214, ff.) § 39. Yes, it _is_ a system, a system built up by the united efforts of many astute intellects and showing marvellous skill in selecting means to attain a clearly conceived end. There is then in the history of education little that should be more interesting or might be more instructive to the master of an English public school than the chapter about the Jesuits.[38] V. RABELAIS. (1483-1553.) § 1. To great geniuses it is given to think themselves in a measure free from the ordinary notions of their time and often to anticipate the discoveries of a future age. In all literature there is perhaps hardly a more striking instance of this “detached” thinking than we find in Rabelais’ account of the education of Gargantua. § 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 thereby 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 lumber must be swept away, and in two years a youth may acquire a better judgment, a better 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 piety, he did care for piety, and valued very highly both wisdom and eloquence. The eloquent 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 Æmilius of the time past than a youth of the present age.”