Enlightened education: growth, the garden, and Japan perceptions of Constantijn Huygens

Abstract

ABSTRACT Child education and accompanying discourse in the seventeenth-century circles of Constantijn Huygens are thoroughly researched. But while children grow up, parents also learn and not only through their siblings. Some remarks about experiences that Huygens had outside the regular discourse on education can be made. Huygens’ correspondence and his garden poem Hofwijck show that Japan played a significant role in his understanding of uncontrolled growth of plants in garden wilderness where ideas on vegetal growth extend to raising children. A major informant on the Far East in Huygens’ family circles was François Caron, who reported in detail on children growing up in Japan. Relative success of their children in society shows that their educational approaches apparently worked. A novel understanding of processes of growth and limitations to influence such processes in the garden denied Renaissance reasoning; combined with insights from Japan it strengthened Huygens in promoting his enlightened ideas on individual talent of children.