He also strove to organize education as a connected whole from the infant school to the last touch of polish from foreign travel.

Milton alludes almost scornfully to Comenius in his preface to Hartlib, but his tract is nevertheless imbued with the Moravian's principles.

His aim, like Comenius's, is to provide for the instruction of all, "before the years of puberty, in all things belonging to the present and future life." His view is as strictly utilitarian as Comenius's.

"Language is but the instrument conveying to us things useful to be known." Of the study of language as intellectual discipline he says nothing, and his whole course of instruction is governed by the desire of imparting useful knowledge.

Whatever we may think of the system of teaching which in our day allows a youth to leave school disgracefully ignorant of physical and political geography, of history and foreign languages, it cannot be denied that Milton goes into the opposite extreme, and would overload the young mind with more information than it could possibly digest.