Locke: Chronology

Some Thoughts Concerning Education - by John Locke, 1693

§ 182 Chronology. With geography, chronology ought to go hand in hand; I mean the general part of it, so that he may have in his mind a view of the whole current of time, and the several considerable epochs that are made use of in history. Without these two, history, which is the great mistress of prudence, and civil knowledge; and ought to be the proper study of a gentleman, or man of business in the world; without geography and chronology, I say, history, will be very ill retained, and very little useful; but be only a jumble of matters of fact, confusedly heaped together without order or instruction. It is by these two, that the actions of mankind are ranked into their proper places of times and countries; under which circumstances, they are not only much easier kept in the memory, but in that natural order, are only capable to afford those observations which make a man the better and the abler for reading them.

§ 183 When I speak of chronology as a science he should be perfect in, I do not mean the little controversies that are in it. These are endless, and most of them of so little importance to a gentleman, as not to deserve to be inquired into, were they capable of an easy decision. And therefore all that learned noise and dust of the chronologist is wholly to be avoided. The most useful book I have seen in that part of learning, is a small treatise of Strauchius, which is printed in twelves, under the title of Breviarium Chronologicum, out of which may be selected all that is necessary to be taught a young gentleman concerning chronology; for all that is in that treatise, a learner need not be cumbered with. He has in him the most remarkable or usual epochs reduced all to that of the Julian period, which is the easiest and plainest and surest method that can be made use of in chronology. To this treatise of Strauchius, Helvicus' tables may he added, as a book to be turned to on all occasions.

§ 184 History. As nothing teaches, so nothing delights, more than history. The first of these recommends it to the study of grown men, the latter makes me think it the fittest for a young lad, who, as soon as he is instructed in chronology, and acquainted with the several epochs in use in this part of the world, and can reduce them to the Julian period, should then have some Latin history put into his hand. The choice should be directed by the easiness of the style; for wherever he begins, chronology will keep it from confusion; and the pleasantness of the subject inviting him to read, the language will insensibly be got, without that terrible vexation and uneasiness, which children suffer where they are put into books beyond their capacity, such as are the Roman orators and poets, only to learn the Roman language. When he has by reading mastered the easier, such perhaps as Justin, Eutropius, Quintus Curtius, etc., the next degree to these will give him no great trouble, and thus by a gradual progress from the plainest and easiest historians, he may at last come to read the most difficult and sublime of the Latin authors, such as are Tully, Virgil, and Horace.