ABSTRACT
IN his intellectual and spiritual pilgrimage Comenius became aware of the partial nature of the concepts of wisdom normally held. The Stoic definition that it is knowledge of all things human and divine (Sapientia est rerum humanarum divinarumque scientia) left unresolved the relation between man and society, between intellect and goodness, between the actual and the potential. The concept of the Good Man made little sense without the Good Society and Encyclopaedic Knowledge presupposed a universal and natural didactic process by which it could be acquired. Above all Comenius was disturbed by the thought that wisdom might be a rare possession of the few because this seemed at once to betray its universal character. The ‘pearl of great price’ must not be beyond the reach of the multitude yet it must elude the grasp of any particular point of view – even the theological in the seventeenth century or the scientific in the twentieth.
