While residing at Elbing, Comenius wrote the _Methodus novissima_ for the use of the teachers of Sweden. This he intended as a plan of studies, and it contains the principles which must lie at the basis of every rational course of study. The three principles of his method are the parallelism of things and words, proper stages of succession, and easy natural progress. In God are the ideas, the original types which he impresses upon things; things, again, impress their representation upon the senses, the senses impart them to the mind, the mind to the tongue, and the tongue to the ears of others; for souls shut up in bodies cannot understand each other in a purely intellectual way. Any language is complete in so far as it possesses a full nomenclature, has words for everything,—and these significant and consistent,—and is constructed in accordance with fixed grammatical laws. It is a source of error when things accommodate themselves to words, instead of words to things. The same classification prevails for words as for things; and whoever understands the relation of words among themselves will, the more easily, study the analogous relations among things. Vives thought that the most complete language would be that in which the words express the nature of things, and Comenius believed that there could be composed a real language in which each word should be a definition. To be able to represent a thing by the mind, hand, or tongue is to understand it. The mental process involved consists of representations and images of the pictures of things. If, says Comenius, I perceive a thing by the senses, its image is impressed upon my brain; if I represent a thing, I impress its image upon the material; but if I express in words the thing which I have thought of or represented, I impress it upon the atmosphere, and through it upon the ear, brain, and mind of another. Things are learned by examples, rules, and practice. Before the understanding, truth must be held up as an example; before the will, the good; before the forming powers, the ideal; and to these must be added practice regulated by suitable rules. But rules should not be given before the examples. This is well understood by artisans; they do not begin by lecturing to their apprentices upon trades, but by showing them how masters work and then by putting tools in their hands and training them to imitate their masters. We learn to do by doing, to write by writing, and to paint by painting. The second step must never be taken until the first is learned; and the first step should be repeated and assimilated with the second step. We should advance from the easy to the more difficult, from the near to the more distant, and from the simple to the complex. Proceed toward knowledge by the perception and understanding of objects present to the senses, and later to the information of others about the objects.