Before we think of his methods and school books, let us inquire what he did for education that has proved to be on a solid foundation and “not liable to any ruin.” § 43. He was the first to reach a standpoint which was and perhaps always will be above the heads of “the practical men,” and demand _education for all_. “We design for all who have been born human beings, general instruction to fit them for everything human. They must, therefore, as far as possible be taught together, so that they may mutually draw each other out, enliven and stimulate. Of the ‘mother-tongue school’ the end and aim will be, that all the youth of both sexes between the sixth and the twelfth or thirteenth years be taught those things which will be useful to them all their life long.”[79] In these days we often hear controversies between the men of science and the ministers of religion. It is as far beyond my intention as it is beyond my abilities to discuss how far the antithesis between religion and science is a true one; but our subject sometimes forces us to observe that religion and science often bring thinkers by different paths to the same result; _e.g._, they both refuse to recognise class distinctions and make us see an essential unity underlying superficial variations. In Comenius we have an earnest Christian minister who was also an enthusiast for science. Moreover he was without social and virtually without national restrictions, and he was thus in a good position for expressing freely and without bias what both his science and his religion taught him. “Not only are the children of the rich and noble to be drawn to the school, but all alike, gentle and simple, rich and poor, boys and girls, in great towns and small, down to the country villages. And for this reason. Every one who is born a human being is born with this intent—that he should be a human being, that is, a reasonable creature ruling over the other creatures and bearing the likeness of his Maker.” (_Didactica M._ ix, § 1.) This sounds to me nobler than the utterances of Rousseau and the French Revolutionists, not to mention Locke who fell back on considering merely “the gentleman’s calling.” Even Bishop Butler a century after Comenius hardly takes so firm a ground, though he lays it down that “children have as much right to some proper education as to have their lives preserved.”[80]