Publisher's Synopsis
An excerpt from the Author's PREFACE:
It is my belief that Johann Valentin Andreae represents a very important step in the development of the principles of education and scientific investigation, and that his works, now very little known, deserve worthy recognition in the history of literature. It is the purpose of this investigation to show the value of his writings as those of a great teacher and reformer; and especially to establish his utopia, Reipublicae Christianopolitanae Descriptio, in its proper place among the ideal states of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As the Latin original of this utopia has become quite rare I have made an English translation of it, hoping that thereby the attention of students of literature, philosophy, pedagogy, and sociology may be attracted to this remarkable document. Recognizing the great value of Andreae's work Robert Boyle, as early as 1647, in a letter to Samuel Hartlib, expressed the wish that an English version of it might be made.
