The significance of Mulcaster’s theories may best be appreciated by comparing them with those of the great educational reformer who came next in order of time. The services rendered to the world by Comenius are too well accredited, and too widely acknowledged, to suffer any serious loss of prestige by such a comparison. It has been already urged that true originality in social affairs means an enlightened judgment as to what is possible and desirable for one’s own time and country, and the reform of education had to be worked out and proclaimed for continental Europe on independent lines. It is not likely that Mulcaster’s writings had any direct influence on Comenius, though they could hardly fail to make some contribution to the general stock of ideas that is successively inherited by each generation, and spreads almost imperceptibly over an ever widening area. Even apart from any claim to priority in doctrine, the forcible personality of the Moravian writer, expressing itself in a singularly exhaustive treatment of educational problems and their practical application, will always assure to him an unquestioned authority, while his assertion of the weighty principle that words and things must be taught together, spoken and written signs being constantly associated with the objects, qualities, or actions they represent, is in itself enough to secure him a lasting reputation. But from the national point of view, which in tracing such historical successions it is not unreasonable to assume, we may justly note that there are a considerable number of educational doctrines, now generally accepted among us in theory if not in practice, the earliest formulation of which, though generally ascribed to Comenius, is really to be found in the writings of Richard Mulcaster. More than this, it may be maintained that on several important points a more penetrating insight was shown by our own countryman, in spite of his disadvantage in time. In regard both to the end and the scope of education, for example, a more humanistic conception seems to have been held by Mulcaster. Unlike Comenius, who lays chief stress on the preparation for eternity, he sets forth as the main purpose of youthful training the more proximate aims of self-realisation and useful service to one’s fellowmen. “The end of education and training is to help nature to her perfection in the complete development of all the various powers ... whereby each shall be best able to perform all those functions in life which his position shall require, whether public or private, in the interest of his country in which he was born, and to which he owes his whole service.” And while both writers insist that the rudiments of learning should be taught to children of every social class and of both sexes, the Englishman alone expresses sympathy with the ideal of a higher education for girls where circumstances permit. It would seem also that Mulcaster took the more reasonable view of the relation of a teacher to his class, for his claim that the elementary master should have the smallest number to deal with, at least shows a fuller sense of the importance of individual treatment than is conveyed in the later writer’s dictum that it does not matter how large a class is if the teacher has monitors to help him.