§ 8. So, as might have been expected, the grand experiment failed. The Prince, exasperated at being placed in a somewhat ridiculous position, and possibly at the serious loss of money into the bargain, revenged himself on Ratke by throwing him into prison, nor would he release him till he had made him sign a paper in which he admitted that he had undertaken more than he was able to fulfil. § 9. This was no doubt the case; and yet Ratke had done more for the Prince than the Prince for Ratke. In Koethen had been opened the first German school in which the children were taught to make a study of the German language. Ratke never recovered from his failure at Koethen, and nothing memorable is recorded of him afterwards. He died in 1635. § 10. Much was written by Ratke; much has been written about him; and those who wish to know more than the few particulars I have given may find all they want in Raumer or Barnard. The Innovator failed in gaining the applause of his contemporaries, and he does not seem to stand high in the respect of posterity; but he was a pioneer in the art of didactics, and the rules which Raumer has gathered from the _Methodus Institutionis nova ... Ratichii et Ratichianorum_, published by Rhenius at Leipzig in 1626, raise some of the most interesting points to which a teachers attention can be directed. I will therefore state them, and say briefly what I think of them. § 11. I. _In everything we should follow the order of Nature. There is a certain natural sequence along which the human intelligence moves in acquiring knowledge. This sequence must be studied, and instruction must be based on the knowledge of it._ Here, as in all teaching of the Reformers, we find “Nature” used as if the word stood for some definite idea. From the time of the Stoics we have been exhorted to “follow Nature.” In more modern times the demand was well formulated by Picus of Mirandola: “Take no heed what thing many men do, but what thing the _very law of Nature_, what thing _very reason_, what thing _our Lord Himself_ showeth thee to be done.” (Trans. by Sir Thomas More, quoted in Seebohm, _Oxford Reformers_.) Pope, always happy in expression but not always clear in thought, talks of— “Unerring Nature, still divinely bright, One clear, unchanged, and universal light.” (_Essay on C._, i, 70.) But as Dr. W. T. Harris has well pointed out (_St. Louis, Mo., School Report, ’78, ’79_, p. 217), with this word “Nature” writers on education do a great deal of juggling. Some times they use it for the external world, including in it man’s _unconscious_ growth, sometimes they make it stand for the ideal. What sense does Ratke attach to it? One might have some difficulty in determining. Perhaps the best meaning we can nowadays find for his rule is: _study Psychology_.