K O D I K A S / C O D E 44 (2021) · No. 1 - 3 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Jan Amos Comenius: Orbis sensualium pictus , or the Infinite Drift. Jan Amos Comenius ’ Orbis sensualium pictus oder die unendliche Abdrift (1996) Abstract: Eschbach gives a detailed account of Jan Comenius ’ life and work up to his opus magnum the Orbis sensualium pictus. With the Orbis pictus, Comenius not only presented a new instructional work, which was to serve for instruction in Latin, as a picture book for the beginnings of instruction in the family, a mother tongue textbook for pupils of elementary school but also explored new methodological territory. The essay is demonstrating how the Orbis pictus is designed as a work of hermetic semiotics. It is therefore only superficially directed to the reconstruction of the hermetic-semiotic tradition; primarily, it is concerned with the ex negativo proof of the positive capabilities of critical semiotics. 1 Preliminary remark Since I did not want to answer the invitation to contribute to the Festschrift György Szépe by reaching into the drawer where long published or justifiably unpublished texts slumber, and since I also did not want to deliver an article that hardly touches on the interests of those celebrated, I spent some time looking for a suitable topic, one I believe I have found in the Orbis sensualium pictus of Jan Amos Komensky, or Comenius, to use his Latinized name. At first, it was rather peripheral reasons that tipped the scales in favor of this theme, such as the Hungarian origin of his paternal family Szépe or the fact that the Orbis pictus was written during his four years of activity in Sárospatak, more detailed studies revealed a wealth of parallels between Jan Amos Comenius and György Szépe, which far exceeded the normal measure of biographical similarities between any two scholars. Of course, first and foremost, both were teachers in the service of improving humankind, a highfalutin expression that means nothing more, but also nothing less, than providing better education to the broadest possible circle of people. Comenius lived during the Thirty Years ’ War and suffered from the subjugation of his homeland; Szépe experienced the trauma of the Second World War and the failure of the 56th Uprising; both traveled to fulfill their missions; both were involved in the establishment of colleges or universities; both were peace activists. The list goes on. One could call the Orbis sensualium pictus, with a slight sniff, an illustrated language textbook for children. This would grasp at least one essential aspect of the extraordinarily successful work. To my knowledge, the second aspect of this work has not yet been treated anywhere in the literature: I would like to demonstrate in the following that the Orbis pictus is designed as a work of hermetic semiotics, which is why a suitable approach can lead to completely new insights and contexts. 2.1 Jan Amos Comenius: curriculum vitae On March 28, 1592, Jan Komenský 1 was born as the son of Martin Komenský and his wife Anna. As unclear as his exact origin is to this day - at least three birthplaces (Nivnice, Komna, and Hungarian Brod) 2 and at least five surnames (1. Komenský after his father ’ s origin; 2. Comenius as a Latinized form of the aforementioned name; 3. Nivnicensis, Nivnicenus, Nivanus, Nivnicky after his birthplace; 3 4. Szeges (Seges) from the surname of his Hungarian father; 5. Foytu (Vogt) after the official name of Jan ’ s grandfather and greatgrandfather (cf. Polisensky, 1973: 21 f.), it should be indisputable that Komensky influenced the religious, political and scientific fate of the 17th century like few other contemporaries and that his - especially pedagogical - effect reaches until today, or to put it correctly: that his actual importance has only been fully grasped after centuries. This is essentially due to the dramatic circumstances of life during the Thirty Years ’ War, in which Comenius lost everything dear to him so that until the mid-thirties of our century it had to be assumed that in the destruction of Leszno, the pansophical works on which Comenius had worked for decades were also burned. Due to important manuscript finds in St. Petersburg, Halle a. d. S. and London (Hartlib Papers), the research situation today has fundamentally changed, insofar as we no longer have to assume unfinished projects and completed but unpublished and destroyed manuscripts, but rather an impressive oeuvre, which in the Opera omnia edition comprised 60 volumes. Jan Komenský came from a family of the Bohemian Brotherhood, which meant that his life path was predetermined in essential respects. The biographical data of Jan Komenský ’ s youth is incomplete; what is known, however, is that Komenský lost both his parents and two of his sisters as a child in rapid succession and spent his adolescence with an aunt in 1 Josef V. Polisensky reports that Comenius ’ grandfather, and perhaps already his great-grandfather, was the head of the municipal administration and the estate administrator of the Lords of Komna. The grandfather bore the surname Szeges; later he and his children were called Foyto (Vogt) after his official title but later returned to the surname Szeges (cf Polisensky 1973: 21). 2 Josef Zemanek (1990: 21) resolves the dispute about the birthplace of Comenius in favor of Uhersky Brod: “ The relationship of the town of Uhersky Brod to the name Komensky has existed for almost five hundred years. It began with the stay of his ancestors in our town, the Seges family, which was proved here already at the end of the 15th century: In the first half of the 16th century, one of them, Jan Seges, had acquired the office of a bailiff in the village of Komna, where he then settled. After him, this office was taken over by his eldest son Stanek, while the second son, Martin, went to Uhersky Brod. Since he came to this town from Komna, people called him Komnensky or Komenksy. Quite quickly he joined the group of rich and influential burghers, and by the turn of the century (16th/ 17th century) he already enjoyed a significant position. He owned a burgher ’ s house, fields, meadows, and vineyards, and he also leased the farm of the former Dominican monastery. As the owner of a burgher house, he had the right to serve wine. This Martin Seges had four daughters; his youngest son was called Jan. ” 3 Anton Vrbka (1892: 15-25) cites several significant pieces of evidence for the birthplaces of Nivnice and Hungarian Brod, but without being able to make a definitive decision. Jan Amos Comenius: Orbis sensualium pictus, or the Infinite Drift (1996) 189 Stráznice and a guardian in Hungarian Brod, where he received a not particularly careful education. It was only after a relatively long delay that he acquired, with considerable effort, the knowledge that would enable him to begin his studies in 1611 at the newly founded Calvinist college in Herborn, where the Bohemian Brotherhood preferred to send its offspring for education. Occasionally (cf. e. g. Floss 1973: 173), the Herborn mentality is portrayed as schoolmasterly, uncreative, relatively barren, and bigotedly Protestant; de facto, however, Komenský received in Herborn and after his studies in Heidelberg from his revered teachers Johann Heinrich Alsted, Johannes Piscator (Fischer), and David Pareus many of the stimuli that gave him a lasting orientation in his thinking. In Herborn, Komenský adopted the additional first name Amos; the Latinization of his family name also falls into this period. Although I have found little useful information in the literature, I count eight or nine languages that Comenius was familiar with 4 : 1. his Bohemian (Czech) mother tongue; 2. Latin; 3. Greek; 4. Hebrew; 5. Hungarian (cf. Blekastad 1969: 485; Bakos 1972: 393); 6. German; 7. Polish; 8. Dutch; 9. English. I conclude on Polish language skills because of his sixteen years of exile in Leszno. Comenius learned Dutch by living in Amsterdam for fourteen years. Most uncertain are conjectures about English, while Comenius ’ German and Hungarian must have been quite good since he entertained at some point the idea of translating his Orbis pictus into German himself. His Hungarian language skills will certainly not have been acquired purely during his four-year stay in Sárospatak. Rather, the roots are likely to be found in his multilingual homelife as a youth, and, on top of that, his first wife was Hungarian. After completing his studies, Komenský returned to his homeland in 1614 and worked as a teacher at the Latin school in Prerov, which he had graduated from a few years earlier and where he was ordained as a priest of the Brotherhood in 1616. Two years later he married Magdalena Vizovska, whom he had met in Hungary when he bought beehives for his Prerov parish to teach them beekeeping. 5 In 1618 - 1621, Comenius served as a teacher and preacher in Fulnek. This was when the infamous defenestration of Prague occurred, later counted among the decisive moments of the Thirty Years ’ War. In 1620, with the defeat of the Winter King at the Battle of White Mountain, the catastrophe of the Bohemian Brethren Unity took its course. Like the French Huguenots, the Czech Brethren were persecuted and hanged by the victorious Catholics. Jan Komenský had to go into hiding, found temporary protection and shelter at Brandeis Castle with Charles of Zerotin, lost his wife and two sons, and finally led his congregation into Polish exile in Leszno. In 1624 Comenius married Dorothea Cyrillova in his second marriage, the daughter of the brother bishop Jan Cyrill, who had crowned Frederick V, Elector Palatine, king, which the Catholic Habsburg Emperor naturally interpreted as open indignation. In exile in Leszno, Comenius again earned his 4 Heinrich Geissler is even more generous in his assessment of J. A. Comenius ’ linguistic skills. He writes: “ We know of him that he was so proficient in Czech, Polish, German, and Hungarian that he wrote books in these languages. In addition, he understood English, French, and Russian. He also had a complete command of Latin and was at home in Greek and Hebrew ” (Geissler 1959: 47). Comenius did not know French (cf. Reber 1895: 6) and I have doubts about the knowledge of Swedish claimed by Geissler; otherwise I recognize a pleasing overall agreement of the findings. 5 In Zoubek it says: “ Faint hints suggest that the bees did not come from Hungary alone, but also Comenius ’ bride came with them from Slovakia. ” 190 Jan Amos Comenius: Orbis sensualium pictus, or the Infinite Drift (1996) living as a teacher, although he preferred to devote himself to his scientific research and publications. Through his teaching and his concern for the community of about a thousand souls, a rich scientific work was produced, but Comenius could only do this by working practically day and night, which had the inevitable consequence that he often suffered from exhaustion and insomnia. In any case, from now on his (language) textbooks, his didactic works, and his preliminary pansophical studies were written in rapid succession: The Bohemian Didactics (Didactica, 1628 - 1632), The Open Language Door (Janua linguarum reserata, 1629 - 1631), The Informatorium of the Mother School (Informatorum skoly materske, 1629 - 1632), The General View of Physics (Physicae Synopsis, 1630 - 1632), and The Great Didactics (Didactica magna, 1633 - 1638). Among the first pansophical works are the Preludes to Pansophical Endeavors (Praeludia, 1634 - 1636), the Precursors to Pansophy (Prodromus Pansophiae, 1634 - 1639), the Illumination of Pansophical Endeavors (Dilucidatio, 1638 - 1639), and the Fleshing Out of Pansophy (Pansophiae Diatyposis, 1639 - 1641). Above all, his language textbooks, which were an extraordinary success, spread his reputation worldwide through numerous translations. It will be discussed later what enabled Comenius to build such an innovative doctrinal edifice out of the supposedly dull orthodoxy of Herborn; at this point, it should only be noted that two essential items are still missing from the above workload: 1. an intensive and broad study of literature, so that Comenius was comprehensively informed about the state of science, which in the 17th century, only two hundred years after his death, was not possible. 2. a very intensive and extensive correspondence, which bound him into a whole network of scientific contacts, which he knew to arrange extremely skillfully for his various projects. With his growing international reputation, Comenius hardly had the necessary time for the conscientious execution of his plans. In 1641 and 1642, his travels took him to England, Holland, and Sweden. In London, in the circle of influential friends and patrons, Samuel Hartlib, John Dury, and Bishop John Wilkins, who was inspired by Comenius to develop a universal language (cf. Wilkins, 1984), he held pansophical consultations, which - as so often in the life of Comenius - ultimately failed due to adverse external circumstances, in this case, the outbreak of civil war, but at least indirectly contributed to the foundation of the Royal Academy. How much his advice was already in demand at that time can be seen from the fact that he was invited by Cardinal Richelieu, who was otherwise not suspected of any Protestant inclinations and who had just starved the Huguenots in La Rochelle, to continue his pansophical studies in France. Harvard University also sought out Comenius, as did the Swedes, whose commission to develop language textbooks he finally followed. To be close to his Swedish patrons and not lose contact with his community, Comenius lived from 1642 to 1648 in Elbing, Sweden, where he tried to fulfill his mission with the financial means of his great patron Lodewijk de Geer and the support of a small circle of collaborators. This work resulted in the publication of The latest language method (Methodus linguarum novissima) in 1649. The year before, 1648, on completion of the Swedish mission, Comenius suffered public and private disasters: Although the Peace of Münster and Osnabrück ended the Thirty Years ’ War, the interests of Bohemia and Moravia had been shamefully betrayed to their Swedish ally, so that hopes of a peaceful return home were quashed, as the exile became abruptly permanent. Comenius, elected leading bishop of the Bohemian Brotherhood in 1648, foresaw correctly that the Peace of Westphalia would end his Brotherhood, Jan Amos Comenius: Orbis sensualium pictus, or the Infinite Drift (1996) 191 which he expressed in his 1650 Bequest to the Dying Mother, the Brotherhood. Finally, in 1648, his second wife died when the youngest of their four children was just two years old. Comenius did not collapse under the depressing blows of fate and married Johanna Gajusova in 1649. From the various international offers to continue his studies, he accepted the invitation of the Transylvanian Prince Sigismund Rákóczi to reform the local Latin school in Sárospatak, one of the seats of the princely family, according to pansophical principles. In 1650 Comenius moved with his family to Sárospatak, where he led the most important project of his career for four years; we will discuss it in more detail below. In addition to his practical pedagogical activities, Comenius continued to publish and research with his usual intensity. Among the outstanding moments of the four-year stay in Hungary was without a doubt the development and realization of the publication that was to make Comenius world-famous: the visible world in pictures, better known by its Latin title Orbis sensualium pictus, which was first published by Endter in Nürnberg in 1658, shortly after the end of his activity in Sárospatak. The end of the Sárospatak school experiment is much more like an abortion than a completion; once again Comenius had failed due to adverse circumstances: the death of his principal, the obstruction of his colleagues, the laziness, immorality, and unwillingness of his Hungarian shills, and last but not least the counterreformation activities of the Catholics, especially the Jesuits. Deeply disappointed, he returned to Leszno for his last stay, only to see his refuge burn down in the aftermath of the 1656 Swedish-Polish war, and with Leszno, saw not only his refuge but also the work of decades go up in flames. He got away with just his life intact. The homeless refugee wandered through Europe until he found a new shelter for the rest of his life in Amsterdam with Laurentius de Geer, the son of his deceased patron. With an almost incomprehensible stamina, Comenius set to work again in Amsterdam and not only completed the edition of his Complete Didactic Works (Opera didactica omnia, 1657) but also resumed his pansophical studies, the results of which had been lost to the flames in Leszno. Whether Comenius was able to rely on text fragments recovered from Leszno must remain an open question for the time being; in any case, it is a fact that during his Amsterdam years, he drew up an almost unbelievable seven-volume sum of his pansophical endeavors, which has been available to us in its entirety since it ’ s fortunate rediscovery in the form of the Consultatio Catholica. This extremely concise curriculum vitae would remain incomplete in one essential respect if the publication of prophecies under the title Lux e tenebris (1657) did not point to the obscurantist tendencies that Comenius followed throughout his life and which must not be ignored in the assessment of his life ’ s work (cf. Wittmann 1973: 82). Early on, he had made friends with the seer Christoph Kotter; later on, he even took the seeress Christina Poniatowska into his household, and to his former classmate, the seer Nikolaus Drabik, who finally had to pay for his wild fantasies with his head, he kept a hardly comprehensible loyalty to Nibelung, when his charlatanry had long become obvious (cf. Beisswanger 1904: 56). We have here a striking example of the fact that this great reformer and innovator Comenius had something of a split personality, and could not consistently maintain a balancing act between scholastic antiquity and early Enlightenment modernity. This irrationalism, which was not a one-time aberration, as his lively interest in Johann Valentin Andreae ’ s Fama fraternitatis rosae crucis and similar obscurantisme vividly demonstrates 192 Jan Amos Comenius: Orbis sensualium pictus, or the Infinite Drift (1996) and as will be examined in detail below, and his obtuseness, articulated in particular in the fact that he published Lux e tenebris despite the most severe criticisms (cf. Hofmann 1976: 68) and dismayed reactions of his friends ten years later, did great harm to himself and his cause. Towards the end of his life, the last bishop of the Bohemian Brotherhood became a bit lonely, which was probably due not least to his previously mentioned esoteric inclinations, but also to the fact that he had outlived many of his friends and relatives by decades at a time when people on average did not live beyond thirty years of age. On November 15, 1670, Jan Amos Comenius died in Amsterdam. He found his final resting place in the Walloon Church in Naarden near Amsterdam. 2.2 Comenius in Sárospatak (1650 - 1654) Before the happy rediscovery of the Consultatio Catholica, Comenius ’ four-year stay in Sárospatak could have been considered a more insignificant and ultimately unsuccessful episode in his career: “ Today, however, when Komenský ’ s omniscience (pansophy) has come with such urgency to the forefront of the study of his thought and work, any disdain for his stay there must cease. It is now known that this seemingly short epoch was decisive in forming his main work, ‘ De rerum humananim emendatione consultatio catholica ’” (Brambora 1972: 36 f.). 6 In addition to the content-related arguments, which underline the enormous importance of the first practical school experiences in Sárospatak for the further development of Pansophy, the more private motives that guided Comenius in his decision to accept the invitation to Hungary must also be taken into account. First and foremost, after the catastrophes of 1648, I see the welcome opportunity to participate in an extremely promising project in a completely new environment. Geréb, 1958: 7 draws attention to a second essential connection: “ That Comenius came to Hungary undoubtedly had political reasons: He expected a war of liberation to be waged by the Rákoczi dynasty against the Habsburgs and thus also for the concerns of the Czech people. ” If it was not just the expectation of a war of liberation led by Prince Rákoczi, Comenius certainly appreciated that so many of his countrymen had found refuge and support in Hungary. In the decision to invite Comenius, a dispute between Puritans and Orthodox Christians, reported by Geréb in 1958, may have also played a significant role. Lajos Orosz writes: “ In this situation, the invitation to Comenius, the greatest authority on pedagogy in the whole of Europe, who was neither a Puritan, nor expressly anti-Presbyterian, was not simply a compromise, but a tertium datur which satisfied all opposing parties ” (Orosz 1973: 103). Prince Sigismund of Rákoczi had written to Comenius in March 1650 in his name and the name of his mother, the princely widow Susanna Lorantfy, requesting a conversation about 6 Milada Blekastad (1969: 184 ff.) points out the fundamental role of the image of the wheel in the composition of De rerum humanarum emendatione consultatio catholica. A separate study would be required to adequately appreciate this universally disseminated image. Jan Amos Comenius: Orbis sensualium pictus, or the Infinite Drift (1996) 193 improving schools in Hungary. Kvacala (1913: 11) reports that the letter of invitation from Prince Rákoczi was accompanied by a letter from Janos Tolnai, the principal of the Sárospatak school. Tolnai was a long-time friend of Samuel Hartlib, who emphatically accepted the prince ’ s invitation. This letter was preceded by a development of the school, which Lajos Dezs ő , (1883: 173) knowledgeably describes: “ The school at Patak originated in 1531 from a Minorite monastery. Its first teacher was Stefan Kopácsi, a Franciscan, and one of the first Hungarian reformers. Initially, the school was only a trivial school. Only in 1549, after Kopácsi ’ s return from Wittenberg, was it transformed into a larger one, where teachers and clergy were educated. The owners of the dominion of Patak were the patrons of the school; these Protestant noblemen found it necessary to raise the intellectual power of Protestantism through good schools. From 1618, the Rákóczi family owned the dominion of Patak. George Rákóczi the First (ruling prince of Transylvania from 1630 - 1648), an enlightened man who guided the education of his two salines with exemplary wisdom and deep pedagogical insight, showed much favor to the Protestant schools in Hungary. He felt particularly moved to raise the school in Patak, located in his dominion, to the position where the princely school in Gyula-Fehérvár (Alba-Julia), founded by Gabriel Bethlen (his predecessor), stood. Also, his widow, Susanna Lorántfy (d. 1660), and his younger son Sigismund Rákóczi (M.) sacrificed a lot for the school in Patak, which was called the Rákóczi school at that time and was in its first flourishing period. ” At the meeting with the prince in Tokaj in May 1650, Comenius was asked to give an expert opinion “ on how the provincial school in Patak could be set up as well as possible according to the laws of philosophy ” (Lindner 1902: LV). Under the title, “ Illustris patakinae scholae idea, ” Comenius delivered his expert opinion, which later found its way into his collected didactic writings. After Prince Rákóczi had approved Comenius ’ plan of a pansophical school, he explained the mutual expectations in his appointment document: “ We appoint you for the purpose that you may give us sacred assistance in improving our schools at Patak, and that you may supply here with us a true, full, and clear image of your method, which is already beginning to spread everywhere. We have by no means the intention to deprive you of your more important studies, to which you want to devote your old-age years for the general good, by calling you to the toils of the school dust, but that under your guidance our scholars, the principles of this our school and the teachers may give you pleasure by progressing in the desired reorganization and by carrying out your efforts for the teaching method ” (quoted from Lindner 1902: LVI). The pansophical school that Comenius wanted to establish in Sárospatak was conceived of as a seven-class gymnasium, divided into a lower and an upper class according to the following scheme: Class: The Vestibulum (Vestibule). Class: The Janua (entrance) Lower level with additions Class: The Atrium (hall) linguistic character Class: The philosophical class Class: The logical class High school with additions Class: The political class With factual character Class: The theosophical class 194 Jan Amos Comenius: Orbis sensualium pictus, or the Infinite Drift (1996) In the pansophical school, children from the nobility, the bourgeoisie, and talented peasants were to be taught. The subject matter was considered in stages, through observation, experience, and self-affirmation by the scholars. This methodical measure resulted from the progressive intention of the Pansophical school not to be run merely as a language school (Latin school), but to give equal importance to the subject matter. Each school year was to have its textbook, to which the teachers and students were to be completely subordinated. Each textbook should have a threefold division into 1. lexicon, 2. grammar, and 3. text, to grasp the whole language during the three-year lower school. Each of the seven classes was to have its teacher, headed by the rector, who would visit all the classes daily to ensure everything was running smoothly. Comenius did not forget to demand a decent salary for class teachers so that they would not give up easily, nor did he fail to include in the eighthour daily teaching load the necessary rest breaks (cf. Lindner 1902: LVII - LXI). Of the original plans that Comenius had developed vis-à-vis Prince Rákóczi, less than half could be realized, which was due, among other things, to the fact that at the beginning of the school experiment, sufficient numbers of textbooks and well-trained personnel were not available. Moreover, the school experiment would have had to be sustained over a much longer period of time to become implanted completely and have a chance of survival. Moreover, the time in Sárospatak was not without conflict, as seen from various written statements. For example, Comenius complains in a letter to the prince ’ s widow: “ Nothing happens here that is worthy of my presence, rather I have to endure ridicule with my didactic efforts and will suffer even greater if I stay longer. My whole method aims to turn the school fronts into games and amusements. Nobody here wants to understand this. The youth is treated quite slavishly, even the young nobility; the teachers base their reputation on scowls, harsh words, and even blows, and would rather be admired than loved. So often I have rebuked publicly and privately that this is not the right way 1st, but always in vain. Also, from the very beginning, I advised to introduce any theatrical games, in possession of a certain experience that there are no more effective means to drive away mental sluggishness and to spur on lively activity ” (Antochi 1984: 47). Dietrich (1995: 96) says the Sárospatak mission failed all around, despite undeniable successes in which he agrees with Hermann Gottsched (1879: 5), who brusquely claimed that Comenius was driven away from his model school at Patak by “ Hungarian dullness and intolerance, ” which finds an echo in Comenius ’ former Herborn teacher Bisterfield, who wrote, “ In the whole world one can rather take up a better method and pansophical studies than among this people ” (J. R. 1913: 228). Gustav Adolf Lindner, in his insightful and knowledgeable biography of Comenius, struck a much more conciliatory tone: “ If one looks at the actual successes which Comenius achieved with the pansophical school in Sáros-Patak, the distance between idea and success, plan and execution, strikes one very unpleasantly. ( … ) Comenius was aware of the obstacles he faced in implementing his designs. These are books, teachers, and pupils. In various places of his school writings, Comenius places the highest emphasis on producing appropriate textbooks; from them, he expects the salvation of his method. The production of a textbook, in which the entire subject matter of a whole school class would be concentrated in such a way that neither teacher nor pupil would need to go beyond it, is such an ideal that its realization cannot possibly be entrusted to an individual, least of all to a person ‘ whom old age has already broken and to whom death sits in the rikken ’ , as Comenius says of himself. ( … ) Regarding teachers and co-workers, Comenius did not fare any better than Pestalozzi Jan Amos Comenius: Orbis sensualium pictus, or the Infinite Drift (1996) 195 did later. He, too, had to struggle with the Lernaean snake of indifferentism and inertia on the part of teachers and learners. ( … ) The students also caused him many difficulties, as he complained about their ‘ wild nature ’ and their ‘ rough manners ’ of them, as well as about the jealousies between the nobles and the commoners. ( … ) Where there is merit, there is also envy. Jealous of the growing reputation of Comenius, those who were to be his collaborators opposed him with envy and passive resistance, so that it may not have seemed undesirable to him when the death of Prince Sigismund Rákoczi and the ecclesiastical conditions in Lissa interrupted the further expansion of the Pan- Sophic school. Comenius took leave of Hungary in 1654, leaving a valuable memento of his earlier stay. This is the most popular of Comenius ’ works, the one in which the main idea of his educational reform was typically expressed, and which alone will be sufficient to wrest his name from oblivion. We mean the Orbis pictus - the world in pictures ” (Lindner 1902: LV). This assessment essentially coincides with the detailed investigation of the Sárospatak seminary director Lajos Dezs ő (1883), who considerably expanded our knowledge of the background of the Pansophic school experiment and its abortion: “ We know that the impetus for Comenius ’ appointment to Patak came from Joh. Tolnai. The prejudice, however, which the deans Tarczali and Simandi and the Patak clergy harbored against Tolnai, was most probably also transferred to Comenius ’ school reforms; so that Comenius, apart from the members of the Rakoczi family, apart from Joh. Tolnai and Paul Megyesy (the court preacher) paid hardly any sincere friends among those who possessed any influence in this matter. Under such circumstances, a spirit of opposition soon arose among teachers and students. ‘ It soon became apparent ’ - says Comenius - ‘ that my endeavor would not reach its goal, for reasons it is more appropriate to conceal. I saw that the pansophical studies found no ground where almost everyone was content with fragments, where impatience prevailed, etc. ’ It is probable that the patrons also did not lend Comenius the proper support. It is also probable that Comenius was an eye-witness to the fierce performances of the professors, even though he had to weather some storms. He must have had bitter experiences that he wrote: ‘ If there is any place under the sun where discord, gloating and envy prevail, where people ruin themselves with secret hatred and hostility, this is the place. ’ Under such circumstances, Tolnai not without reason expressed his fear that after the departure of Comenius, everything would return to the old track, and not without reason Comenius said to the trustees: ‘ God grant that you may be permanently united in your intentions and plans. God grant that your efforts in maintaining concord among the teachers may have the desired success: for I confess it, I fear ruin from this silk ’ . Under such circumstances, there was no thought of carrying out the plan as early as the time of Comenius, and of improving and maintaining it after his departure ” (Dezs ő , 1883: 290 f.). Although the opinions expressed so far on the success or failure of the Sarospatak school experiment address some objectively existing problems, they are all too pessimistic, so I will let Josef Bramobra have his more favorable say at the end of this section: The whole result of this four-year Sárospatak stay is imposing, even in quantity: the pedagogical harvest is - in terms of volume - equal to the yield of the previous twenty-two years. It contains, first of all, three compilations of theoretical statements, which were published in Sárospatak one after the other: ‘ Primitiae laborum Patakinorum ’ (1650 - 1651, ‘ Laborum scholasticorum in illustri Patakino gymnasio continuatio ’ (1651 - 1652) and ‘ Laborum scholasticorum Patakini obitorum coronis ’ (1654). ( … ) The concise programmatic writing ‘ Illustris patakinae scholae idea, ’ which was written right after the first talks with Prince Rákoczi, he expanded the following year into the well-known writing ‘ Schola pansophica ’ and after another two years, he also conceived the organizational plan of this 196 Jan Amos Comenius: Orbis sensualium pictus, or the Infinite Drift (1996) school ( ‘ Leges scholae bene ordinataes ’ ). All these writings were produced in Sárospatak and were published there ” (Brambora 1972: 34 f.). 2.3.0 Orbis sensualium pictus: illustrated language textbook The Thirty Years ’ War devastated Central Europe; entire regions were depopulated by the effects of war and epidemics, customs were shredded, and education fell to an all-time low. In this bleak situation, Comenius wrote his Orbis sensualium pictus with the firm conviction that he could contribute significantly to improving human relations through a better school education for all children, writing not as an educator, but foremost as a theologian. With the Orbis pictus, Comenius not only presented a new instructional work, which was to serve 1. in the initial instruction in Latin, 2. as a picture book for the “ mother school ” , i. e. for the beginnings of instruction in the family, and 3. as a mother tongue textbook for pupils of elementary school (cf. Vidrascu 1891: 15 f.), but also entered new methodological territory, insofar as language teaching was not detached from the real world as pure text teaching, but was to profit from one ’ s own contemplation and experience in dealing with things, or in other words: the pictures function neither as mere illustrations and loosenings, nor are they mnemonic aids, but they establish the vivid link between language and factual teaching (cf. Schaller 1970: 123), since the most important thing is that understanding, handling and language are practiced together from youth on, because they form the links of a chain (cf. Liese 1903: 13). What sounds like a banality, hardly worthy of such a fuss, is nevertheless at the heart of the pedagogical approach. The Bochum Comeniologist Klaus Schaller stated: “ Not in knowledge (scientia - theoria), not in conscience (conscientia - praxis), but in the action of man (usus/ fruitia - chresis) his humanity is shown. Not the knowing, but the acting man is the true man; only the one deserves to be called truly man who fearlessly stands up for the improvement of all that is entrusted to men in this world (rerum humanarum emendatio), for the realization of the truth inscribed by God in creation. Thus, it is no wonder that from the early writings to the late work of Komensky - modernly speaking - a theory of action is the central theme (Schaller 1985: 205). 2.3.1 Structure and intention of the Orbis pictus Comenius unfolds a panorama of the world and its inhabitants on 150 plates. The literature repeatedly claims that this pictorial work was framed by the plates I. God and CL. The Last Judgment. However, if one wants to be accurate, one would have to frame it a bit wider, because of the “ Lecture to the Reader, ” the “ Introduction ” and a “ Living Alphabet ” from the beginning. At the same time, a “ Resolution ” follows at the end. This further frame is extremely important for the interpretation of the Orbis pictus, because here the author Comenius explains his intentions and, especially in Resolution, makes clear that he has not presented a universal register in the textbook, but a selection worth knowing; literally: “ Ita vidisti summatim Res omnes quae ostendi .poterunt ” (Comenius 1991: 309; emphasis mine, A. E.). Deviating from the accompanying German translation by Siegmund von Birken, a church hymn writer and zealous collaborator of the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft in Nürnberg (cf. Jan Amos Comenius: Orbis sensualium pictus, or the Infinite Drift (1996) 197 Pilz 1967: 40), I translate: “ So you have seen only the main things according to all things that can be demonstrated. ” This “ resolution ” corresponds to Comenius ’ frequently repeated intention “ to teach everything to everyone. ” While he did indeed want to teach all children, i. e., especially girls, in school, which was just as unusual in his time as his disregard for socalled class distinctions, the “ everything ” easily led to misunderstandings, because Comenius naturally did not want - like no reasonable pedagogue - to cram every child with the entirety of the knowledge of his time. What he understood by “ everything ” was ” everything necessary, ” as explained in the introduction. Incidentally, in the “ Resolution ” the teacher urges his pupil: “ Continue now and diligently learn other good books so that you may become learned and pious, ” which would not be a very sensible request if the pupil already knew “ everything ” after completing the Orbis pictus. A schematic summary of the topics covered in the Orbis pictus will give an overview of the 150 panels: “ God, the world, the sky, the four elements (fire, air, water, earth), then on several plates the mineral kingdom, then the plant kingdom, then already in more detail the animals, finally in figure 35 the human being, first the bodily side: limbs, viscera, bone structure, sense organs, etc. under it also the soul, represented as an only dotted human figure - then the human crafts: gardening, agriculture, animal husbandry, etc. Tailor, cobbler, carpenter, etc., then the arts, oratory, music, philosophy, etc., then ethics with the virtues embodied in allegorical female figures: Prudence, industriousness, temperance, stout-heartedness, good-naturedness, justice, gentleness, and then, in more detail, the representation of social and state life, and finally, in conclusion, the religions: Paganism, Judaism, Christianity, the Mahometan faith, Providence, the Last Judgment ” (Bollnow 1950: 147). For a correct understanding of the intention pursued by Comenius, special attention must be paid to the organizing principle of his textbook. As already said, the whole world is presented between the two absolute poles ‘ God ’ and ‘ Last Judgement, ’ so that in this great metaphysical conception, every earthly phenomenon - and consequently humankind as well - appears in its assigned place as a member of the objective world context. This divine world order corresponds to the motto of the title copy: “ Omnia sponte fluant. Absit violentia rebus. ” This is not a call for a non-violent education (for then Comenius would contradict himself, for example, in plate XCVII, where it says: “ Some gossip and show themselves wanton and indolent: they are chastised with the bacel and the ruhte. ” ), but the reflection of the divine order: everything should develop according to the natural, i. e., divine order, which should not be violated violently, i. e., against the will of God. Only about 10 percent of the Orbis pictus is devoted to theological and moral subjects. In comparison, natural history comprises about 40 percent. Crafts, trade, and other professions make up more than 20 percent (cf. Geréb, 1958: 8), so Alt is strongly reminded of the style of the Ständebücher (cf. alt, 1970: 40), one will do well to take the Christian world order as a basis but to look for the actual intention in another direction. In my opinion, two overlapping intentions can be distinguished: On the one hand, Comenius offers factual information, which he draws mainly from the primary child ’ s world of experience, which seems to me to be far more urban-bourgeois than the rural-peasant world of experience; on the other hand, as a teacher of language, he pursues the intention of creating a connection between visual and acoustic comprehension (by reading aloud): 198 Jan Amos Comenius: Orbis sensualium pictus, or the Infinite Drift (1996) “ By looking at the pictures, the student was supposed to acquire the respective heading and, after leafing through the book several times, to be able to read it without too much effort. In principle, this was nothing other than an ingenious conception of the well-known holistic method for that time ” (Kunstmann 1957: 377 f.). 2.3.2 The mode of representation of the orbis pictus Robert Alt claims that Comenius in his textbooks helped realistic illustration, which hardly ever occurred before the 16th century, breakthrough (cf. Alt 1970: 17). This assertion is at least for a part of the illustrations inaccurate and - as I will discuss in more detail in the next chapter - could put the whole Orbis pictus in a completely wrong light. In order not to merely parry assertion with counter-assertion, I would like to cite some concrete cases which refute Robert Alt: I. Plate XXI shows, among other things, the “ vigilant ” crane holding a stone in one raised foot, to perk up on guard duty if it should fall asleep and drop the stone. Of course, this is not a realistic representation but comes from the circle of animal legends. 2) Plate XLII shows the soul of man as a dotted silhouette; it takes some audacity to call such a representation realistic. 3. plates CX - CXVII show the virtues in allegorical female figures; again, no trace of a realistic depiction. 4 Unicorns, dragons, and basilisks on plates XXVIII - XXX populate fairy tales rather than the animal world. 5 Also the providence in plate CXLIX corresponds to old emblematic representation conventions (cf. Wamcke 1987), without therefore a claim to realism. A representation can often be better characterized by what it omits and conceals than by what is presented. In the case of the Orbis pictus, it is immediately obvious that the central event of the 17th century, the Thirty Years ’ War, does not appear expressis verbis. Comenius, two years after the Peace of Westphalia, will not have already forgotten or repressed this horrible war, which had robbed him of everything important to a human being, which leaves only one plausible answer to its absence from the book: Comenius did not want to speak of war, but of peace. He presents to children a peaceful, industrious, Godpleasing world, which does not exist de facto in this way, but which is to become so (cf Harms 1970: 531 1.): This is the great irenic message of the Orbis pictus. This peaceful pedagogical intention manifests using the circle, tree (cf. Van Vliet 1992: 257 ff.), and garden metaphor. Erwin Schadel writes on circle symbolism (6): “ For circle symbolism, i. e., for the view that the moving world revolves - in a similar way as the wheel revolves around its fixed axis - around the unmoved divine center, he was inspired by Cusanus or by the Speculum intellectuale, a Cusanus anthology published in 1510 by the Nuremberg physician Ulrich Pinder. The tree metaphor, which suggests that what is visible in this world grows out of invisible ‘ roots ’ and which brings an ‘ organic ’ aspect into Comenius ’ encyclopaedic ideas, he received from Jakob Böhme, who in the first chapter of his Aurora speaks of the ‘ spring tree of the world ’ (Schadel 1989: XXV f.). But he could have also - perhaps more obvious for a bishop of the Bohemian Brotherhood - simply opened the bible and found their many examples of the tree metaphor (cf. Cervenka 1969: 80 ff.). Klaus Schaller (1992: 210) has devoted some attention to the garden metaphor and has explained the vignette text of the title copy as I have tried to do above. Jan Amos Comenius: Orbis sensualium pictus, or the Infinite Drift (1996) 199 The rich imagery of the Orbis pictus suggests, in my opinion, an analysis of this extremely successful textbook in terms of image and drawing theory; to my great surprise, I have searched in vain for such an analysis in the extensive Comenius literature. Apart from a few tentative hints, such as perhaps the coloring book for preschool children, 7 it was not taken sufficiently seriously as such. 2.3.3 Models and impact of the Orbis pictus Occasionally the Orbis pictus has been presented as the first picture book or as the first textbook that makes use of pictures (cf. e. g., Vidrascu 1891: 25), without any real basis (cf. Capkova, 1970: 7). Indeed, this could only be claimed by someone who had read Comenius very inattentively and, moreover, had no idea of the history of (picture) pedagogy. Heinrich Geissler (1959: 111) points out in this context that Comenius occasionally called his Orbis pictus Lucidarius = Lightbringer (the first proof of 1653 bears the title Vestibuli et Januae Lucidarium, cf. Blekastad 1969: 514), with which he not only took up an idea originating from mysticism but also borrowed - certainly not unconsciously - the title of the oldest medieval German textbook. The fact that Comenius used templates, and in some cases even took them over literally, was always clearly stated. For example, in the eighth chapter of the Methodus Linguarum Novissima, he names no less than 22 literary sources (cf. Liese 1903: 87), which include pedagogues, theologians, and philosophers of outstanding importance, such as Vives, Lubinus (cf. Richter 1893), Vossius, Melanchthon, Ratichius, Bodinus, Andreae, Helvicus, Alsted, Jungius, Campanella, Murner, Bacon, Erasmus, and so on. A detailed reference would have to be even more extensive and worked with about the same care as Milada Blekastad ’ s great Comenius study, which she modestly calls an attempt despite its great wealth of detail. Even if most of the pedagogical and didactic measures that Gerhard Michel (1992) identifies in his careful analysis of the Orbis pictus should have been known before Comenius, Michel can be agreed that it was Comenius who took up these diverse suggestions, organized them, and realized them in a homogeneous work. 8 The Orbis sensualium pictus is undoubtedly a successful textbook; Pilz (1967) in his great work determined that there had been 244 editions of this extraordinary book, translated into all languages of the world and spread over centuries. Almost notorious in Comenius literature are references to Goethe ’ s judgment in the 14th book of Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth), where, in comparison with Basedow ’ s elementary work, he speaks of the “ sensual-methodical merits ” that he “ must ascribe to the work of Amos Comenius. ” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Johann Gottfried Herder expressed themselves just as approvingly and appreciatively on the Comenian work as did the Swedish chancellor Oxenstierna, whereby primarily his peace pedagogical and language didactic efforts found 7 However, it is difficult to imagine how a little book with the dimensions of 94 x 153 mm in the original edition of 1658 should serve as a coloring book for small children. 8 Wendelin Toischer (1913: 193) sourly criticizes that no new ideas were realized in the Orbis pictus, because at least Eilhard Lubnius had long before “ guessed ” what was then executed in the Orbis pictus (cf. Bohlen, 1906: 64). Unfortunately, it seems to have escaped the revered author that between a piece of advice and its execution can lie worlds. Furthermore, it would be a severe abridgment to reduce the Orbis pictus to the realization of Lubinic advice for the creation of a Latin language book, because then, for example, the entire Irenean as well as the entire Pansophic complex to name only two important concerns that Comenius also pursued in his Orbis pictus would have remained completely unconsidered. 200 Jan Amos Comenius: Orbis sensualium pictus, or the Infinite Drift (1996) acclamation. At the same time, the pansophical studies met with incomprehension or rejection (cf. Vrbka 1892: 143 ff.). There is, however, no lack of the most severe criticism: Christian Weise counted Comenius among the “ worst arch-fools in the whole world ” because he burdened the students with an excessive abundance of useless words; Pierre Bayle expressed himself in a similarly derogatory manner in his Dictionnaire historique et critique (1741) and Johann Christoph Adelung in his Geschichte der menschlichen Narrheit (1785), which, however, need not be of further interest because their spiteful remarks neither reflected general opinion nor were sufficiently factually substantiated (cf. Aron 1895). 2.4.0 Orbis sensualium pictus: Hermetic Semiotics Comenius did not write semiotics that could be compared with roughly contemporaneous approaches (e. g. John Locke ’ s Essay Concerning Human Understanding of 1690); even less were his reflections echoed in the great semiotics of the 19th and 20th centuries (e. g. Charles Sanders Peirce, Ferdinand de Saussure, Charles William Morris); not even significant terminological echoes would legitimize stylizing Comenius as a semiotician avant la lettre, even if Gerhard Michel (1984: 18 f.) can show that Comenius in the last chapter of the “ Mundus artificialis ” of Pansophie as Artes Signorum: Physiognomica, Semeiotica, and Cabala, which were probably familiar to him from the logic of Ramon Lull. My attempt to explain aims in a completely different direction: I would like to introduce Comenius as an important representative of the hermetic semiotics, which for centuries has discredited its twin sister, the critical semiotics because again and again from the aberrations of the hermetic sister - inadmissibly - to the behavior and ability of its critical sister is concluded and then immediately the whole clan with a ban is put. My interest is therefore only superficially directed to the reconstruction of the hermetic-semiotic tradition; primarily I am concerned with the ex negativo proof of the positive capabilities of critical semiotics. In pursuit of my semiotic interests, moreover, I am not interested in discrediting Comenius in any way; on the contrary, I hope that my attempt at explanation will contribute to an adequate understanding of Comenius; I am merely surprised that my path has not long since been trodden by Comeniologists. 2.4.1 Pansophy: Two Ways of Natural Philosophy Since his years of study in Herborn, Comenius incessantly strived to build his theologicalpedagogical-philosophical system on a pansophical basis. After a long series of preliminary stages, which have now been made accessible in the large edition of his works, he finally arrived during his Amsterdam years at the mature formulation of his Pansophy, which forms the centerpiece of the seven-volume work De rerum humanarum emendatione consultatio catholica. The term ‘ Pansophy ’ was not coined by Comenius, but adopted from various sources. He refers to the Pansophia sive paedia philosophica published by Petrus Laurenberg in Rostock in 1635. However, since his pansophical studies can be shown to date back to the 1920s (cf. Novak 1895: 242 - 252), the use of this term by his teacher Johann Heinrich Alsted may have been more decisive for him. The term also appears in the Rosicrucian writings of Johann Jan Amos Comenius: Orbis sensualium pictus, or the Infinite Drift (1996) 201 Valentin Andreae, who had a formative influence on Comenius: Will-Erich Peuckert (1956: 369) calls Pansophy the world formula, the new law that the Rosicrucians had to proclaim; finally, Jakob Bohme also makes use of this expression in his Mysterium Pansophicum of 1628 (cf. Mahnke 1931: 271) and, as will be shown, it was precisely the mystical tendencies represented by Andreae and Boehme that were decisive for Comenius ’ orientation. Since Comenius does not speak of ‘ philosophy ’ to characterize his approach but chooses ‘ Pansophy, ’ it should be asked what his particular concern was. Pansophy aims at an ‘ allknowing, ’ the ‘ cognitio rerum universalis, ’ the means the knowledge of ‘ natural ’ things as well as the knowledge of ‘ artificial ’ things, created by human beings, and includes ‘ revealed ’ things (cf. Hornstein 1968: 81). In an essay on the political pedagogy of Comenius, Klaus Schaller (1972: 72 ff.) summarizes the central concern of Pansophy in four points: 1. the questioning of the subjectivity of the human subject; 2. the doctrine of the threestage nature of human knowledge; 3. the ars character of thought, speech, and action and their unity in the triertium; 4. the identity of the figure of thought and the figure of action. Ad 1: The subjectivity of the human subject must be questioned, according to Comenius, who posts that when a man turns in the wrong direction, he elevates himself to the principle and regulative of his inner-worldly action: “ If he seeks himself in God and things (pansophia), then he reaches that place where he is what he is ” (Schaller 1972: 73). Ad 2: Three-stage is the doctrine of Pansophic knowledge, insofar as Comenius is not content with the what-determination of a thing, but continues to search for the “ through-what ” and the “ to-what. ” The two further questions concern the position of a thing in relation to the whole, not, however, in the sense of a topographical fixation, but in the interest of determining the function that results from the position of the individual in relation to the whole. Ad 3: In the “ Trigonus Sapientiae, ” Comenius summarizes the three human gifts cogitatio, sermo, and operatio, which are related to res in the three artes logic, grammar, and pragmatics. On the unity of the three artes rests the ethical conduct that enables man to perform good and useful works. Ad 4: The universal harmony of thought, speech, and action reflected in the “ Triertium Catholicum ” justifies the transfer of the laws of thought to the orientation of behavior: the logical syllogism becomes in the course of this transfer the syllogism practicus. Klaus Schaller explains: “ To the pansophist, who is familiar with the basic masses of the whole through the formula ‘ a Deo - per Deum - ad Deum ’ and who knows how to orient his actions according to them, the given (also the political situation) arranges itself into antecedent and consequent propositions, from which follows with logical-pragmatic certainty the final proposition, which is then also to be enforced in political action ” (Schaller 1972: 75). Although Theodor W. Adorno (1994: 328) urgently warned against the “ contamination of spirit and Dasein ” as the “ cardinal sin of occultism, ” which he incidentally reviled as “ the metaphysics of dumb guys ” (ibid., 325), I nevertheless hope to be able to show in the following that pansophy is “ far more than a (cranky) artifice of didactics ” (Mahnke 1931: 97). To this end, it will be necessary to distinguish, alongside the geometric-causal natural philosophy of Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza, a second, organic-teleological path of natural philosophy that has been “ quite unduly neglected by the history of philosophy ” (ibid., 270). 202 Jan Amos Comenius: Orbis sensualium pictus, or the Infinite Drift (1996) The natural philosophical doctrine of Comenius, which in universal harmony deals with everything under itself and is liberally (related to itself, knows the three methods of induction, deduction, and syncrisis. 9 To fulfill the universalistic claim to knowledge of Pansophy, it is necessary to use the syncritical method in conjunction with the inductive and the deductive, because only by linking the ascending and the descending methods and simultaneously using the comparison (i. e., the syncrisis) the knowledge of the whole can be achieved because what is not sufficiently known from itself can be known from similar things because similar things are always made according to the same idea: “ Thus, through comparison of the similar, the ‘ ultima ratio ’ is revealed ” (Schaller 1962: 45). Gustav Beisswänger (1904: 41) comparably expresses himself: “ The analytical method is to be applied where it is a question of fathoming the constituent parts, the synthetic, the connection of things; the third is no longer used by philosophers without reason, and yet it is highly important. For only it uncovers with its comparison the basic forms and laws common to things, and thus grasps to the full knowledge and understanding of things. ” With the syncritical method, we have not only come on the track of the characteristic approach of Pansophy, but in this universal comparison of everything with everything, the Semiotics of Comenius is also indicated. For this I would like to cite a passage in Dietrich Mahnke (1931: 277): “ For since Pansophy, as the highest structure of human art, must be an exact ‘ representation ’ of nature ” a living image of the universe, ’ but since the real world again corresponds completely to the divine world of ideas (omnino proportionata), everything in Pansophy, as in the latter, must be connected in universal harmony. ” This concept of representation, which betrayed its Neoplatonic origin, is not the concept of representation of the rationalist semiotic tradition, in which the sign is the means of knowledge of something else, still unknown, but belongs to the Hermetic tradition, in which the sign in principle cannot exceed the circle of similarities, because everything harmonizes with everything: “ An image is ( … ) a thing which, by similarity, represents another thing. As the picture stands for another thing and represents the other, it fulfills ‘ repraesentatio. ’ So it is also determined by Comenius as a kind of ‘ repraesentatio. ’ But what distinguishes the image from other kinds of ‘ repraesentatio ’ is the similarity: ‘ similitudo, ’ understood as a partial agreement of the image with the depicted. From this correspondence, it follows that in the image one can see that Other whose image it is. Thus, an image is a vivid ‘ repreasentatio, ’ and the behavior with which an image wants to be received is looking at it (spectare). Comenius now transfers the concept of the image thus conceived from the optical sphere, to which it originally belongs, to speech. ( … ) Thought is the image of the things the mind has in mind, but speech is the image of the thoughts that the mind has in itself ” (Kraemer 1977: 27). Klaus Schaller (1962: 29) calls panharmony “ one of the most important ‘ inventions ’ (inventa) of the whole Comenian system, it is a key through which the universe opens 9 Lindner (1902: LXVIII f.) in himself when calls syncrisis an analogical inference and a “ not yet fully appreciated and exploited counterpart of the celebrated method of induction. ” The counterpart of induction is deduction! Syncrisis, in contrast, is a comparison floating from similarity to similarity (cf. Bellerate, 1972, 46). Jan Amos Comenius: Orbis sensualium pictus, or the Infinite Drift (1996) 203 up to knowledge from itself. ” One may agree or disagree with this assessment; in any case, this is probably the reason why classical philosophy gives Hermeticism a wide berth: “ For it answers the core questions of philosophy completely mythologically, i. e., unscientifically. Knowledge and science are not sought through pure reason activity, not through principles, concepts, and general propositions, but through intuition ” (Cervenka 1970: 128). The actual basis of Comenian Pansophy is thus the doctrine of the unrestricted parallelism of microcosm and macrocosm, which unmistakably reveals the affiliation of Pansophy to Hermetic philosophy. 2.4.2 The Hermetic Context There is no lack of indications of the close intellectual relationship between Comenius ’ pansophy and Hermetic philosophy; the only astonishing thing is the cautious way this fact is dealt with. The impression must arise that either no special weight is to be attached to this relationship or that one would tacitly approve of this proximity. However, since I do not consider it a scientifically acceptable attitude to pass over with polite silence premise errors which are capable of corrupting an entire approach and since, secondly, the premise errors in the present case are semiotic in nature, I would like to deal with them in some detail. Comenius was deeply involved in the hermetic context, so leaving aside his incredible naivety in dealing with various soothsayers and prophets, if we do not poke around in the Rosicrucian history, and if we do not go into the extent to which Comenius is rightly counted among the founding fathers of Freemasonry (cf. e. g. Staedke 1930: 69; Lion, 1922: 151), formally established in England soon after his death, enough delicate questions remain, of which I would like to pick out three: 1. the doctrine of signatures; 2. universal language and 3. the syncritical method. In a system in which everything is connected with everything according to the principle of universal harmony, individual aspects can only be separated from each other by using some force, which is why it must be admitted in advance that the phenomena discussed in isolation in the following merge into each other in Comenius in many ways. Among the constantly recurring figures in the Comenian work is the book metaphor, which usually occurs in the following form: “ Three books are given, in which we read and know everything by reading: the world, the mind, and the Holy Scriptures. ” Of crucial interest here, of course, is how this reading is to proceed. To answer this question, it should be recalled that during his time in Herborn, Comenius had studied the Cursus philosophiae encyclopaedia of his teacher Alsted, which contained a physiognomy based on the doctrine of signatures. The other source, which gained decisive importance for distorting Comenius ’ natural philosophical system (cf. Cervenka 1970: 64), was Hermeticism, the philosophy of alchemy propagated by Paracelsus. Cervenka states: “ The ( … ) views of Cusanus, the reading of the writings of Andreae and the Paracelsian-oriented Rosicrucians, and finally the acquaintance with German, especially Boehmean mysticism, brought him ever closer to the ‘ chemical ’ worldview ” (Cervenka 1970: 65). For the mystic Jakob Bohme, every use of language is the revelation of secrets in which God lets man participate insofar as it is in his eternal counsel. Because of the Fall, man lost his 204 Jan Amos Comenius: Orbis sensualium pictus, or the Infinite Drift (1996) natural language, in which names and things were not yet separated, so that before the Fall man could look into the heart of all things, i. e., had immediate access to them. Although man is excluded from direct communication with God and things because of the Fall, there is nevertheless a possibility of understanding: all external appearances of the world have a symbolic meaning, they are signatures of the inner world. He who understands how to read the signatures is in God, while everything spoken without knowing the signature is dumb and without understanding (cf. Bohme 1980: 331). “ Reading ” man can read the signatures by observing them in contemplation. The “ reading ” of the three books, which Comenius speaks of, is therefore not an intellectual activity that can be described in rational categories, but a spiritual one. Kurt Quecke describes the doctrine of signatures as “ a rather arbitrary application of the conclusion by analogy ” (Quecke 1955: 41) and explains: “ It was claimed that nature labeled its products, whether by shape, color, taste, line, number, form, the relation of parts to one another, smell, consistency, or grain, indicating by what means a remedy was effective. With the help of the ‘ art signatum ’ one tried to decipher the secret code of nature ” (ibid., 41 f.). Paracelsus speaks at great length about signatures; however, to illustrate the doctrine of signatures, two brief examples will suffice in the present context: “ Know further that also many roots, herbs, etc., have received their names. Thus one says: The herb heals eyebright, therefore because it is comforting and helpful to the evil eyes of the sick. The bloodroot has its name because it stops blood better than other roots ” (Paracelsus 1988: 182). These two examples illustrate that the theory of signatures had to seek out the signature inherent in each thing, i. e., its particular properties and characteristics, and from there to infer its hidden meaning and function. Edighoffer emphasizes that the unity of the perceptible external signature and the hidden internal meaning is based on the Paracelsian and Rosicrucian thesis of the unity of all life, or as Comenius puts it, the togetherness of microcosm and macrocosm (cf. Edighoffer 1995: 23). When Paracelsus says: “ All things are hidden in all things ” (Paracelsus 1988: 201), then it becomes clear that panharmony is not merely naive name magic from the circle of naturopathy, but makes much higher waves: “ The signs of the heavenly bodies bring with them prophecies, oracles, and the like_ They indicate the supernatural powers and virtues of things. They give true signs and judgments in Geomantia, Chiromantia, Physionomia, Hydromantia, Pyromantia, Necromantia, Astronomia, Berilistica, and the like astral arts ” (ibid., 157). It should have become clear that with Pansophy we have left the ground of science and - to speak with Peuckert (1956) - have entered into the white and black Magic. In Comenius, with regard to language, we encounter irritating duplicity of attitudes and efforts: On the one hand, we find his lifelong efforts to improve language textbooks and language teaching, achieving great and lasting successes with sometimes fundamentally novel means (and demands such as mother-tongue teaching), and on the other hand, we are confronted with his pansophical-inspired designs for a universal language, which eventually found expression in the Panglottia of the Consultatio Catholica. The design of a world language, “ one of the great dreams of the wishful 17th century ” (Geissler Jan Amos Comenius: Orbis sensualium pictus, or the Infinite Drift (1996) 205 1959: 150), had already preoccupied Comenius when he held pansophic consultations with his English friends, and amazingly, we learn from Benjamin DeMott 1955: 1071: Yet it must be said that there were no signs of interest in England in constructed languages before Comenius wrote, and there are some indications that Comenius may have introduced to their field of research the Englishmen who were to become reformers of language. Particularly significant evidence here is that while no book on universal languages appeared in England before Comenius ’ visit to London in 1641, several came out shortly thereafter; that the most vigorous supporter of work on new Languages, Samuel Hartlib, was for years in correspondence with Comenius about linguistic schemes and was instrumental in bringing him to England; and that the first attempt to create a new language in England was made at the bidding of a clergyman who was a financial backer of Comenius ’ ecumenical movement. But in addition, there are links between Comenius and Wilkins, whose Essay was the principal English text in the field. Of course, one goal of the universal linguists was to facilitate and speed up international communication; but this should not detract from the essential second goal of using the universal language to contribute to the demand for religious harmony and to the mission of the Gentiles, which links Comenius in intention and method directly to Ramon Lull (cf. Beisswanger 1904: 79), whose work Comenius had become acquainted with early on. Again, it was his theological intentions and commitments that destroyed his fruitful (linguistic) scientific approaches: Because he did not want to admit and, according to the knowledge and judgement of languages at that time, could not admit that a language has a living life of its own, he undertook (with his draft of a universal language) the impossible. His demand that the individual linguistic expression completely agrees with the essence of the thing denoted is an idea originating in mysticism, to which reality does not correspond. Comenius thus missed the essence of the linguistic, which is to be sought in the constant struggle for expression, in the unfinished and dynamic. Therefore he had to involve himself in insoluble contradictions (Geissler 1959: 158). Although Comenius contributed remarkable arguments to deny language the attribute of naturalness (cf. Kraemer 1977: 60) and regarded it as a purely human affair (cf ibid., 61), he then nevertheless endeavors to create a planned language as similar as possible to the “ natural ” language (of Paradise), which, freed from all idiosyncrasies (cf. ibid., 63), should enable improved international communication. That Comenius, who developed so much linguistic sensitivity in the conception and realization of his language textbooks, fell into all the pitfalls of the universal language idea can only be explained by the fateful dream of being able to grasp, order, and name the entire universe encyclopedically. Enough has been written on the necessary failure of any universal-language approach, so it is not necessary to spread this criticism here again. If Comenius had maintained his linguistic, creative gesture, which he demonstrated impressively in his Latin works (and which, significantly, provoked the most severe criticism of conservative-purist Latinists), it would have been obvious to him, already based on his insight into the mutability of languages, that a universal language represents an interdictio in adiecto. It would be an unreasonable demand to ask from a man of the 17th century the way of thinking of a linguistic pragmatist of the 20th century; nevertheless, I would like to claim that Comenius with his Panglottie fell far behind his own earlier insights 206 Jan Amos Comenius: Orbis sensualium pictus, or the Infinite Drift (1996) because, in his young years, he had still declared that he wrote Bohemian because he would write for his people; for whom then was the Panglottie intended? We have heard before that the pansophic harmony of everything with everything, i. e., the parallelism of things, had led Comenius to develop his pansophic method of syncrisis, which was to enable the comparison of similar things. Behind the syncritical method is the view, typical of Comenius and his time, that in the unified universe ordered by rational laws, the smallest microcosm reflects the lawfulness of the macrocosm (cf. Peuckert 1928: 29; Edighoffer 1995: 68): This is the thought behind the pansophic life-work of Comenius, as well as behind Descartes ’ mathesis universalis and Leibniz ’ s scientia generalis: a scientific system can exhaust the totality of nature and of the spirit -a hope that has determined the educational idea again and again until the turn of the last century (Flitner 1954: 228). Also mentioned before was the parable of the tree, which I now, however, do not merely want to repeat, but in agreement with Jaromir Cervenka, to interpret as the key to the whole Pansophic conception: The parable of the tree occurs already in the early writings of Comenius. In the Labyrinth of the World of 1623, the guide leads the pilgrim to a place in the middle of which there is a large tree with many branches, leaves, and fruits. The tree is called Natura. The world-tree parallel is much more detailed in the Centrum Securitatis of 1625. ‘ The world has grown out of God, ’ says Comenius here, ‘ like a tree out of its root. ’ As the tree grows up from its root, unfolding into branches and twigs, from which again spring leaves, blossoms, and fruits, which, despite their diversity, are all connected together like a chain in which one link hangs on another. Each of these links draws from the root, employing another, the life-sustaining moisture, so that all together form the unity of the tree, so all things of the world have sprouted from their root, from God. From Him, they draw the animating power and form in all their diversity a huge organism in which everything is connected chain-like (Cervenka 1969: 80). The multiplicity of the meanwhile consulted concordant passages now allows the thesis that in the great analogy of the tree metaphor without any doubt the origin of the hermetic semiotics of Comenius is to be sought. In essential respects, the hermetic semiotics goes back behind already reached sign-theoretical positions: 1. If in the sense of the syncrisis, it is permissible, even necessary, to compare everything with everything, it is no longer meaningful to maintain the difference between sign and signified, just as it makes no sense to call the freight the sign of the tree (or vice versa); the only statement still possible concerns the present similarity relation. 2. a cognition in the differentiating, rationalistic sense is neither meaningful nor possible because the hermetic semiotics does not ask for differences, but for similarities. 3. a change of the existing conditions is excluded insofar as the entire universe is built up according to a uniform, fixed plan and is hermetically closed and should not be changed by force: absit violentia rebus! 2.4.3 The infinite Drift The principle inconclusiveness of sign interpretation has led various authors to overextend the process of interpretation disastrously, considering the absence of a univocal meaning as a legitimation to postulate the aquivocation of all meanings in free flotation from meaning to meaning, in associative wandering in reminiscences, fantasies, prophecies, puns, Jan Amos Comenius: Orbis sensualium pictus, or the Infinite Drift (1996) 207 etymologies, pictorial compositions. Two of these tendencies to let interpretation drift in an uncontrolled and uncontrollable way, namely the so-called deconstructivism a la Derrida and the hermetic semiotics of the mystics and alchemists, have been examined in detail in the recent past by Umberto Eco in his important work The Limits of Interpretation and by Klaus Oehler in an essay entitled “ On Limits of Interpretation from the Perspective of Semiotic Pragmatism. ” Since Eco and Oehler have principle errors of the deconstructivist and the alchemist approach with great clarity, I do not want to repeat this criticism, but merely to refer to these two important works and to emphasize the consequences fruitful for our context of the discussion. Rather than denying the existence of univocal meaning in the sense of modern theories of drift, or asserting the universal linkage of everything to everything in the sense of the Hermeticists, critical semiotics rests on the fundamental principle that a sign is something through the knowledge of which we learn more (cf. Peirce C. P. 8. 332). In contrast, Hermetic semiotics seems to emphasize that the sign is something through which we learn something else. In Peirce ’ s semiotics, “ to experience more ” means that in the process of interpretation, i. e., in the transition from one interpreter to the next, the sign becomes more and more precisely determined both in terms of its extension and its intention. In the process of sign interpretation approaches asymptotically the final, logical interpreter, which is why at an advanced stage of the process of cognition one has acquired a more exact knowledge of the sign object than at the beginning of the interpretation. Ludwik Fleck ’ s (1980) Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact is a very good illustration of this process of knowledge extension. Every sign potentially contains the totality of conclusions that can be deduced from it, only as a possibility, which, however, under certain conditions could actualize itself as the reality of a sign. The in-principle infinite process of interpretation is normally interrupted repeatedly by the need for action. Still, despite these interruptions, the rule is that in each phase of semiosis, one has more exact knowledge of the content of the representative than in the preceding phase and at the starting point. In contrast to this understanding of unbounded semiosis, for modern theories of drift, a sign is not something through whose knowledge we learn more, but through which we are confronted with others, with others again and again, and so on. Eco has therefore defined drift as a case of connotative neoplasm. The connotative neoplasm lives from the fact that, precisely because of the denial of a fixed, unambiguous, identical signifier, virtually everything can be brought into the relation of similarity with everything. At the same time, Peirce explicitly warns against this as an aberration: “ There is no greater and more frequent error in practical logic than the assumption that things which are very similar in some respects are therefore all the more likely to be similar in other respects ” (C. R. 2. 634). Vivid literary examples of the infinite drift, which use exuberant similarity principles, can be found in Eugene Sue ’ s The Eternal Jew, in the Orbis pictus of Jan Amos Comenius, or Umberto Eco ’ s The Foucault Pendulum. I would like to take the liberty of remarking in passing that Eco has taken an intellectually highly questionable path with his second novel by exaggerating the free play of signifiers, so that in the end a gigantic world conspiracy of the Jews and Freemasons, the Rosicrucians and the KGB emerges. But what is meant as an intellectual game and criticism of how infinite drifting through excessive exaggeration could become deadly serious were used by the Nazis in their atrocious propaganda quite successfully. 208 Jan Amos Comenius: Orbis sensualium pictus, or the Infinite Drift (1996) The pseudo-connotative infinite strings of signs, which arise due to the logical error named by Peirce, are not to be in line with the infinite sign processes identified by Peirce. These occur like the out-of-control cell division in the spreading of metastases, these take place according to the regulating mechanism of intersubjective overprivation. If the control over the growth of the semioticity is lost in the course of semiosis and the sign loses its normal function, then that associative sliding from meaning to meaning is typical for interpretative drift and is comparable to processes of metastasis, arises. Infinite semiosis, then, is not to be equated with limitless free, arbitrary interpretation in the style of signature theory. The transformation of signs into other signs, which are supposed to be better, i. e., more clarifying, than the initial signs, is not a solipsistic but a social action; concerning its validity, it is dependent on general acceptance, which must come sooner, or later if it is to endure. This socially dimensioned semiotic meliorism, which manifests itself in belief, conviction, and agreement, does not, however, in itself guarantee a factual reference and does not by itself lead, even in the long run, to an ontology of the real. This was also never the opinion of Peirce, who did not at all hold the view that a sign ’ s interpretation as such, the mere translation of signs into other signs, leads to cognition of the real or to progress in cognition. Sign interpretation understood as mere, immanent clarification of concepts, for which the factually real appears only as utopian fiction, is exactly that sign idealism, which he did not tire of denouncing as a fall from grace, as that fall from grace of modern philosophy, which makes it impossible for it to explain a fact of natural science, which it instead knocks into shape until it assumes the form it needs for its nominalistic purposes. There is no transition from the sign idealism of only sign-imminent understood semiotic processes to sign-determined knowledge of reality. Proper signification differs from false signification in that it has not only a fundamentum in mente but also a fundamentum in re. Peirce expressed this fact terminologically by differentiating between the immediate and the dynamic object in the concept of the object of the sign. The immediate object is the idea or thought on which the sign is directly based, the understanding in which it is founded. The dynamic object is the object of the sign, insofar as it is the thing or situation on which that idea or thought and the understanding are based. To say that signs always refer only to signs is true and false at the same time, at least in need of supplementation by the additional explanation that a sign linkage is true only because it has a fundamentum in re or such a fundamentum is claimed for it, which as such is not thought of to its full extent as a sign, but also as a sign ground, as a being in the mode of the sign: “ The answer of the mystic to our question comes from a completely different world: Words are images for him, which really reflect things if they are used in the right relationship to the world of God. They can then reach a congruence with things. Nomenclatura and imago are more than a symbol; it is not only representative. It is the thing itself. And Comenius can exclaim: ‘ O man, gather into the unity of language that is scattered in multiplicity ’” (Giessler 1959: 107). 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