training is the cultivation bestowed on any set of faculties with the object of developing them” (j. m. wilson), and to train any faculty, you must set it to work. hence it follows, that as boys’ minds are not simply their memories, the master must aim at something more than causing his pupils to remember facts. jacotot has done good service to education by giving prominence to this truth, and by showing in his method how other faculties may be cultivated besides the memory.
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§ 12. “tout est dans tout” (“all is in all”), is another of jacotot’s paradoxes. i do not propose discussing it as the philosophical thesis which takes other forms, as “every man is a microcosm,” &c., but merely to inquire into its meaning as applied to didactics.
if you asked an ordinary french schoolmaster who jacotot was, he would probably answer, jacotot was a man who thought you could learn everything by getting up fénelon’s “télémaque” by heart. by carrying your investigation further, you would find that this account of him required modification, that the learning by heart was only part, and a very small part, of what jacotot demanded from his pupils, but you would also find that entire mastery of “télémaque” was the first requisite, and that he managed to connect everything he taught with that “model-book.” of course, if “tout est dans tout,” everything is in “télémaque;” and, said an objector, also in the first book of “télémaque” and in the first word. jacotot went through a variety of subtilties to show that all “télémaque” is contained in the word calypso, and perhaps he would have been equally successful, if he had been required to take only the first letter instead of the first word. his maxim indeed becomes by his treatment of it a mere paraphrase of “quidlibet ex quolibet.” the reader is amused rather than convinced by these discussions, but he finds them not without fruit. they bring to his mind very forcibly a truth to which he has hitherto probably not paid sufficient attention. he sees that all knowledge is connected together, or (what will do equally well for our present purpose) that there are a thousand links by which we may bring into connexion the different subjects of knowledge. if by means of these links we can attach in our minds the knowledge we acquire to[424] the knowledge we already possess, we shall learn faster and more intelligently, and at the same time we shall have a much better chance of retaining our new acquisitions. the memory, as we all know, is assisted even by artificial association of ideas, much more by natural. hence the value of “tout est dans tout,” or, to adopt a modification suggested by joseph payne, of the connexion of knowledges. suppose we know only one subject, but know that thoroughly, our knowledge, if i may express myself algebraically, cannot be represented by ignorance plus the knowledge of that subject. we have acquired a great deal more than that. when other subjects come before us, they may prove to be so connected with what we had before, that we may also seem to know them already. in other words when we know a little thoroughly, though our actual possession is small, we have potentially a great deal more.[181]
§ 13. jacotot’s practical application of his “tout est dans tout” was as follows:—“il faut apprendre quelque chose, et y rapporter tout le reste.” (“the pupil must learn something thoroughly, and refer everything to that.”) for language he must take a model book, and become thoroughly master of it. his knowledge must not be a verbal knowledge only, but he must enter into the sense and spirit of the writer. here we find that jacotot’s practical advice coincides with that of many other great authorities, who do not base it on the same principle. the jesuits’ maxim was, that their pupils should always learn something thoroughly, however[425] little it might be. pestalozzi insisted on the children going over the elements again and again till they were completely master of them. ascham, ratke, and comenius all required a model-book to be read and re-read till words and thoughts were firmly fixed in the pupil’s memory. jacotot probably never read ascham’s “schoolmaster.” if he had done so he might have appropriated some of ascham’s words as exactly conveying his own thoughts. ascham, as we saw, recommended that a short book should be thoroughly mastered, each lesson being worked over in different ways a dozen times at the least, and in this way “your scholar shall be brought not only to like eloquence, but also to all true understanding and right judgment, both for writing and speaking.” in this the englishman and the frenchman are in perfect accord.
§ 14. but if jacotot agrees so far with earlier authorities, there is one point in which he seems to differ from them. he makes great demands on the memory, and requires six books of “télémaque” to be learned by heart. on the other hand, montaigne, locke, rousseau, h. spencer, and other great writers would be opposed to this. ratke insisted that nothing should be learnt by heart. protests against “loading the memory,” “saying without book,” &c., are everywhere to be met with, and nowhere more vigorously expressed than in ascham. he says of the grammar-school boys of his time, that “their whole knowledge, by learning without the book, was tied only to their tongue and lips, and never ascended up to the brain and head, and therefore was soon spit out of the mouth again. they learnt without book everything, they understood within the book little or nothing.” but these protests were really directed at verbal knowledge, when it is made to take the place of[426] knowledge of the thing signified. we are always too ready to suppose that words are connected with ideas, though both old and young are constantly exposing themselves to the sarcasm of mephistopheles:—
... eben wo begriffe fehlen,
da stellt ein wort zur rechten zeit sich ein.
... just where meaning fails, a word
comes patly in to serve your turn.
against this danger jacotot took special precautions. the pupil was to undergo an examination in everything connected with the lesson learnt, and the master’s share in the work was to convince himself, from the answers he received, that the pupil thoroughly grasped the meaning, as well as remembered the words, of the author. still the six books of “télémaque,” which jacotot gave to be learnt by heart, was a very large dose, and he would have been more faithful to his own principles, says joseph payne, if he had given the first book only.
§ 15. there are three ways in which the model-book may be studied. 1st, it may be read through rapidly again and again, which was ratke’s plan and hamilton’s; or, 2nd, each lesson may be thoroughly mastered, read in various ways a dozen times at the least, which was ascham’s plan; or, 3rd, the pupil may begin always at the beginning, and advance a little further each time, which was jacotot’s plan.[182] this last, could not, of course, be carried very far[427] the repetitions, when the pupil had got on some way in the book, could not always be from the beginning; still[428] every part was to be repeated so frequently that nothing could be forgotten. jacotot did not wish his pupils to learn[429] simply in order to forget, but to learn in order to remember for ever. “we are learned,” said he, “not so far as we[430] have learned, but only so far as we remember.” he seems, indeed, almost to ignore the fact that the act of learning serves other purposes than that of making learned, and to assert that to forget is the same as never to have learned, which is a palpable error. we necessarily forget much that passes through our minds, and yet its effect remains. all grown people have arrived at some opinions, convictions, knowledge, but they cannot call to mind every spot they trod on in the road thither. when we have read a great history, say, or travelled through a fresh country, we have gained more than the number of facts we happen to remember. the mind seems to have formed an acquaintance with that history or that country, which is something different from the mere acquisition of facts. moreover, our interests, as well as our ideas, may long survive the memory of the facts which originally started them. we are told that one of the old judges, when a barrister objected to some dictum of his, put him down by the assertion, “sir, i have forgotten more law than ever you read.” if he wished to make the amount forgotten a measure of the amount remembered, this was certainly fallacious, as the ratio between the two is not a constant quantity. but he may have meant that this extensive reading had left its result, and that he could see things from more points of view than the less travelled legal vision of his opponent. that power acquired by learning may also last longer than the knowledge of the thing learned is sufficiently obvious. so the advantages derived from having learnt a thing are not entirely lost when the thing itself is forgotten.[183]
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§ 16. but the reflection by no means justifies the disgraceful waste of memory which goes on in most school-rooms.[432] much is learnt which, for want of the necessary repetition, will soon be lost again, besides much that would be valueless if remembered. the thing to aim at is not giving “useful knowledge,” but making the memory a store house of such facts as are good material for the other powers of the mind to work with; and that the facts may serve this purpose they must be such as the mind can thoroughly grasp and handle, and such as can be connected together. to instruct is instruere, “to put together in order, to build;” it is not cramming the memory with facts without connexion, and, as herbert spencer calls them, unorganisable. and yet a great deal of our children’s memory is wasted in storing facts of this kind, which can never form part of any organism. we do not teach them geography (earth knowledge, as the germans call it), but the names of places. our “history” is a similar, though disconnected study. we leave our children ignorant of the land, but insist on their getting up the “landmarks.” and, perhaps, from a latent perception of the uselessness of such work, neither teachers nor scholars ever think of these things as learnt to be remembered. they are indeed got up, as schuppius says of the logic of his day, in spem futur? oblivionis. latin grammar is gone through again and again, and a boy feels that the sooner he gets it into his head, the better it will be for him; but who expects that the lists of geographical and historical names which are learnt one half-year, will be remembered the next? i have seen it asserted, that when a boy leaves school, he has already forgotten nine-tenths of what he has been taught, and i dare say that estimate is quite within the mark.
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§ 17. by adopting the principles of jacotot, we avoid a great deal of this waste. we give some thorough knowledge, with which fresh knowledge may be connected. and it will then be found that perfect familiarity with a subject is something beyond the mere understanding it and being able, with difficulty, to reproduce what we have learned. by thus going over the same thing again and again, we acquire a thorough command over our knowledge; and the feeling perfectly at home, even within narrow borders, gives a consciousness of strength. an old adage tells us that the jack-of-all-trades is master of none; but the master of one trade will have no difficulty in extending his insight and capacity beyond it. to use an illustration, which is of course an illustration merely, we should kindle knowledge in children, like fire in a grate. a stupid servant, with a small quantity of wood, spreads it over the whole grate. it blazes away, goes out, and is simply wasted. another, who is wiser or more experienced, kindles the whole of the wood at one spot, and the fire, thus concentrated, extends in all directions. similarly we should concentrate the beginnings of knowledge, and although we could not expect to make much show for a time, we might be sure that after a bit the fire would extend, almost of its own accord.[184]
§ 18. from joseph payne i take jacotot’s directions for carrying out the rule, “ii faut apprendre quelque chose, et y rapporter tout le reste.”
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1. learn—i.e., learn so as to know thoroughly, perfectly, immovably (imperturbablement), as well six months or twelve[435] months hence, as now—something—something which fairly represents the subject to be acquired, which contains its essential characteristics. 2. repeat that “something” incessantly (sans cesse), i.e., every day, or very frequently, from the beginning, without any omission, so that no part may be forgotten. 3. reflect upon the matter thus acquired, so as, by degrees, to make it a possession of the mind as well as of the memory, so that, being appreciated as a whole, and appreciated in its minutest parts, what is as yet unknown, may be referred to it and interpreted by it. 4. verify, or test, general remarks, e.g., grammatical rules, &c., made by others, by comparing them with the facts (i.e., the words and phraseology) which you have learnt yourself.
§ 19. in conclusion, i will give some account of the way in which reading, writing, and the mother-tongue were taught on the jacototian system.
the teacher takes a book, say edgeworth’s “early lessons,” points to the first word, and names it, “frank.” the child looks at the word and also pronounces it. then the teacher does the same with the first two words, “frank and”; then with the three first, “frank and robert,” &c. when a line or so has been thus gone over, the teacher asks which word is robert? what word is that (pointing to one)? “find me the same word in this line” (pointing to another part of the book). when a sentence has been thus acquired, the words already known are analysed into syllables, and these syllables the child must pick out elsewhere.[436] finally, the same thing is done with letters. when the child can read a sentence, that sentence is put before him written in small-hand, and the child is required to copy it. when he has copied the first word, he is led, by the questions of the teacher, to see how it differs from the original, and then he tries again. the pupil must always correct himself, guided only by questions. this sentence must be worked at till the pupil can write it pretty well from memory. he then tries it in larger characters. by carrying out this plan, the children’s powers of observation and making comparisons are strengthened, and the arts of reading and writing are said to be very readily acquired.
§ 20. for the mother-tongue, a model book is chosen and thoroughly learned. suppose “rasselas” is selected. “the pupil learns by heart a sentence, or a few sentences, and to-morrow adds a few more, still repeating from the beginning. the teacher, after two or three lessons of learning and repeating, takes portions—any portion—of the matter, and submits it to the crucible of the pupil’s mind:—who was rasselas? who was his father? what is the father of waters? where does it begin its course? where is abyssinia? where is egypt? where was rasselas placed? what sort of a person was rasselas? what is ‘credulity’? what are the ‘whispers of fancy,’ the ‘promises of youth,’ &c., &c.?”
a great variety of written exercises is soon joined with the learning by heart. pieces must be written from memory, and the spelling, pointing, &c., corrected by the pupil himself from the book. the same piece must be written again and again, till there are no more mistakes to correct. “this,” said joseph payne, who had himself taught in this way, “is the best plan for spelling that has been devised.”[437] then the pupil may write an analysis, may define words, distinguish between synonyms, explain metaphors, imitate descriptions, write imaginary dialogues or correspondence between the characters, &c. besides these, a great variety of grammatical exercises may be given, and the force of prefixes and affixes may be found out by the pupils themselves by collection and comparison. “the resources even of such a book as “rasselas” will be found all but exhaustless, while the training which the mind undergoes in the process of thoroughly mastering it, the acts of analysis, comparison, induction, and deduction, performed so frequently as to become a sort of second nature, cannot but serve as an excellent preparation for the subsequent study of english literature” (payne).
§ 21. we see, from these instances, how jacotot sought to imitate the method by which young children and self-taught men teach themselves. all such proceed from objects to definitions, from facts to reflections and theories, from examples to rules, from particular observations to general principles. they pursue, in fact, however unconsciously, the method of investigation, the advantages of which are thus set out in a passage from burke’s treatise on the sublime and beautiful:—“i am convinced,” says he, “that the method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation is incomparably the best; since, not content with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to the stock on which they grew; it tends to set the reader [or learner] himself in the track of invention, and to direct him into those paths in which the author has made his own discoveries.” “for jacotot, i think the claim may, without presumption, be maintained that he has, beyond all other teachers, succeeded in co-ordinating the method[438] of elementary teaching with the method of investigation” (payne).
§ 22. the latter part of his life, which did not end till 1840, jacotot spent in his native country—first at valenciennes, and then at paris. to the last he laboured indefatigably, and with a noble disinterestedness, for what he believed to be the “intellectual emancipation” of his fellow-creatures. for a time, his system made great way in france, but we now hear little of it. jacotot has, however, lately found an advocate in m. bernard perez, who has written a book about him and also a very good article in buisson’s dictionnaire.
