§ 1. qui facit per alium facit per se. it is thus the law holds us accountable for the action of others which we direct. by the extension of this rule we immensely increase the personality of great writers and may credit them with vast spheres of action which never come within their consciousness. no man gains and suffers more from this consideration than rousseau. on the one hand, we may attribute to him the crimes of robespierre and saint-just; on the other pestalozzi was instigated by him to turn to farming and—education.

in treating of rousseau as an educational reformer i passed over a life in which almost every incident tends to weaken the effect of his words. with pestalozzi we must turn to his life for the true source of his writings and the best comment on them.

§ 2. john henry pestalozzi was born at zurich in 1746. his father dying when he was five years old, he was brought up with a brother and sister by a pious and self-denying mother and by a faithful servant “babeli,” who had comforted the father in his last hours by promising to stay with his family. thus pestalozzi had an advantage denied to rousseau and denied as it would seem to locke; there[291] was scope for his home affections, and the head was not developed before the heart. when he was sent to a day-school he became to some extent the laughing stock of his companions who dubbed him harry oddity of foolborough; but he gained their good-will by his unselfishness. it was remembered that on the shock of an earthquake when teachers and taught fled from the school building harry oddity was induced to go back and bring away what his companions considered precious. his holidays he spent with his grandfather the pastor of a village some three miles from zurich, where the lad learnt the condition of the rural poor and saw what a good man could do for them. he always looked back to these visits as an important element in his education. “the best way for a child to acquire the fear of god,” he wrote, “is for him to see and hear a true christian.” the grandfather’s example so affected him that he wished to follow in his steps, and he became a student of theology.[151]

§ 3. even as a student pestalozzi proved that he was no ordinary man. in his time there was great intellectual and moral enthusiasm among the students of the little swiss university. some distinguished professors, especially bodmer, had awakened a craving for the old swiss virtues of plain living and high thinking; and a band of students, among whom lavater was leader and pestalozzi played a prominent part, became eager reformers. the citizens of the great towns like geneva and zurich had become in effect privileged classes; and as their spokesmen the geneva magistrates condemned the contrat social and the emile.[292] this raised the indignation of the reforming students at zurich; and though their organ, a periodical called the memorial, kept clear of politics, one muller wrote a paper which contained some strong language, and this was held to be proof of a conspiracy. muller fled and was banished. pestalozzi and some other of his friends were imprisoned. the memorial was suppressed.

§ 4. it is in this memorial, a weekly paper edited by lavater who was five years pestalozzi’s senior that we have pestalozzi’s earliest writing. we find him coming forward as “a man of aspirations.” no one he says can object to his expressing his wishes. and “wishes” with a man of 19 are usually hopes. among other wishes he says: “i would that some one would draw up in a simple manner a few principles of education intelligible to everybody; that some generous people would then share the expense of printing, so that the pamphlet might be given to the public for nothing or next to nothing. i would then have clergymen distribute it to all fathers and mothers, so that they might bring up their children in a rational and christian manner. but,” he adds, “perhaps this is asking too much at a time.”

the memorial was suppressed because “the privileged classes” knew that it was in the hands of their opponents. pestalozzi then and always felt keenly the oppression to which the peasants were exposed; and he spoke of “the privileged” as men on stilts who must descend among the people before they could secure a natural and firm position. he also satirises them in some of his fables, as, e.g., that of the “fishes and the pike.” “the fishes in a pond brought an accusation against the pike who were making great ravages among them. the judge, an old pike, said[293] that their complaint was well founded, and that the defendants, to make amends, should allow two ordinary fish every year to become pike.”

§ 5. by this time pestalozzi had given up theology and had taken to the law. now under the influence of rousseau, or rather of the craving for a simple “natural” life which found its most eloquent expression in rousseau’s writing, pestalozzi made a bonfire of his mss. and decided on becoming a farmer.

§ 6. there was another person concerned in this decision. in his childhood he had one day ventured into the shop of one of the leading tradesmen, herr schulthess, bent on procuring for his farthings some object of delight; but he found there a little shop-keeper, anna schulthess, seven years his senior, who discouraged his extravagance and persuaded him to keep his money. anna and he since those days had become engaged—not at all to the satisfaction of her parents. their intimacy had been strengthened by their concern for a common friend, a young man named bluntschli, who died of consumption. this friend, three years older than pestalozzi, seems to have understood him thoroughly; and in the parting advice he gave him there was a warning which happily for the general good was in after years neglected. “i am going,” said bluntschli, “and you will be left alone. avoid any career in which you might become the victim of your own goodness and trust, and choose some quiet life in which you will run no risk. above all, do not take part in any important undertaking without having at your side a man who by his cool judgment, knowledge of men and things, and unshakable fidelity may be able to protect you from the dangers to which you will be exposed.”

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§ 7. when the friendship with anna schulthess had ripened into a betrothal pestalozzi spent a year in the neighbourhood of bern learning farming under a man then famous for his innovations. his new ideas pestalozzi absorbed very readily. “i had come to him,” he says, “a political visionary, though with many profound and correct attainments, views, and anticipations in matters political. i went away from him just as great an agricultural visionary, though with many enlarged and correct ideas and intentions with regard to agriculture.”

§ 8. during his “learning year” he kept up a correspondence with his betrothed, and the letters of both, which have been preserved, differ very widely from love-letters in general. of himself pestalozzi gives an account which shows that in part at least he could see himself as others saw him. “dearest,” he writes, “those of my faults which appear to me most important in relation to the situation in which i may be placed in after-life are improvidence, incautiousness, and a want of presence of mind to meet unexpected changes in my prospects.... of my great, and indeed very reprehensible negligence in all matters of etiquette, and generally in all matters which are not in themselves of importance, i need not speak; anyone may see them at first sight of me. i also owe you the open confession, my dear, that i shall always consider my duties toward my beloved partner subordinate to my duties towards my country; and that, although i shall be the tenderest husband, nevertheless, i hold myself bound to be inexorable to the tears of my wife if she should ever attempt to restrain me by them from the direct performance of my duties as a citizen, whatever this must lead to. my wife shall be the confidante of my heart, the partner of all[295] my most secret counsels. a great and honest simplicity shall reign in my house. and one thing more. my life will not pass without important and very critical undertakings. i shall not forget ... my first resolutions to devote myself wholly to my country. i shall never, from fear of man, refrain from speaking when i see that the good of my country calls upon me to speak. my whole heart is my country’s: i will risk all to alleviate the need and misery of my fellow-countrymen. what consequences may the undertakings to which i feel myself urged on draw after them! how unequal to them am i! and how imperative is my duty to show you the possibility of the great dangers which they may bring upon me! my dear, my beloved friend, i have now spoken candidly of my character and my aspirations. reflect upon everything. if the traits which it was my duty to mention diminish your respect for me, you will still esteem my sincerity, and you will not think less highly of me, that i did not take advantage of your want of acquaintance with my character for the attainment of my inmost wishes.”

§ 9. the young lady addressed was worthy of her lover. “such nobleness, such elevation of character, reach my very soul,” said she. with equal nobleness she encouraged pestalozzi in his schemes and took the consequences without a murmur during their long married life of 46 years.

§ 10. full of new ideas about farming pestalozzi now thought he saw his way to making a fortune. he took some poor land near birr not far from zurich, and persuaded a banking firm to advance money with which he proposed to cultivate vegetables and madder. in september, 1769, he was married, and six months later the[296] pair settled in a new house, “neuhof,” which pestalozzi had built on his land.

§ 11. but in spite of his excellent ideas and great industry, his speculation failed. the bankers soon withdrew their money. pestalozzi was not cautious enough for them. however, his wife’s friends prevented an immediate collapse.

§ 12. but before he had any reason to doubt the success of his speculation pestalozzi had begun to reproach himself with being engrossed by it. what had become of all his thoughts for the people? was he not spending his strength entirely to gain the prosperity of himself and his household? these thoughts came to him with all the more force when a son was born to him; and at this time they naturally connected themselves with education. he had now seen a good deal of the degraded state of the peasantry. how were they to be raised out of it?

§ 13. to pestalozzi there seemed one answer and one only. this was by education. to many people in the present day it might seem that “education,” when quite successful, would qualify labourers to become clerks. this was not the notion of pestalozzi. rousseau had completely freed him from bondage to the renascence, and education did not mean to him a training in the use of books. he looked at the children of the lowest class of the peasants and asked himself what they needed to raise them. knowledge would not do it. “the thing was not that they should know what they did not know, but that they should behave as they did not behave” (supra, p. 169); and the road to right action lay through right feeling. if they could be made conscious that they were loved and cared for, their hearts would open and give back love and respect in return. more than this, they must be taught not only to respect their elders but also[297] themselves. they must be taught to help themselves and contribute to their own maintenance. so pestalozzi resolved to take into his own house some of the very poorest children, to bring them up in an atmosphere of love, and to instruct them in field-work and spinning which would soon partly (as pestalozzi hoped, wholly) pay for their keep. thus, just at the time when the experiment for himself failed he began for others an experiment that seemed likely to add indefinitely to his difficulties.

§ 14. in the winter of 1774 the first children were taken into neuhof. the consequences to his wife and to his little son only four years old might have vanquished the courage of a less ardent philanthropist. “our position entailed much suffering on my wife;” he writes, “but nothing could shake us in our resolve to devote our time, strength and remaining fortune to the simplification of the instruction and domestic education of the people.”

§ 15. these children, at first not more than 20 in number, pestalozzi treated as his own. they worked with him in the summer in the garden and fields, in winter in the house. very little time was given to separate lessons, the children often learning while they worked with their hands. pestalozzi held that talking should come before reading and writing; and he practised them in conversation on subjects taken from their every day life. they also repeated passages from the bible till they knew them by heart.

§ 16. in a few months, as we are told, the appearance of these poor little creatures had entirely changed; though fed only on bread and vegetables they looked strong and hearty, and their faces gained an expression of cheerfulness, frankness and intelligence which till then had been totally wanting. they made good progress with their manual work[298] as well as with the associated lessons, and took pleasure in both. in all they said and did, they seemed to show their consciousness of their benefactor’s kind care of them.

§ 17. this experiment naturally drew much attention to it, and when it had gone on over a year pestalozzi was induced by his friend iselin of basel to insert in the ephemerides (a paper of which iselin was editor), an “appeal ... for an institution intended to provide education and work for poor country children.” in this appeal pestalozzi narrates his experience. “i have proved,” says he, “that it is not regular work that stops the development of so many poor children, but the turmoil and irregularity of their lives, the privations they endure, the excesses they indulge in when opportunity offers, the wild rebellious passions so seldom restrained, and the hopelessness to which they are so often a prey. i have proved that children after having lost health, strength and courage in a life of idleness and mendicity have, when once set to regular work quickly recovered their health and spirits and grown rapidly. i have found that when taken out of their abject condition they soon become kindly, trustful and sympathetic; that even the most degraded of them are touched by kindness, and that the eyes of the child who has been steeped in misery, grow bright with pleasure and surprise, when, after years of hardship, he sees a gentle friendly hand stretched out to help him; and i am convinced that when a child’s heart has been touched the consequences will be great for his development and entire moral character.”

pestalozzi therefore would have the very poorest children brought up in private establishments where agriculture and industry were combined, and where they would learn to work steadily and carefully with their hands, the chief part of their time being devoted to this manual work, and their instruction[299] and education being associated with it. and he asks for support in greatly increasing the establishment he has already begun.

§ 18. encouraged by the support he received and still more by his love for the children and his own too sanguine disposition pestalozzi enlarged his undertaking. the consequence was bankruptcy. several causes conspired to bring about this result. whatever he might do for the children, he could not educate the parents, and these were many of them beggars with the ordinary vices of their class. with the usual discernment of such people they soon came to the conclusion that pestalozzi was making a fortune out of their children’s labour; so they haunted neuhof, treated pestalozzi with the greatest insolence, and often induced their children to run away in their new clothes. this would account for much, but there was another cause of failure that accounted for a great deal more. this was pestalozzi’s extreme incapacity as an administrator. even his industrial experiment he carried on in such a way that it proved a source of expense rather than of profit. he says himself, that, contrary to his own principles, which should have led him to begin at the beginning and lay a good foundation in teaching, he put the children to work that was too difficult for them, wanted them to spin fine thread before their hands got steadiness and skill by exercise on the coarser kind, and to manufacture muslin before they could turn out well-made cotton goods. “before i was aware of it,” he adds, “i was deeply involved in debt, and the greater part of my dear wife’s property and expectations had, as it were, in an instant gone up in smoke.”

§ 19. the precise arrangement made with the creditors we do not know. the bare facts remain that the children were sent away, and that the land was let for the creditors’[300] benefit; but pestalozzi remained in the house. this was settled in 1780.

§ 20. we have now come to the most gloomy period in pestalozzi’s history, a period of eighteen years, and those the best years in a man’s life, which pestalozzi spent in great distress from poverty without and doubt and despondency within. when he got into difficulties, his friends, he tells us, loved him without hope: “in the whole surrounding district it was everywhere said that i was a lost man, that nothing more could be done for me.” “in his only too elegant country house,” we are told, “he often wanted money, bread, fuel, to protect himself against hunger and cold.” “eighteen years!—what a time for a soul like his to wait! history passes lightly over such a period. ten, twenty, thirty years—it makes but a cipher difference if nothing great happens in them. but with what agony must he have seen day after day, year after year gliding by, who in his fervent soul longed to labour for the good of mankind and yet looked in vain for the opportunity!” (palmer.)

§ 21. but he who was always ready to sacrifice himself for others now found someone, and that a stranger, ready to make a great sacrifice for him. a servant, named elizabeth naef, heard of the disaster and distress at neuhof, and her master having just died she resolved to go to the rescue. at first pestalozzi refused her help. he did not wish her to share the poverty of his household, and he felt himself out of sympathy with her “evangelical” form of piety. but elizabeth declared she had come to stay, and when pestalozzi found he could not shake her determination he consented, saying, “well, you will find after all that god is in our house also.”

§ 22. to this pious sensible but illiterate peasant woman[301] pestalozzi was fond of tracing many of his ideas. she was the original of his gertrude, and it was of her he wrote: “god’s sun pursues its path from morning to evening; yet your eye detects no movement, your ear no sound. even when it goes down, you know that it will rise again and continue to ripen the fruits of the earth. extreme as it may seem, i am not ashamed to say that this is an image of gertrude as of every woman who makes her house a temple of the living god and wins heaven for her husband and children.” (leonard and gertrude). she was invaluable at neuhof and restored comfort to the household. in after years she managed the establishment at yverdun and married one of the krüsis who were pestalozzi’s assistants.

§ 23. writing of the gloomy years at neuhof pestalozzi afterwards said; “my head was grey, yet i was still a child. with a heart in which all the foundations of life were shaken, i still pursued in those stormy times my favourite object, but my way was one of prejudice, of passion and of error.” but with pestalozzi self-depreciation had “almost grown the habit of his soul,” and in his writings at neuhof at this period we find no traces of this prejudice, passion and error from which he supposes himself to have suffered. he certainly did not abandon his love of humanity; and in his sacrifice for it he sought a religious basis. in these neuhof days he wrote: “christ teaches us by his example and doctrine to sacrifice not only our possessions but ourselves for the good of others, and shews us that nothing we have received is absolutely ours but is merely entrusted to us by god to be piously employed in the service of charity.” (quoted by guimps. r’s trans. 72.) whatever were his doubts and difficulties, he never swerved from pursuing the great object of his life, and nothing could cloud his[302] mind as to the true method of attaining that object. as he afterwards wrote to gessner (wie gertrud u.s.w.), “even while i was the sport of men who condemned me i never lost sight for a moment of the object i had in view, which was the removal of the causes of the misery that i saw on all sides of me. my strength too kept on increasing, and my own misfortunes taught me valuable truths. i knew the people as no one else did. what deceived no one else always deceived me, but what deceived everybody else deceived me no longer.... my own sufferings have enabled me to understand the sufferings of the people and their causes as no man without suffering can understand them. i suffered what the people suffered and saw them as no one else saw them; and strange as it may seem, i was never more profoundly convinced of the fundamental truths on which i had based my undertaking than when i saw that i had failed.” (r’s. guimps 74.)

§ 24. pestalozzi still had a few friends who did not despise the dreamer of dreams. among them was the editor of the ephemerides, iselin. this friend encouraged him to write, and there soon appeared in the ephemerides a series of reflexions under the title of “the evening hour of a hermit.” not many editors would have printed these aphorisms, and they attracted little or no attention at the time, but they have proved worth attending to. “the fruit of pestalozzi’s past years, they are,” says raumer, “at the same time the seed-corn of the years that were to come, the plan and key to his action in pedagogy.... the drawing of the architect of genius contains his work, even though the architect himself has not skill enough to carry out his own design.” (quoted by otto fischer).[152]

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§ 25. what was the connexion between pestalozzi’s belief at this season and complete belief in dogmatic christianity? the question is one that will always be asked and can never, i think, be fully answered. in the days[304] preceding the french revolution it was a proof of wisdom to “cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, and cling to faith,” even though the faith were “beyond the forms of faith” (see tennyson’s ancient sage). but pestalozzi did far more than this. he traced all virtue and strength in the people to belief in the fatherhood of god; and he saw in unbelief the severance of all the bonds of society. the “hermit” does not indeed use the phrases common among “evangelical” christians, but that he was indeed a christian is established not only by the general tone of his aphorisms but still more clearly by his last words: “the man of god, who with his sufferings and death has restored to humanity the lost feeling of the child’s disposition towards god is the redeemer of the world; he is the sacrificed priest of the lord; he is the mediator between god and god-forgetting mankind. his teaching is pure justice, educating philosophy of the people; it is the revelation of god the father to the lost race of his children.”

§ 26. the “evening hour” remaining almost unnoticed, pestalozzi’s friends urged him to write something in a more popular form. so he set to work on a tale which should depict the life of the peasantry and shew the causes of their[305] degradation and the cure. with extraordinary rapidity he wrote between the lines of an old account book the first part of his “leonard and gertrude.” the book, which was complete in itself, and through the good offices of iselin (of the ephemerides), soon found a publisher, suddenly sprang into immense popularity, a popularity of which nothing but the “continuations” could ever have deprived it. in the works of a great artist we see natural objects represented with perfect fidelity and yet with a life breathed into them by genius, which is wanting or at least is not visible to common eyes in the originals. just so do we find swiss peasant life depicted by pestalozzi. the delineation is evidently true to nature; and, at the same time, shows nature as she reveals herself to genius. but for this work something more than genius was necessary, viz., sympathy and love. in the preface to the first edition, he says, “in that which i here relate, and which i have, for the most part, seen and heard myself in the course of an active life, i have taken care not once to add my own opinion to what i saw and heard the people themselves saying, feeling; believing, judging, and attempting.” in a later edition (1800) he says, “i desired nothing then, and i desire nothing else now, as the object of my life, but the welfare of the people, whom i love, and whom i feel to be miserable as few feel them to be miserable, because i have with them borne their sufferings as few have borne them.”

§ 27. wherever german was read this book excited vast interest, and though it seemed to most people only a good tale, it met with some more discerning readers. the bern agricultural society sent the author their thanks and a gold medal, and pestalozzi was at once recognised as a man who understood the peasantry and had good ideas for raising[306] them. the book is and must remain a classic, but pestalozzi in his zeal to spread the truth added again and again “continuations,” and these became less and less popular in the method of exposition.[153]

§ 28. here and there we get glimpses of the trials pestalozzi had gone through in his industrial experiment. “the love and patience,” he writes, “with which gertrude bore with the disorderly and untrained little ones was almost past belief. their eyes were often anywhere but on their yarn, so that this would now be too thick, and now too thin. when they had spoiled it, they would watch for a moment when gertrude was not looking, and throw it out of the window by the handful, until they found that she discovered the trick when she weighed their work at night.” (e. c’s. trans., p. 122.) and in this connexion pestalozzi preached his doctrine of perfect attainment. “‘what you can’t do blindfold,’” said harry, “‘you can’t do at all.’” (ib.)

§ 29. “gertrude,” we are told, “seemed quite unable to explain her method in words;” and here no doubt pestalozzi was speaking of himself; but like gertrude he “would let fall some significant remark which went to the root of the whole matter of education.” as an instance we may take[307] what gertrude said to the schoolmaster: “you should do for the children what their parents fail to do for them. the reading, writing, and arithmetic are not after all what they most need. it is all well and good for them to learn something, but the really important thing for them is to be something.” when this truth is fully realized by teachers and school managers there will be some hope for national education.

§ 30. “although gertrude exerted herself to develop very early the manual dexterity of her children, she was in no haste for them to learn to read and write; but she took pains to teach them early how to speak: for, as she said, ‘of what use is it for a person to be able to read and write if he cannot speak, since reading and writing are only an artificial sort of speech.’ ... she did not adopt the tone of an instructor towards the children ... and her verbal instruction seemed to vanish in the spirit of her real activity, in which it always had its source. the result of her system was that each child was skilful, intelligent, and active to the full extent that its age and development allowed.” (ib. p. 130.)

§ 31. in this book we see that knowledge is treated as valueless unless it has a basis in action. “the pastor was soon convinced that all verbal instruction in so far as it aims at true human wisdom and at the highest goal of this wisdom, true religion, ought to be subordinated to a constant training in practical domestic labour.... so he strove to lead the children without many words to a quiet industrious life, and thus to lay the foundations of a silent worship of god and love of humanity. to this end he connected every word of his brief religious teachings with their actual every-day experience, so that when he spoke of[308] god and eternity, it seemed to them as if he were speaking of father and mother, house and home; in short of the things with which they were most familiar” (p. 156). thus he built on the foundation laid by the schoolmaster, who “cared for the children’s heads as he did for their hearts, and demanded that whatever entered them should be plain and clear as the silent moon in the sky. to insure this he taught them to see and hear with accuracy, and cultivated their powers of attention” (p. 157).

§ 32. with all his love for the children, an element of severity was not wanting. pestalozzi maintained that “love was only useful in the education of men when in conjunction with fear: for they must learn to root out thorns and thistles, which they never do of their own accord, but only under compulsion and in consequence of training” (p. 157).

§ 33. just at the end of the book “the duke” appoints a commission to report on the success of the bonal experiment, and pestalozzi makes him give the following order: “to insure thoroughness there must be among the examiners men skilled in law and finance, merchants, clergymen, government officials, schoolmasters, and physicians, besides women of different ranks and conditions of life who shall view the matter with their woman’s eyes and be sure there is nothing visionary in the background” (p. 180). in this respect pestalozzi is in advance of us still. no woman has yet sat on an educational commission.

§ 34. thus we find pestalozzi at the age of thirty-five turning author, and for the next six or seven years he worked indefatigably with his pen. most men of genius have some leading purpose which unites their varied activities, and this was specially true of pestalozzi. he never lost sight[309] of his one object, which was the elevation of the people; and this he held to be attainable only by means of education properly so called. the success of the first part of leonard and gertrude he now endeavoured to turn to account in spreading true ideas of education. with this intent he published christopher and eliza: my second book for the people (1782), which was a kind of commentary on leonard and gertrude. but the public wished to be amused, not taught; and the book was a failure. he was thus driven into the attempt already mentioned to catch the public ear by continuing leonard and gertrude, thus endangering his first and, as it proved, his only great success in literature.

§ 35. to gain circulation for his ideas he also started a weekly paper called the swiss journal, and issued it regularly throughout the year 1782; but the subscribers were so few that he was then obliged to give it up. i have not the smallest doubt that it was, as guimps says, full of wisdom, but not the kind of wisdom that readers of periodicals are likely to care for.[154]

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§ 36. in the swiss journal we get a hint of the analogy between the development of the plant and of the man. this analogy, often as it had been observed before, was never before so fruitful as it became in the hands of pestalozzi and froebel. the passage quoted by guimps is this: “teach me, summer day, that man formed from the dust of the earth, grows and ripens like the plant rooted in the soil.”

§ 37. between the close of the year 1787 and 1797 pestalozzi did not publish anything. though he had become famous, had made the acquaintance of the greatest men in germany, such as goethe, wieland, herder, and fichte, and had been declared a “citizen of the french republic,” together with bentham, tom payne, wilberforce, clarkson, washington, madison, klopstock, kozciusko, &c., he was nearly starving, and, naturally enough in that state of affairs both private and public, he was in great despondency. as we have seen, his whole life and work were founded on religion and on the only religion possible for us, the christian religion; but carried away by his political radicalism he seems at this time to have doubted whether christianity was more than the highest human wisdom. in october, 1793, he wrote to a friend in berlin: “i doubt, not because i look on doubt as the truth, but because the sum of the impressions of my life has driven faith with its blessings from my soul. thus impelled by my fate i see[311] nothing more in christianity but the purest and noblest teaching of the victory of the spirit over the flesh, the one possible means of raising our nature to its true nobility, or in other words of establishing the empire of the reason over the senses by the development of the purest feelings of the heart.” if this was the lowest point to which pestalozzi’s faith sank in the days of the revolution, it remained for practical purposes higher than the faith of most professing christians then and since.

§ 38. at this time we find him complaining: “my agriculture swallows up all my time. i am longing for winter with its leisure. my time passes like a shadow.” he was then forty-six years of age and seemed to himself to have done nothing.

§ 39. another five years he had to wait before he found an opportunity for action. during this time, impelled by fichte, he endeavoured to give his ideas philosophic completeness, and after labouring for three years with almost incredible toil he published in 1797 his “inquiry into the course of nature in the development of the human race.” this book is pronounced even by his biographer guimps to be “prolix and obscure,” and, says pestalozzi, “nobody understood me.” but even in this book there was much wisdom, had the world cared to learn; but the world had then no place for pestalozzi, and as he says at the end of this book, “without even asking whether the fault was his or another’s, it crushed him with its iron hammer as the mason crushes a useless stone.” he was, however, not actually crushed, and a place was in time found for him.

§ 40. the world might be pardoned for neglecting an inquiry which even a biographer finds “prolix and obscure.” but why could it see nothing in another book[312] which pestalozzi published in the same year, “figures to my abc book,” or according to its later title, “fables,” a series of apologues as witty and wise as those of lessing.[155]

§ 41. as i have said already (supra p. 239) there seems a marked distinction between thinkers and doers, at least in education, and we seldom find a man great in both. but with all his weakness as a practical man pestalozzi proved great both as a thinker and a doer. he not only thought out what should be done, but he also made splendid efforts to do it. his first attempt at neuhof was, as we have seen, all his own; so was the next at stanz; but afterwards he had to work with others, and the work would have come to a standstill if he had not gained the co-operation of the magistrates, the parents of the children, and his own[313] assistants. so he never again had the free hand, or at least the free thought which bore such good fruit in his enforced cessation from practice in the years between 1780 and 1798. it is well then to ask, as his biographer guimps has asked, what was the main outcome of pestalozzi’s thought before he plunged into action a second time in 1798.

§ 42. pestalozzi set himself to find a means of rescuing the people from their poverty and degradation. this he held would last as long as their moral and intellectual poverty lasted; so there was no hope except in an education that should make them better and more intelligent. in studying the children even of the most degraded parents he found the seeds, as it were, of a wealth of faculties, sentiments, tastes, and capabilities, which, if developed, might make them reasonable and upright human beings. but what was called education did nothing of the kind. instead of developing the noblest part of the child’s nature it neglected this entirely, and bringing to the child the knowledge, ideas, and feelings of others, it tried to make him “learn” them. so “education” did little beyond stifling the child’s individuality under a mass of borrowed ideas. the schoolmaster worked, as it were, from without to within. this pestalozzi would change, and make education begin in the child and work from within outwards. acting on this principle he sought for some means of developing the child’s inborn faculties, and he found as he says: “nature develops all the powers of humanity by exercising them; they increase with use.” (evening hour, aph. 22.) no means can be found of exercising the higher faculties which can be compared with the actual relations of daily life; so pestalozzi declares: “the pure sentiment of truth and wisdom is formed in the narrow circle of the relationships[314] which affect us, the circumstances which suggest our actions, and the common knowledge which we cannot do without.” and taking as his starting-point the needs, desires, and connexions of actual life he was naturally led to associate the work of the body with that of the mind, to develop industry and study side by side, to combine the workshop and the school. with regard to instruction he was never tired of insisting on the importance of thorough mastery in the first elements, and there was to be no advance till this mastery was attained. (see what “harry” says, supra p. 306.) “the schools,” he says (e. h., no. 28), “hastily substitute an artificial method of words for the truer method of nature which knows no hurry but waits.”

§ 43. in this account of pestalozzi’s doctrine before 1798 i have as usual followed m. guimps. according to him pestalozzi had discovered “a principle which settles the law of man’s development, and is the fundamental principle of education.” this principle m. guimps briefly states as follows: “all the real knowledge, useful powers, and noble sentiments that a man can acquire are but the extension of his individuality by the development of the powers and faculties that god has put in him, and by their assimilation of the elements supplied by the outer world. there exists for this development and the work of assimilation a natural and necessary order, an order which the school mostly sets at nought.”

§ 44. now we come to the period of pestalozzi’s practical activity. in 1798 switzerland was overrun by the french. everything was remodelled after the french pattern; and in conformity with the existing phase in the model country the government of switzerland was declared to be in the hands of five “directors.” pestalozzi was a radical, and[315] he at once set to work to serve the new government with his pen. the directors gladly welcomed such an ally as the author of leonard and gertrude, and they made him editor of a newspaper intended to diffuse the revolutionary principles among the people. naturally enough they supposed that he, like other people, “wanted” something; but when asked what he wanted he replied simply that he wished to be a schoolmaster. the directors, especially le grand, took a genuine interest in education, and were quite willing that pestalozzi should be allowed a free hand in his “new departure.” they therefore agreed to find the funds with which pestalozzi might open a new institution in aargau.

§ 45. but the editorship and the plans for the new institution came to an abrupt ending. the catholic cantons did not acquiesce in giving up their local liberties and being subjected to a new government in the hands of men whom they regarded as heretics and even atheists. consequently those missionaries of enlightenment, the french troops, at once fell upon them and slaughtered many without distinction of age or sex. the french, we are told, did not expect to meet with resistance; so their light became lightning and struck dead the stupid people who could not or would not see. “our soldiers” (it is michelet who speaks) “were ferocious at stanz.” (nos fils, 217). this ferocity at stanz in september, 1798, was in secret disapproved of by the directors, who were nominally responsible for it. but all they could do was to provide in a measure for the “111 infirm old people, the 169 orphans, and 237 other children,” who were left totally destitute. le grand proposed to pestalozzi that he should, for the present, give up his other plans and go to stanz (which is on[316] the lake of lucerne) to take charge of the orphan and destitute children. pestalozzi was not the man to refuse such a task as this. he at once set out. some buildings connected with an ursuline convent were, without the consent of the nuns, made over to him. workmen were employed upon them, and as soon as a single room could be inhabited pestalozzi received forty children into it. this was in january, 1799, in the middle of a remarkably cold winter.

§ 46. thus under circumstances perhaps less unfavourable than they seemed began the five months’ trial of pure pestalozzianism. the physical difficulties were immense. at first pestalozzi and all the children were shut up day and night in a single room. he had throughout no helper of any kind but one female servant, and he had to do everything for the children, even what was most menial and disgusting. as soon as possible the number was increased, and before long was nearly eighty, some of the children having to go out to sleep. but great as were the material difficulties, those arising from the opposition and hatred of the people he came to succour were still worse. to them he seemed no philanthropist, but only a servant of the devil, an agent of the wicked government which had sent its ferocious soldiers and slaughtered the parents of these poor children, a protestant who came to complete the work by destroying their souls. pestalozzi, who was making heroic efforts in their behalf, seems to have wondered at the animosity shown him by the people of stanz; but on looking back we must admit that in the circumstances it was only natural.

§ 47. and yet in spite of enormous difficulties of every kind pestalozzi triumphed. within the five months he[317] spent with them he attached to him the hearts of the children, and produced in them a marvellous physical, intellectual, and moral change. “if ever there was a miracle,” says michelet, “it was here. it was the reward of a strong faith, of a wonderful expansion of heart. he believed, he willed, he succeeded.” (nos fils 223.)

what was the great act of faith by which pestalozzi triumphed? according to m. michelet he stood before these vicious and degraded children and said, “man is good.” pestalozzi does not tell us this himself; and as a benighted believer in christianity, i venture to differ from the enlightened michelet. as far as i can judge from pestalozzi’s own teaching the source of his strength was his belief in the goodness not of man but of god.

§ 48. but encouraged and rewarded as he was by the result, pestalozzi could not long have maintained this fearful exertion. he was over fifty years of age, and he must soon have succumbed; indeed he was already spitting blood when in june, 1799, the french soldiers, whose action had brought him to stanz, drove him away again. falling back before the austrians they had need of a hospital in stanz, and demanded the buildings occupied by pestalozzi and the children. so almost all the children had to be sent away, and then at last pestalozzi took thought for his own health and retired to some baths in the mountains. but most of his peculiarities in teaching may be said to date from the experience at stanz; and i will therefore give this experience in his own words.

§ 49. the following is the account given in his letter to his friend gessner. (i have in part availed myself of mr. russell’s translation of guimps, pp. 149 ff.)

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“my friend, once more i awake from a dream; once more i see my work destroyed, and my failing strength wasted.

“but, however weak and unfortunate my attempt, a friend of humanity will not grudge a few moments to consider the reasons which convince me that some day a more fortunate posterity will certainly take up the thread of my hopes at the place where it is now broken....

“i once more made known, as well as i could, my old wishes for the education of the people. in particular, i laid my whole scheme before legrand (then one of the directors), who not only took a warm interest in it, but agreed with me that the republic stood in urgent need of a reform of public education. he also agreed with me that much might be done for the regeneration of the people by giving a certain number of the poorest children an education which should be complete, but which, far from lifting them out of their proper sphere, would but attach them the more strongly to it.

“i limited my desires to this one point, legrand helping me in every possible way. he even thought my views so important that he once said to me: ‘i shall not willingly give up my present post till you have begun your work.’ ...

“it was my intention to try to find near zurich or in aargau a place where i should be able to join industry and agriculture to the other means of instruction, and so give my establishment all the development necessary to its complete success. but the unterwalden disaster (september, 1798) left me no further choice in the matter. the government felt the urgent need of sending help to this unfortunate district, and begged me for this once to make an attempt to put my plans into execution in a place where almost everything that could have made it a success was wanting.

“i went there gladly. i felt that the innocence of the people would make up for what was wanting, and that their distress would, at any rate, make them grateful.

“my eagerness to realise at last the great dream of my life would have led me to work on the very highest peaks of the alps, and, so to speak, without fire or water.

“for a house, the government made over to me the new part of the ursuline convent at stanz, but when i arrived it was still uncompleted, and not in any way fitted to receive a large number of children. before anything else could be done, then, the house itself had to be got ready.[319] the government gave the necessary orders, and rengger pushed on the work with much zeal and useful activity. i was never indeed allowed to want for money.

“in spite, however, of the admirable support i received, all this preparation took time, and time was precisely what we could least afford, since it was of the highest importance that a number of children, whom the war had left homeless and destitute, should be received at once.

“i was still without everything but money when the children crowded in; neither kitchen, rooms, nor beds were ready to receive them. at first this was a source of inconceivable confusion. for the first few weeks i was shut up in a very small room; the weather was bad, and the alterations, which made a great dust and filled the corridors with rubbish, rendered the air very unhealthy.

“the want of beds compelled me at first to send some of the poor children home at night; these children generally came back the next day covered with vermin. most of them on their arrival were very degenerated specimens of humanity. many of them had a sort of chronic skin-disease, which almost prevented their walking, or sores on their heads, or rags full of vermin; many were almost skeletons, with haggard, careworn faces, and shrinking looks; some brazen, accustomed to begging, hypocrisy, and all sorts of deceit; others broken by misfortune, patient, suspicious, timid, and entirely devoid of affection. there were also some spoilt children amongst them who had known the sweets of comfort, and were therefore full of pretensions. these kept to themselves, affected to despise the little beggars their comrades, and to suffer from this equality, and seemed to find it impossible to adapt themselves to the ways of the house, which differed too much from their old habits. but what was common to them all was a persistent idleness, resulting from their want of physical and mental activity. out of every ten children there was hardly one who knew his a b c; as for any other knowledge, it was, of course, out of the question.

“the entire absence of school learning was what troubled me least, for i trusted in the natural powers that god bestows on even the poorest and most neglected children. i had observed for a long time that behind their coarseness, shyness, and apparent incapacity, are hidden the finest faculties, the most precious powers; and now, even amongst[320] these poor creatures by whom i was surrounded at stanz, marked natural abilities soon began to show themselves. i knew how useful the common needs of life are in teaching men the relations of things, in bringing out their natural intelligence, in forming their judgment, and in arousing faculties which, buried, as it were, beneath the coarser elements of their nature, cannot become active and useful till they are set free. it was my object then to set free these faculties, and bring them to bear on the pure and simple circumstances of domestic life, for i was convinced this was all that was wanting, and these natural faculties would shew themselves capable of raising the hearts and minds of my pupils to all that i could desire.

“i saw then how my wishes might be carried out; and i was persuaded that my affection would change the state of my children just as quickly as the spring sun would awake to new life the earth that winter had benumbed. i was not deceiving myself: before the spring sun melted the snow of our mountains my children were hardly to be recognised.

“but i must not anticipate. just as in the evening i often mark the quick growth of the gourd by the side of the house, so i want you to mark the growth of my plant; and, my friend, i will not hide from you the worm which sometimes fastens on the leaves, sometimes even on the heart.

“i opened the establishment with no other helper but a woman-servant. i had not only to teach the children, but to look after their physical needs. i preferred being alone, and, unfortunately, it was the only way to reach my end. no one in the world would have cared to enter into my views for the education of children, and at that time i knew scarcely any one even capable of it.

“in proportion as the men whom i might have called to my aid were highly educated just so far they failed to understand me, and were incapable of confining themselves even in theory to the simple starting-points which i sought to come back to. all their views about the organisation and requirements of the enterprise differed entirely from mine. what they specially objected to was the notion that the enterprise might be carried out without the aid of any artificial means, and simply by the influence of nature in the environment of the children, and by the activity aroused in them by the needs of their daily life.

“and yet it was precisely upon this idea that i based all my hope of success; it was, as it were, a basis for innumerable other points of view.

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“experienced teachers, then, could not help me; still less boorish, ignorant men. i had nothing to put into the hands of assistants to guide them, nor any results or apparatus by which i could make my ideas clearer to them. thus, whether i would or no, i had first to make my experiment alone, and collect facts to illustrate the essential features of my system before i could venture to look for outside help. indeed, in my then position, nobody could help me. i knew that i must help myself and shaped my plans accordingly.

“i wanted to prove by my experiment that if public education is to have any real value for humanity, it must imitate the means which make the merit of domestic education; for it is my opinion that if school teaching does not take into consideration the circumstances of family life, and everything else that bears on a man’s general education, it can only lead to an artificial and methodical dwarfing of humanity.

“in any good education, the mother must be able to judge daily, nay hourly, from the child’s eyes, lips, and face, of the slightest change in his soul. the power of the educator, too, must be that of a father, quickened by the general circumstances of domestic life.

“such was the foundation upon which i built. i determined that there should not be a minute in the day when my children should not be aware from my face and my lips that my heart was theirs, that their happiness was my happiness, and their pleasures my pleasures.

“man readily accepts what is good, and the child readily listens to it; but it is not for you that he wants it, master and educator, but for himself. the good to which you would lead him must not depend on your capricious humour or passion; it must be a good which is good in itself and by the nature of things, and which the child can recognize as good. he must feel the necessity of your will in things which concern his comfort before he can be expected to obey it.

“whatever he does gladly, whatever gains him credit, whatever tends to accomplish his great hopes, whatever awakens his powers and enables him truly to say i can, all this he wills.

“but this will is not aroused by words; it is aroused only by a kind of complete culture which gives feelings and powers. words do not give the thing itself, but only an expression, a clear picture, of the thing which we already have in our minds.

“before all things i was bound to gain the confidence and the love of the children. i was sure that if i succeeded in this all the rest[322] would come of itself. friend, only think how i was placed, and how great were the prejudices of the people and of the children themselves, and you will comprehend what difficulties i had to overcome.”

after narrating what we already know he goes on:

“think, my friend, of this temper of the people, of my weakness, of my poor appearance, of the ill-will to which i was almost publicly exposed, and then judge how much i had to endure for the sake of carrying on my work.

“and yet, however painful this want of help and support was to me, it was favourable to the success of my undertaking, for it compelled me to be always everything for my children. i was alone with them from morning till night. it was from me that they received all that could do them good, soul and body. all needful help, consolation, and instruction they received direct from me. their hands were in mine, my eyes were fixed on theirs.

“we wept and smiled together. they forgot the world and stanz; they only knew that they were with me and i with them. we shared our food and drink. i had about me neither family, friends, nor servants; nothing but them. i was with them in sickness, and in health, and when they slept. i was the last to go to bed, and the first to get up. in the bedroom i prayed with them, and, at their own request, taught them till they fell asleep. their clothes and bodies were intolerably filthy, but i looked after both myself, and was thus constantly exposed to the risk of contagion.

“this is how it was that these children gradually became so attached to me, some indeed so deeply that they contradicted their parents and friends when they heard evil things said about me. they felt that i was being treated unfairly, and loved me, i think, the more for it. but of what avail is it for the young nestlings to love their mother when the bird of prey that is bent on destroying them is constantly hovering near?

“however, the first results of these principles and of this line of action were not always satisfactory, nor, indeed, could they be so. the children did not always understand my love. accustomed to idleness, unbounded liberty, and the fortuitous and lawless pleasures of an almost wild life, they had come to the convent in the expectation of being well fed, and of having nothing to do. some of them soon discovered that they had been there long enough, and wanted to go away again; they talked of the school fever that attacks children when[323] they are kept employed all day long. this dissatisfaction, which showed itself during the first months, resulted principally from the fact that many of them were ill, the consequence either of the sudden change of diet and habits, or of the severity of the weather and the dampness of the building in which we lived. we all coughed a great deal, and several children were seized with a peculiar sort of fever. this fever, which always began with sickness, was very general in the district. cases of sickness, however, not followed by fever, were not at all rare, and were an almost natural consequence of the change of food. many people attributed the fever to bad food, but the facts soon showed them to be wrong, for not a single child succumbed.

“on the return of spring it was evident to everybody that the children were all doing well, growing rapidly, and gaining colour. certain magistrates and ecclesiastics, who saw them some time afterwards, stated that they had improved almost beyond recognition....

“months passed before i had the satisfaction of having my hand grasped by a single grateful parent. but the children were won over much sooner. they even wept sometimes when their parents met me or left me without a word of salutation. many of them were perfectly happy, and used to say to their mothers: ‘i am better here than at home.’ at home, indeed, as they readily told me when we talked alone, they had been ill-used and beaten, and had often had neither bread to eat nor bed to lie down upon. and yet these same children would sometimes go off with their mothers the very next morning.

“a good many others, however, soon saw that by staying with me they might both learn something and become something, and these never failed in their zeal and attachment. before very long their conduct was imitated by others who had not altogether the same feelings.

“those who ran away were the worst in character and the least capable. but they were not incited to go till they were free of their vermin and their rags. several were sent to me with no other purpose than that of being taken away again as soon as they were clean and well clothed.

“but after a time their better judgment overcame the defiant hostility with which they arrived. in 1799[156] i had nearly eighty children. most of them were bright and intelligent, some even remarkably so.

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“for most of them study was something entirely new. as soon as they found that they could learn, their zeal was indefatigable, and in a few weeks children who had never before opened a book, and could hardly repeat a pater noster or an ave, would study the whole day long with the keenest interest. even after supper, when i used to say to them, ‘children, will you go to bed, or learn something?’ they would generally answer, especially in the first month or two, ‘learn something.’ it is true that afterwards, when they had to get up very early, it was not quite the same.

“but this first eagerness did much towards starting the establishment on the right lines, and making the studies the success they ultimately were, a success indeed, which far surpassed my expectations. and yet great beyond expression were my difficulties. i did not as yet find it possible to organise the studies properly.

“neither my trust nor my zeal had been able to overcome either the intractability of individuals or the want of coherence in the whole experiment. the general order of the establishment, i felt, must be based upon order of a higher character. as this higher order did not yet exist, i had to attempt to create it; for without this foundation i could not hope to organise properly either the teaching or the general management of the place, nor should i have wished to do so. i wanted everything to result not from a preconceived plan, but from my relations with the children. the high principles and educating forces i was seeking, i looked for from the harmonious common life of my children, from their common attention, activity, and needs. it was not, then, from any external organisation that i looked for the regeneration of which they stood so much in need. if i had employed constraint, regulations, and lectures, i should, instead of winning and ennobling my children’s hearts, have repelled them and made them bitter, and thus been farther than ever from my aim. first of all, i had to arouse in them pure, moral, and noble feelings, so that afterwards, in external things, i might be sure of their ready attention, activity, and obedience. i had, in short, to follow the high precept of jesus christ, ‘cleanse first that which is within, that the outside may be clean also; and if ever the truth of this precept was made manifest, it was made manifest then.

“my one aim was to make their new life in common, and their new powers, awaken a feeling of brotherhood amongst the children, and make them affectionate, just, and considerate.

[325]

“i was successful in gaining my aims. amongst these seventy wild beggar-children there soon existed such peace, friendship, and cordial relations as are rare even between actual brothers and sisters.

“the principle to which i endeavoured to conform all my conduct was as follows: endeavour, first, to broaden your children’s sympathies, and, by satisfying their daily needs, to bring love and kindness into such unceasing contact with their impressions and their activity, that these sentiments may be engrafted in their hearts; then try to give them such judgment and tact as will enable them to make a wise, sure, and abundant use of these virtues in the circle which surrounds them. in the last place, do not hesitate to touch on the difficult questions of good and evil, and the words connected with them. and you must do this especially in connection with the ordinary events of every day, upon which your whole teaching in these matters must be founded, so that the children may be reminded of their own feelings, and supplied, as it were, with solid facts upon which to base their conception of the beauty and justice of the moral life. even though you should have to spend whole nights in trying to express in two words what others say in twenty, never regret the loss of sleep.

“i gave my children very few explanations; i taught them neither morality nor religion. but sometimes, when they were perfectly quiet, i used to say to them, ‘do you not think that you are better and more reasonable when you are like this than when you are making a noise?’ when they clung round my neck and called me their father, i used to say, ‘my children, would it be right to deceive your father? after kissing me like this, would you like to do anything behind my back to vex me?’ when our talk turned on the misery of the country, and they were feeling glad at the thought of their own happier lot, i would say, ‘how good god is to have given man a compassionate heart!’ ... they perfectly understood that all they did was but a preparation for their future activity, and they looked forward to happiness as the certain result of their perseverance. that is why steady application soon became easy to them, its object being in perfect accordance with their wishes and their hopes. virtue, my friend, is developed by this agreement, just as the young plant thrives when the soil suits its nature, and supplies the needs of its tender shoots.

“i witnessed the growth of an inward strength in my children, which, in its general development, far surpassed my expectations, and[326] in its particular manifestations not only often surprised me, but touched me deeply.

“when the neighbouring town of altdorf was burnt down, i gathered the children round me, and said, ‘altdorf has been burnt down; perhaps, at this very moment, there are a hundred children there without home, food, or clothes; will you not ask our good government to let twenty of them come and live with us?’ i still seem to see the emotion with which they answered, ‘oh, yes, yes!’ ‘but, my children,’ i said, ‘think well of what you are asking! even now we have scarcely money enough, and it is not at all certain that if these poor children came to us, the government would give us any more than they do at present, so that you might have to work harder, and share your clothes with these children, and sometimes perhaps go without food. do not say, then, that you would like them to come unless you are quite prepared for all these consequences.’ after having spoken to them in this way as seriously as i could, i made them repeat all i had said, to be quite sure that they had thoroughly understood what the consequences of their request would be. but they were not in the least shaken in their decision, and all repeated, ‘yes, yes, we are quite ready to work harder, eat less, and share our clothes, for we want them to come.’

“some refugees from the grisons having given me a few crowns for my poor children, i at once called them and said, ‘these men are obliged to leave their country; they hardly know where they will find a home to-morrow, yet, in spite of their trouble, they have given me this for you. come and thank them.’ and the emotion of the children brought tears to the eyes of the refugees.

“it was in this way that i strove to awaken the feeling of each virtue before talking about it, for i thought it unwise to talk to children on subjects which would compel them to speak without thoroughly understanding what they were saying.

“i followed up this awakening of the sentiments by exercises intended to teach the children self-control, so that all that was good in them might be applied to the practical questions of every-day life.

“it will easily be understood that, in this respect, it was not possible to organise any system of discipline for the establishment; that could only come slowly, as the general work developed.

“silence, as an aid to application, is perhaps the great secret of such[327] an institution. i found it very useful to insist on silence when i was teaching, and also to pay particular attention to the attitude of my children. i succeeded so well that the moment i asked for silence, i could teach in quite a low voice. the children repeated my words all together; and as there was no other sound, i was able to detect the slightest mistakes of pronunciation. it is true that this was not always so. sometimes, whilst they repeated sentences after me, i would ask them as if in fun to keep their eyes fixed on their middle fingers. it is hardly credible how useful simple things of this sort sometimes are as means to the very highest ends.

“one young girl, for instance, who had been little better than a savage, by keeping her head and body upright, and not looking about, made more progress in her moral education than any one would have believed possible.

“these experiences have shown me that the mere habit of carrying oneself well does much more for the education of the moral sentiments than any amount of teaching and lectures in which this simple fact is ignored.

“thanks to the application of these principles, my children soon became more open, more contented and more susceptible to every good and noble influence than any one could possibly have foreseen when they first came to me, so utterly devoid were they of ideas, good feelings, and moral principles. as a matter of fact, this lack of previous instruction was not a serious obstacle to me; indeed, it hardly troubled me at all. i am inclined even to say that, in the simple method i was following, it was often an advantage, for i had incomparably less trouble to develop those children whose minds were still blank, than those who had already acquired inaccurate ideas. the former, too, were much more open than the latter to the influence of all pure and simple sentiments.

“but when the children were obdurate and churlish, then i was severe, and made use of corporal punishment.

“my dear friend, the pedagogical principle which says that we must win the hearts and minds of our children by words alone without having recourse to corporal punishment, is certainly good, and applicable under favourable conditions and circumstances; but with children of such widely different ages as mine, children for the most part beggars, and all full of deeply-rooted faults, a certain amount of corporal punishment[328] was inevitable, especially as i was anxious to arrive surely, speedily, and by the simplest means, at gaining an influence over them all, for the sake of putting them all in the right road. i was compelled to punish them, but it would be a mistake to suppose that i thereby, in any way, lost the confidence of my pupils.

“it is not the rare and isolated actions that form the opinions and feelings of children, but the impressions of every day and every hour. from such impressions they judge whether we are kindly disposed towards them or not, and this settles their general attitude towards us. their judgment of isolated actions depends upon this general attitude.

“this is how it is that punishments inflicted by parents rarely make a bad impression. but it is quite different with schoolmasters and teachers who are not with their children night and day, and have none of those relations with them which result from life in common.

“my punishments never produced obstinacy; the children i had beaten were quite satisfied if a moment afterwards i gave them my hand and kissed them, and i could read in their eyes that the final effect of my blows was really joy. the following is a striking instance of the effect this sort of punishment sometimes had. one day one of the children i liked best, taking advantage of my affection, unjustly threatened one of his companions. i was very indignant, and my hand did not spare him. he seemed at first almost broken-hearted, and cried bitterly for at least a quarter of an hour. when i had gone out, however, he got up, and going to the boy he had ill-treated, begged his pardon, and thanked him for having spoken about his bad conduct. my friend, this was no comedy; the child had never seen anything like it before.

“it was impossible that this sort of treatment should produce a bad impression on my children, because all day long i was giving them proofs of my affection and devotion. they could not misread my heart, and so they did not misjudge my actions. it was not the same with the parents, friends, strangers, and teachers who visited us; but that was natural. but i cared nothing for the opinion of the whole world, provided my children understood me.

“i always did my best, therefore, to make them clearly understand the motives of my actions in all matters likely to excite their attention and interest. this, my friend, brings me to the consideration of the moral means to be employed in a truly domestic education.

[329]

“elementary moral education, considered as a whole, includes three distinct parts: the children’s moral sense must first be aroused by their feelings being made active and pure; then they must be exercised in self-control, so that they may give themselves to that which is right and good; finally they must be brought to form for themselves, by reflection and comparison, a just notion of the moral rights and duties which are theirs by reason of their position and surroundings.

“so far, i have pointed out some of the means i employed to reach the first two of these ends. they were just as simple for the third; for i still made use of the impressions and experiences of their daily life to give my children a true and exact idea of right and duty. when, for instance, they made a noise, i appealed to their own judgment, and asked them if it was possible to learn under such conditions. i shall never forget how strong and true i generally found their sense of justice and reason, and how this sense increased and, as it were, established their good will.

“i appealed to them in all matters that concerned the establishment. it was generally in the quiet evening hours that i appealed to their free judgment. when, for instance, it was reported in the village that they had not enough to eat, i said to them, ‘tell me, my children, if you are not better fed than you were at home? think, and tell me yourselves, whether it would be well to keep you here in such a way as would make it impossible for you afterwards, in spite of all your application and hard work, to procure what you had become accustomed to. do you lack anything that is really necessary? do you think that i could reasonably and justly do more for you? would you have me spend all the money that is entrusted to me on thirty or forty children instead of on eighty as at present? would that be just?’

“in the same way, when i heard that it was reported that i punished them too severely, i said to them: ‘you know how i love you, my children; but tell me would you like me to stop punishing you? do you think that in any other way i can free you from your deeply-rooted bad habits, or make you always mind what i say?’ you were there, my friend, and saw with your own eyes the sincere emotion with which they answered, ‘we don’t complain about your hitting us. we wish we never deserved it. but we want to be punished when we do wrong.’

“many things that make no difference in a small household could not be tolerated where the numbers were so great. i tried to make[330] my children feel this, always leaving them to decide what could or could not be allowed. it is true that in my intercourse with them i never spoke of liberty or equality; but, at the same time, i encouraged them as far as possible to be free and unconstrained in my presence, with the result that every day i marked more and more that clear open look in their eyes which, in my experience, is the sign of a really liberal education. i could not bear the thought of betraying the trust in me which i saw shining in their eyes; i strove constantly to strengthen it and at the same time their free individuality, that nothing might happen to trouble those angel-eyes, the sight of which caused me the most intense delight. but i could not endure frowns and anxious looks; i myself smoothed away the frowns; then the children smiled, and even among themselves they took care not to shew frowning faces.

“by reason of their great number, i had occasion nearly every day to point out the difference between good and evil, justice and injustice. good and evil are equally contagious amongst so many children, so that, according as the good or bad sentiments spread, the establishment was likely to become either much better or much worse than if it had only contained a smaller number. about this, too, i talked to them frankly. i shall never forget the impression that my words produced when, in speaking of a certain disturbance that had taken place among them, i said, ‘my children, it is the same with us as with every other household; when the children are numerous, and each gives way to his bad habits, the disorder becomes such that the weakest mother is driven to take sensible measures in bringing up her children, and make them submit to what is just and right. and that is what i must do now. if you do not willingly assist in the maintenance of order, our establishment cannot go on, you will fall back into your former condition, and your misery—now that you have been accustomed to a good home, clean clothes, and regular food—will be greater than ever. in this world, my children, necessity and conviction alone can teach a man to behave; when both fail him, he is hateful. think for a moment what you would become if you were safe from want and cared nothing for right, justice, or goodness. at home there was always some one who looked after you, and poverty itself forced you to many a right action; but with convictions and reason to guide you, you will rise far higher than by following necessity alone.’

“i often spoke to them in this way without troubling in the least[331] whether they each understood every word, feeling quite sure that they all caught the general sense of what i said....

“here are a few more thoughts which produced a great impression on my children: ‘do you know anything greater or nobler than to give counsel to the poor, and comfort to the unfortunate? but if you remain ignorant and incapable, you will be obliged, in spite of your good heart, to let things take their course; whereas, if you acquire knowledge and power, you will be able to give good advice, and save many a man from misery.’

“i have generally found that great, noble, and high thoughts are indispensable for developing wisdom and firmness of character.

“such an instruction must be complete in the sense that it must take account of all our aptitudes and all our circumstances; it must be conducted, too, in a truly psychological spirit, that is to say, simply, lovingly, energetically, and calmly. then, by its very nature, it produces an enlightened and delicate feeling for everything true and good, and brings to light a number of accessory and dependent truths, which are forthwith accepted and assimilated by the human soul, even in the case of those who could not express these truths in words.

“i believe that the first development of thought in the child is very much disturbed by a wordy system of teaching, which is not adapted either to his faculties or the circumstances of his life. according to my experience, success depends upon whether what is taught to children commends itself to them as true through being closely connected with their own personal observation and experience....

“i knew no other order, method, or art, but that which resulted naturally from my children’s conviction of my love for them, nor did i care to know any other.

“thus i subordinated the instruction of my children to a higher aim, which was to arouse and strengthen their best sentiments by the relations of every-day life as they existed between themselves and me....

“as a general rule i attached little importance to the study of words, even when explanations of the ideas they represented were given.

“i tried to connect study with manual labour, the school with the workshop, and make one thing of them. but i was the less able to do this as staff, material, and tools were all wanting. a short time only before the close of the establishment, a few children had begun to spin;[332] and i saw clearly that, before any fusion could be effected, the two parts must be firmly established separately—study, that is, on the one hand, and labour on the other.

“but in the work of the children i was already inclined to care less for the immediate gain than for the physical training which, by developing their strength and skill, was bound to supply them later with a means of livelihood. in the same way i considered that what is generally called the instruction of children should be merely an exercise of the faculties, and i felt it important to exercise the attention, observation, and memory first, so as to strengthen these faculties before calling into play the art of judging and reasoning; this, in my opinion, was the best way to avoid turning out that sort of superficial and presumptuous talker, whose false judgments are often more fatal to the happiness and progress of humanity than the ignorance of simple people of good sense.

“guided by these principles, i sought less at first to teach my children to spell, read, and write than to make use of these exercises for the purpose of giving their minds as full and as varied a development as possible....

“in natural history they were very quick in corroborating what i taught them by their own personal observations on plants and animals. i am quite sure that, by continuing in this way, i should soon have been able not only to give them such a general acquaintance with the subject as would have been useful in any vocation, but also to put them in a position to carry on their education themselves by means of their daily observations and experiences; and i should have been able to do all this without going outside the very restricted sphere to which they were confined by the actual circumstances of their lives. i hold it to be extremely important that men should be encouraged to learn by themselves and allowed to develop freely. it is in this way alone that the diversity of individual talent is produced and made evident.

“i always made the children learn perfectly even the least important things, and i never allowed them to lose ground; a word once learnt, for instance, was never to be forgotten, and a letter once well written never to be written badly again. i was very patient with all who were weak or slow, but very severe with those who did anything less well than they had done it before.

“the number and inequality of my children rendered my task easier.[333] just as in a family the eldest and cleverest child readily shows what he knows to his younger brothers and sisters, and feels proud and happy to be able to take his mother’s place for a moment, so my children were delighted when they knew something that they could teach others. a sentiment of honour awoke in them, and they learned twice as well by making the younger ones repeat their words. in this way i soon had helpers and collaborators amongst the children themselves. when i was teaching them to spell difficult words by heart, i used to allow any child who succeeded in saying one properly to teach it to the others. these child-helpers, whom i had formed from the very outset, and who had followed my method step by step, were certainly much more useful to me than any regular schoolmasters could have been.

“i myself learned with the children. our whole system was so simple and so natural that i should have had difficulty in finding a master who would not have thought it undignified to learn and teach as i was doing....

“you will hardly believe that it was the capuchin friars and the nuns of the convent that showed the greatest sympathy with my work. few people, except truttman, took any active interest in it. those from whom i had hoped most were too deeply engrossed with their high political affairs to think of our little institution as having the least degree of importance.

“such were my dreams; but at the very moment that i seemed to be on the point of realizing them, i had to leave stanz.”

§ 50. heroic efforts rise above the measurement of time. as byron has said, “a thought is capable of years,” and it seldom happens that the nobleness of any human action depends on the time it lasts. pestalozzi’s five months’ experiment at stanz proved one of the most memorable events in the history of education. he was now completely satisfied that he saw his way to giving children a right education and “thus raising the beggar out of the dung-hill”; and seeing the right course he was urged by his love of the people into taking it. but how was he to set to work? his notions of school instruction differed entirely from[334] those of the teaching profession; and even in the revolutionary age they had some reason for looking askance at this revolutionist. “he had everything against him,” we read, “thick, indistinct speech, bad writing, ignorance of drawing, scorn of grammatical learning. he had studied various branches of natural history, but without any particular attention either to classification or terminology. he was conversant with the ordinary operations in arithmetic, but he would have had difficulty in getting through a really long sum in multiplication or division; and he probably had never tried to work out a problem in geometry. for years this dreamer had read no books. but instead of the usual knowledge that any young man of ordinary talent can acquire in a year or two, he understood thoroughly what most masters were entirely ignorant of—the mind of man and the laws of its development, human affections and the art of arousing and ennobling them. he seemed to have almost an intuitive insight into the development of human nature, and was never tired of contemplating it.” (c. monnard in r.’s guimps, p. 174.)[157]

§ 51. this man wished to be a schoolmaster, but who would venture to entrust him with a school? no one seemed willing to do this; and he would have been at a loss where to turn had he not had influential friends at burgdorf, a town not far from bern. these got for him permission to teach, not indeed the children of burgesses but[335] the children of non-burgesses, seventy-three of whom used to assemble under a shoemaker in his house in the suburbs. with this arrangement, however, the shoemaker and the parents of the children were by no means satisfied. “if the burgesses like the new method,” they said very reasonably, “let them try it on their own children.” their grumbling was heard, and permission to teach was withdrawn from pestalozzi.

§ 52. the check, however, was only temporary. his friends were wiser than the shoemaker, and they procured for him admission into the lowest class of the school for burghers’ children. in this class there were about 25 children, boys and girls between the ages of 5 and 8. here he proved that he was vastly different from a mere dreamer. after teaching these children in his own way for eight months he received the first official recognition of the merits of his system. the burgdorf school commission after the usual examination, wrote a public letter to pestalozzi, in which they said: “the surprising progress of your little scholars of various capacities shews plainly that every one is good for something, if the teacher knows how to get at his abilities and develop them according to the laws of psychology. by your method of teaching you have proved how to lay the groundwork of instruction in such a way that it may afterwards support what is built on it.... between the ages of 5 and 8, a period in which according to the system of torture enforced hitherto, children have learnt to know their letters, to spell and read, your scholars have not only accomplished all this with a success as yet unknown, but the best of them have already distinguished themselves by their good writing, drawing, and calculating. in them all you have been able so to arouse and excite a liking for history, natural history,[336] mensuration, geography, &c., that thus future teachers must find their task a far easier one if they only know how to make good use of the preparatory stage the children have gone through with you” (morf, pt. i, p. 223).

§ 53. in consequence of this report, pestalozzi in june 1800 was made master of the second school of burgdorf, a school numbering about 70 boys and girls from 10 to 16 years old. with them pestalozzi did not get on so well. ramsauer, a poor boy of 10 who afterwards helped pestalozzi at yverdun and became one of his best teachers, has left us his remembrances. two things seemed clear to the child’s mind: 1st, that their teacher was very kind but very unhappy; 2nd, that the pupils did not learn anything and behaved very badly. many schoolmasters have smiled in derision at this account of pestalozzi’s actual teaching; but in reading it several things should be borne in mind. first ramsauer as a child would have a keen eye and good memory for the master’s eccentricities; but how far the teaching succeeded he could not judge, for he did not know what it aimed at. then again he saw that pestalozzi’s zeal was for the whole school, not for individual scholars. but the child who knew of nothing beyond burgdorf could not tell that pestalozzi was thinking not so much of the children of burgdorf as of the children of europe. for burgdorf—whether it was pleased to honour or to dismiss pestalozzi—could not contain him. his aims extended beyond the town, beyond canton bern, beyond switzerland even; and he was consumed with zeal to bring about a radical change in elementary education throughout europe. the truth which was burning within him he has himself expressed as follows:

“if we desire to aid the poor man, the very lowest among the people, this can be done in one way only, that is, by[337] changing his schools into true places of education, in which the moral, intellectual, and physical powers which god has put into our nature may be drawn out, so that the man may be enabled to live a life such as a man should live, contented in himself and satisfying other people. thus and only thus does the man, whom in god’s wide world nobody helps and nobody can help, learn to help himself.” “the public common school-coach throughout europe must not simply be better horsed, but still more it must be turned round and be brought on to an entirely new road.” (quoted by morf, p. i, p. 211.)

§ 54. pestalozzi was now working heart and soul at the engineering of this “new road.” his grand successes hitherto had been gained more by the heart than by the head; but the school course must draw out the faculties of the head as well as of the heart. pestalozzi made all instruction start from what children observed for themselves. “i laid special stress,” he says, “on just what usually affected their senses. and as i dwelt much on elementary knowledge, i wanted to know when the child receives its first lesson, and i soon came to the conviction that the first hour of learning dates from birth. from the very moment that the child’s senses open to the impressions of nature, nature teaches it. its new life is but the faculty, now come to maturity, of receiving impressions; it is the awakening of the germs now perfect which will go on using all their forces and energies to secure the development of their proper organisation; it is the awakening of the animal now complete which will and shall become a man. so the sole instruction given to the human being consists merely in the art of giving a helping hand to this natural tendency towards its proper development; and this art consists essentially in the means[338] of putting the child’s impressions in connexion and harmony with the precise degree of development the child has reached. there must be then in the impressions to be given him by instruction, a regular gradation; and the beginning and the progress of his various knowledges must exactly correspond with the beginning and increase in his powers as they are developed. from this i soon saw that this gradation must be ascertained for all the branches of human knowledge, especially for those fundamental notions from which our thinking power takes its rise. on such principles and no others is it possible to construct real school books and books about teaching” (wie gertrud, &c., letter i.).

§ 55. in endeavouring to put teaching, as he said, “on a psychological basis,” pestalozzi compared it to a mechanism. on one occasion when expounding his views, he was interrupted by the exclamation, “vous voulez mécaniser l’éducation!” pestalozzi was weak in french, and he took these words to mean, “you wish to get at the mechanism of education.” he accordingly assented, and was in his turn misunderstood. soon afterwards he endeavoured to express the new thing by a new word and said, “ich will den menschlichen unterricht psychologisieren; i wish to psychologise instruction,” and this he explains to mean that he sought to make instruction fall in with the eternal laws which govern the development of the human intellect (morf, i, p. 227). but this was a task which no one man could accomplish, not even pestalozzi. the eternal laws which govern the development of mind have not been completely ascertained even after investigations carried on during thousands of years; and pestalozzi did not know what had been established by previous thinkers. he made a gigantic effort to find both the laws and their application,[339] but if he had continued to stand alone he could have done but little. happily he attracted to him some young and vigorous assistants, who caught his enthusiasm and worked in his spirit. they did much, but there was one thing the master could not communicate—his genius.

§ 56. just at this time, before pestalozzi found associates in his work, he drew up for a “society of friends of education” an account of his method; and this begins with the words i have already quoted, “i want to psychologise education.” basing all instruction on anschauung (which is nearly equivalent to the child’s own observation), he explains how this may be used for a series of exercises, and he takes as the general elements of culture the following: language, drawing, writing, arithmetic, and the art of measuring. in the education of the poor he would lay special stress on the importance of two things, then and since much neglected, viz., singing and the sense of the beautiful. the mother’s cradle song should begin a series leading up to hymns of praise to god. education should develop in all a sense of the beauties of nature. “nature is full of lovely sights, yet europe has done nothing either to awaken in the poor a sense for these beauties, or to arrange them in such a way as to produce a series of impressions capable of developing this sense.... if ever popular education should cease to be the barbarous absurdity it now is, and put itself into harmony with the real needs of our nature, this want will be supplied.” (r.’s guimps, 186.)

§ 57. in the last year of the eighteenth century (1800) pestalozzi was toiling away, constant to his purpose but not clearly seeing the road before him. in march, 1800, he wrote to zschokke: “for thirty years my life has been a well-nigh[340] hopeless struggle against the most frightful poverty.... for thirty years i have had to forego many of the barest necessaries of life, and have had to shun the society of my fellow-men from sheer lack of decent clothes. many and many a time have i gone without a dinner and eaten in bitterness a dry crust of bread on the road at a time when even the poorest were seated round a table. all this i have suffered and am still suffering to-day, and with no other object than the realization of my plans for helping the poor” (r.’s guimps, 189). it was clear that he could not help others till he himself got help; and he now did get just the help he wanted, an assistant who though a schoolmaster was, strange to say, perfectly ready to learn, and to throw himself into carrying out another man’s ideas. this was hermann kruesi, a man twenty-five years old, who from the age of 18 had been master of the village school at gais in appenzell. in consequence of the war between the french and austrians, appenzell was now reduced to a state of famine, and bands of children were sent off to other cantons to escape starvation. fischer, a friend of pestalozzi’s, and himself an educationist taught by salzmann (supra 289), wrote from burgdorf to the pastor of gais, offering to get thirty children taken in by the people of burgdorf, and asking that they might be sent with some one who would look after them in the day-time and teach them. in answer to this invitation kruesi, after a week’s march, entered burgdorf with a troop of little ones. the children were drawn up in an open place, and benevolent people chose which they would adopt. kruesi was taken into the castle which the government had made over partly to fischer, partly to pestalozzi. in it kruesi opened a day-school. fischer soon afterwards died; and pestalozzi[341] proposed to kruesi, who had become entirely converted to his views, that they should unite and together carry on the school in the castle. by a decree of 23rd july, 1800, the executive council granted to pestalozzi the gratuitous use of as much of the castle and garden as he needed, and thus was established pestalozzi’s celebrated institute at burgdorf.

§ 58. very soon kruesi enlisted other helpers who had read leonard and gertrude, viz., tobler and buss, and this is his account of the party: “our society thus consisted of four very different men ... the founder, whose chief reputation was that of a dreamy writer, incapable in practical life, and three young men, one [tobler] a private tutor whose youth had been much neglected, who had begun to study late, and whose pedagogic efforts had never produced the results his character and talents seemed to promise; another [buss], a bookbinder, who devoted his leisure to singing and drawing; and a third [kruesi himself], a village schoolmaster who carried out the duties of his office as best he could without having been in any way prepared for them. those who looked on this group of men, scarce one of them with a home of his own, naturally formed but a small opinion of their capabilities. and yet our work succeeded, and won the public confidence beyond the expectations of those who knew us, and even beyond our own” (r.’s guimps, 304).

§ 59. with assistance from the government there was added to the united schools of pestalozzi and kruesi a training class for teachers; and elementary teachers were sent to spend a month at burgdorf and learn of pestalozzi, as years afterwards they were sent to the same town to learn of froebel. this institute opened in january, 1801,[342] and had nearly three years of complete success. in it was carried out pestalozzi’s notion that there should be “no gulf between the home and the school.” on one occasion a parent visiting the establishment exclaimed, “why, this is not a school but a family!” and pestalozzi declared that this was the highest praise he could give it. the bond which united them all, both teachers and scholars, was love of “father pestalozzi.” want of space kept the number of children below a hundred, and these enjoyed great freedom and worked away without rewards and almost without punishments. both public reports and private speak very highly of the results. in june, 1802, the president of the council of public education in bern declares: “pestalozzi has discovered the real and universal laws of all elementary teaching.” a visitor, charles victor von bonstetten, writes: “the children know little, but what they know, they know well.... they are very happy and evidently take great pleasure in their lessons, which says a great deal for the method.... as it will be long before there is another pestalozzi, i fear that the rich harvest his discovery seems to promise will be reserved for future ages.”

the success of the method was specially conspicuous in arithmetic. a nürnberg merchant who came prejudiced against pestalozzi was much impressed and has acknowledged: “i was amazed when i saw these children treating the most complicated calculations of fractions as the simplest thing in the world.”

§ 60. up to this point pestalozzi may be said to have gained by the disposition to “reform” or revolutionise everything, which had prevailed in switzerland since 1798. but from the reaction which now set in he suffered more than he had gained. switzerland sent deputies to paris to[343] discuss under the direction of the first consul bonaparte what should be their future form of government. among these deputies pestalozzi was elected, and he set off thinking more of the future of the schools than of the future of the government. at paris he asked for an interview with bonaparte, but destruction being in his opinion a much higher art than instruction, the first consul said he could not be bothered about questions of a, b, c. he, however, deputed monge to hear what pestalozzi had to say, but the mathematician seems to have agreed with some english authorities that “there was nothing in pestalozzi.”[158] on his return to switzerland pestalozzi was asked by buss, “did you see bonaparte?” “no,” replied pestalozzi, “i did not see bonaparte and bonaparte did not see me.” his presumption in thus putting himself on an equality with the great conqueror seems to have taken away the breath of his contemporaries: but “the whirligig of time brings in his revenges,” and before the close of the century europe already thinks more in amount, and immeasurably more in respect, of pestalozzi than of bonaparte.

§ 61. as a result of the reaction the government of united switzerland ceased to exist, and the cantons were restored. this destroyed pestalozzi’s hopes of government support, and even turned his institute out of doors. the[344] castle of burgdorf was at once demanded for the prefect of the district; but pestalozzi was offered an old convent at münchenbuchsee near bern, and thither he was forced to migrate.

§ 62. close to münchenbuchsee was hofwyl where was the agricultural institution of emmanuel fellenberg. fellenberg and pestalozzi were old friends and correspondents, and as they had much regard for each other and fellenberg was as great in administration as pestalozzi in ideas, there seemed a chance of their benefiting by co-operation; but this could not be. the teachers desired that the administration should be put into the hands of fellenberg, and this was done accordingly, “not without my consent,” says pestalozzi, “but to my profound mortification.” he could not work with this “man of iron,” as he calls fellenberg; so he left münchenbuchsee and accepting one of several invitations he settled in the castle of yverdun near the lake of neuchatel. within a twelvemonth he was followed by his old assistants, who had found government by fellenberg less to their taste than no-government by pestalozzi.

§ 63. thus arose the most celebrated institute of which we read in the history of education. for some years its success seemed prodigious. teachers came from all quarters, many of them sent by the governments of the countries to which they belonged, that they might get initiated into the pestalozzian system. children too were sent from great distances, some of them being intrusted to pestalozzi, some of them living with their own tutor in yverdun and only attending the institute during the day. the wave of enthusiasm for the new ideas seemed to carry everything before it; but there is nothing stable in a wave, and when[345] the enthusiasm has subsided disappointment follows. this was the case at yverdun, and pestalozzi outlived his institute. but the principles on which he worked and the spirit in which he worked could not pass away; and, at least in germany, all elementary schoolmasters acknowledge how much they are indebted to his teaching.

§ 64. of the state of things in the early days of the institute we have a very lively account written for his own children by professor vuillemin, who entered it in 1805 as a child of eight, and was in it for two years. from this i extract the following portrait of pestalozzi: “imagine, my children, a very ugly man with rough bristling hair, his face scarred with small-pox and covered with freckles, an untidy beard, no neck-tie, his breeches not properly buttoned and coming down to his stockings, which in their turn descended on to his great thick shoes; fancy him panting and jerking as he walked; then his eyes which at one time opened wide to send a flash of lightning, at another were half closed as if engaged on what was going on within; his features now expressing a profound sadness and now again the most peaceful happiness; his speech either slow or hurried, either soft and melodious or bursting forth like thunder; imagine the man and you have him whom we used to call our father pestalozzi. such as i have sketched him for you we loved him; we all loved him, for he loved us all; we loved him so warmly that when some time passed without our seeing him, we were quite troubled about it, and when he again appeared we could not take our eyes off him” (guimps, 315).

§ 65. at this time he was no less loved by his assistants, who put up with any quarters that could be found for them, and received no salary. we read that the money paid by[346] the scholars was kept in the room of “the head of the family”; every master could get the key, and when they required clothes they took from these funds just the sum requisite. this system, or want of system, went on for some time without abuse. as vuillemin says, it was like a return to the early days of the christian church.

§ 66. we have seen that the first emperor napoleon “could not be bothered about questions of a, b, c.” his was the pride that goes before a fall. on the other hand the prussian government which he brought to the dust in the battle of jena (1806) had the wisdom to perceive that children will become men, and that the nature of the instruction they receive will in a great measure determine what kind of men they turn out. how was prussia again to raise its head? its rulers decided that it was by the education of the people. “we have lost in territory,” said the king; “our power and our credit abroad have fallen; but we must and will go to work to gain in power and in credit at home. it is for this reason that i desire above everything that the greatest attention be paid to the education of the people” (guimps, 319). about the same time the queen (louisa) wrote in her private diary, “i am reading leonard and gertrude, and i delight in being transported into the swiss village. if i could do as i liked i should take a carriage and start for switzerland to see pestalozzi; i should warmly shake him by the hand, and my eyes filled with tears would speak my gratitude.... with what goodness, with what zeal, he labours for the welfare of his fellow-creatures! yes, in the name of humanity, i thank him with my whole heart.”

so in the day of humiliation prussia seriously went to work at the education of the people, and this she did on[347] the lines pointed out by pestalozzi. to him they were directed by their philosopher fichte, who in his addresses to the german nation (delivered at berlin 1807-8) declared that education was the only means of raising a nation, and that all sound reform of public instruction must be based on the principles of pestalozzi.

to bring these principles to bear on popular education, the prussian government sent seventeen young men for a three years’ course to pestalozzi’s institute, “where,” as the minister said in a letter to pestalozzi, “they will be prepared not only in mind and judgment, but also in heart, for the noble vocation which they are to follow, and will be filled with a sense of the holiness of their task, and with new zeal for the work to which you have devoted your life.”

§ 67. among the eminent men who were drawn to yverdun were some who afterwards did great things in education, as e.g., karl ritter, karl von raumer the historian of education, the philosopher herbart, and a man who was destined to have more influence than anyone, except perhaps pestalozzi himself—i mean friedrich froebel. ritter’s testimony is especially striking. “i have seen,” says he, “more than the paradise of switzerland, for i have seen pestalozzi, and recognised how great his heart is, and how great his genius; never have i been so filled with a sense of the sacredness of my vocation and the dignity of human nature as in the days i spent with this noble man.... pestalozzi knew less geography than a child in one of our primary schools, yet it was from him that i gained my chief knowledge of this science; for it was in listening to him that i first conceived the idea of the natural method. it was he who opened the way to me, and i take[348] pleasure in attributing whatever value my work may have entirely to him.”

§ 68. at this time we read glowing accounts of the healthy and happy life of the children; and throughout pestalozzi never lost a single pupil by illness. with a body of very able assistants, instruction was carried on for ten hours out of the twenty-four; but in these hours there was reckoned the time spent in drill, gymnastics, hand-work, and singing. the monotony of school-life was also broken by frequent “festivals.”

§ 69. and yet the institute had taken into it the seeds of its own ruin. there were several causes of failure, though these were not visible till the house was divided against itself.

§ 70. first, pestalozzi based the morality and discipline of the school on the relations of family life. he would be the “father” of all the children. at burgdorf this relation seemed a reality, but it completely failed at yverdun when the institute became, from the number of the pupils and their differences in language, habits, and antecedents, a little world. the pupils still called him “father pestalozzi,” but he could no longer know them as a father should know his children. thus the discipline of affection slowly disappeared, and there was no school discipline to take its place.

§ 71. next, we can see that even at burgdorf, and still more at yverdun, pestalozzi was attempting to do impossibilities. according to his system, the faculties of the child were to be developed in a natural unbroken order, and the first exercises were to give the child the power of surmounting later difficulties by its own exertions. but this education could not be started at any age, and yet children of every age and every country were received into the[349] institution. it was not likely that the fresh comers could be made to understand that they “knew nothing,” and must start over again on a totally different road. the teachers might take such pupils to the water of “sense-impressions,” but they could not inspire the inclination to drink, nor induce the lad to learn what he supposed himself to know already. (cfr. supra p. 64, § 4.)

§ 72. but there was a greater mischief at work than either of these. in his discourse to the members of the institution on new year’s day, 1808, pestalozzi surprised them all by his gloom. he had had a coffin brought in, and he stood beside it. “this work,” said he, “was founded by love, but love has disappeared from our midst.” this was only too true, and the discord was more deeply rooted than at first appeared. among the brood of pestalozzians there was a catholic shepherd lad from tyrol, joseph schmid by name, and he, in the end, proved a veritable cuckoo. as he shewed very marked ability in mathematics, he became one of the assistant masters; and a good deal of the fame of the institution rested on the performances of his pupils. but his ideas differed totally from those of his colleagues, especially from those of niederer, a clergyman with a turn for philosophy, who had become pestalozzi’s chief exponent.

§ 73. after pestalozzi’s gloomy speech, the masters, with the exception of schmid, urged pestalozzi to apply for a government inquiry into the state of the institution. this pestalozzi did, and commissioners were appointed, among them an educationist, père girard of freiburg, by whom the report was drawn up. the report was not favourable. père girard was by no means inclined to sit at the feet of pestalozzi, as he had principles of his own. pestalozzi, he[350] thought, laid far too much stress on mathematics, and he drew from him a statement that everything taught to a child should seem as certain as that two and two made four. “then,” said girard, “if i had thirty children i would not intrust you with one of them. you could not teach him that i was his father.” thus the report, though very friendly in tone, was by no means friendly in spirit. the commissioners simply compared the performances of the scholars with what pupils of the same age could do in good schools of the ordinary type, and père girard stated, though not in the report, that the institution was inferior to the cantonal school of aargau. but the comparison of these incommensurables only shews that girard was not capable of understanding what was going on at yverdun. indeed, he asserts “not only that the mother-tongue was neglected,” but also that the children, “though they had reached a high pitch of excellence in abstract mathematics, were inconceivably weak in all ordinary practical calculations.” this is absurd. in pestalozzian teaching the abstract never went before ordinary practical calculations. the good father evidently blunders, and takes “head-reckoning” for abstract, and pen or pencil arithmetic for practical work. reckoning with slate or paper is no doubt “ordinary,” but a distinction has often to be drawn between what is ordinary and what is practical.

§ 74. soon after this the disputes between schmid and his colleagues waxed so fierce that schmid was virtually driven away. in 1810 he left yverdun, and declared the institution “a disgrace to humanity.” great was the disorder into which the institution now fell from having over it only a genius with “an unrivalled incapacity to govern.” the days which “remind us of the early church” were no[351] more, and financial difficulties naturally followed them. for the next five years things went from bad to worse, and the masters were then driven to the desperate, and, as it proved, the fatal step of inviting the able and strong-willed schmid back again. he came in 1815, he acquired entire control over pestalozzi, and drove from him all his most faithful adherents, among them not only niederer, who had invited the return of his rival, but even kruesi and the faithful servant, elizabeth naef, now mrs. kruesi, the widow of kruesi’s brother. pestalozzi’s grandson married schmid’s sister, and thus united with him by family ties, schmid took entire possession of the old man and kept it till the end. his former colleagues seem to have been deceived in their estimate both of schmid’s integrity and ability. he completed the ruin of the institution, and he was finally expelled from yverdun by the magistrates.

§ 75. but while pestalozzi seemed falling lower and lower to the eyes of the inhabitants of yverdun, and so had little honour in his own country, his fame was spreading all over europe. of this yverdun was to reap the benefit. in 1813-14, austrian troops marched across switzerland to invade france. in january, 1814, the castle and other buildings in yverdun were “requisitioned” for a military hospital, many of the austrian soldiers being down with typhus fever. in a great fright the municipality sent off two deputies to headquarters, then at basel, to petition that this order might be withdrawn. as the order threatened the destruction of his institution, pestalozzi went with them, and it was entirely to him they owed their success. on their return they reported that “no military hospital would be established at yverdun, and that m. pestalozzi had been received with most extraordinary favour.”

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§ 75. on this occasion pestalozzi took the opportunity of preaching to the emperor alexander on the necessity of establishing good schools and of emancipating the serfs. the emperor took the lecture in good part, and allowed the philanthropist to drive him into a corner and “button-hole” him.

§ 76. in 1815 pestalozzi received a visit from an englishman, or more accurately scotsman—dr. bell, who, however, like most of our compatriots, could find nothing in pestalozzi. whatever we may think of bell as an educationist, he was certainly a poor prophet. on leaving yverdun he said, “in another twelve years mutual instruction will be adopted by the whole world and pestalozzi’s method will be forgotten.”[159]

§ 77. in december, 1815, pestalozzi was thrown more completely into the power of schmid by losing the only companion from whom nothing but death could separate him—his wife. at the funeral pestalozzi, standing by the coffin, and as if heard by her whose earthly remains were in it, ran over the disasters and trials they had passed through together, and the sacrifices she had made for him. “what in those days of affliction,” said he, “gave us strength to bear our troubles and recover hope?” and taking up a bible he went on, “this is the source whence you drew, whence we both drew courage, strength, and peace.”

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§ 78. the “death agony of the institution,” as guimps calls it, lasted for some years, but in this gloomy period there are only two incidents i will mention. the first is the publication of pestalozzi’s writings, for which schmid and pestalozzi sought subscriptions; and the appeal was so cordially answered that pestalozzi received ￡2,000. this sum he wished to devote to the carrying out of a plan he had always cherished of an orphanage at neuhof; but the money seems to have melted we do not know how.

§ 79. the other incident is that of pestalozzi’s last success. in spite of schmid he would open a school for twelve neglected children at clindy, a hamlet near yverdun. here he produced results like those which had crowned his first efforts at neuhof, stanz, and burgdorf. old, absent-minded, and incapable as he seemed in ordinary affairs, he, as though by enchantment, gained the attention and the affection of the children, and bent them entirely to his will. in a few months the number of children had risen to thirty, and wonderful progress had been made. clindy at once became celebrated. pestalozzi was induced to admit some children whose friends paid for them, and schmid then persuaded the old man to remove the school into the castle.

§ 80. in 1824 the institution, which had lasted for twenty years, was finally closed, and pestalozzi went to spend his remaining days (nearly three years as it proved) at neuhof, which was then in the hands of his grandson. the year before his death he visited an orphanage conducted on his principles by zeller at beuggen near rheinfelden. the children sang a poem of goethe’s quoted in leonard and gertrude, and had a crown of oak ready to put on the old man’s head; but this he declined. “i am not worthy of it,” said he, “keep it for innocence.”

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§ 81. on 17th february, 1827, at the age of eighty-one, pestalozzi fell asleep.

§ 82. “the reform needed,” said pestalozzi, “is not that the school-coach should be better horsed, but that it should be turned right round and started on a new track.” this may seem a violent metaphor, but perhaps it is not more violent than the change that was (and in this country still is) necessary. let us try to ascertain what is the right road according to pestalozzi, and then see on what road the school-coach is now travelling.

§ 83. the grand change advocated by pestalozzi was a change of object. the main object of the school should not be to teach but to develop.

§ 84. this change of object naturally brings many changes with it. measured by their capacity for acquiring school knowledge and skill young children may be considered, as one of h.m. inspectors considered them, “the fag-end of the school.” but if the school exists not to teach but to develop, young children, instead of being the “fag-end,” become the most important part of all. in the development of all organisms more depends on the earlier than on the later stages; and there is no reason to doubt that this law holds in the case of human beings. on this account, from the days of pestalozzi educational science has been greatly, i may say mainly, concerned with young children. for the dominating thought has been that the young human being is an undeveloped organism, and that in education that organism is developed. so the essence of pestalozzianism lies not so much in its method as in its aim, not more in what it does than in what it endeavours to do.

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§ 85. and thus it was that pestalozzi (in raumer’s words) “compelled the scholastic world to revise the whole of their task, to reflect on the nature and destiny of man, and also on the proper way of leading him from his youth towards that destiny.” and it was his love of his fellow-creatures that raised him to this standpoint. he was moved by “the enthusiasm of humanity.” consumed with grief for the degradation of the swiss peasantry, he never lost faith in their true dignity as men, and in the possibility of raising them to a condition worthy of it. he cast about for the best means of thus raising them, and decided that it could be effected, not by any improvement in their outward circumstances, but by an education which should make them what their creator intended them to be, and should give them the use and the consciousness of all their inborn faculties. “from my youth up,” he says, “i felt what a high and indispensable human duty it is to labour for the poor and miserable; ... that he may attain to a consciousness of his own dignity through his feeling of the universal powers and endowments which he possesses awakened within him; that he may not only learn to gabble over by rote the religious maxim that ‘man is created in the image of god, and is bound to live and die as a child of god,’ but may himself experience its truth by virtue of the divine power within him, so that he may be raised, not only above the ploughing oxen, but also above the man in purple and silk who lives unworthily of his high destiny” (quoted in barnard, p. 13).

again he says (and i quote at length on the point, as it is indeed the key to pestalozzianism), “why have i insisted so strongly on attention to early physical and intellectual education? because i consider these as merely leading to[356] a higher aim, to qualify the human being for the free and full use of all the faculties implanted by the creator, and to direct all these faculties towards the perfection of the whole being of man, that he may be enabled to act in his peculiar station as an instrument of that all-wise and almighty power that has called him into life” (to greaves, p. 160).

§ 86. believing in this high aim of education, pestalozzi required a proper early training for all alike. “every human being,” said he, “has a claim to a judicious development of his faculties by those to whom the care of his infancy is confided” (ib. p. 163).

§ 87. pestalozzi therefore most earnestly addressed himself to mothers, to convince them of the power placed in their hands, and to teach them how to use it. “the mother is qualified, and qualified by the creator himself, to become the principal agent in the development of her child; ... and what is demanded of her is—a thinking love.... god has given to thy child all the faculties of our nature, but the grand point remains undecided—how shall this heart, this head, these hands, be employed? to whose service shall they be dedicated? a question the answer to which involves a futurity of happiness or misery to a life so dear to thee.... it is recorded that god opened the heavens to the patriarch of old, and showed him a ladder leading thither. this ladder is let down to every descendant of adam; it is offered to thy child. but he must be taught to climb it. and let him not attempt it by the cold calculations of the head, or the mere impulse of the heart; but let all these powers combine, and the noble enterprise will be crowned with success. these powers are already bestowed on him, but to thee it is given to assist in[357] calling them forth” (to greaves, p. 21). “maternal love is the first agent in education.... through it the child is led to love and trust his creator and his redeemer.”

§ 88. from the theory of development which lay at the root of pestalozzi’s views of education, it followed that the imparting of knowledge and the training for special pursuits held only a subordinate position in his scheme. “education, instead of merely considering what is to be imparted to children, ought to consider first what they may be said already to possess, if not as a developed, at least as an involved faculty capable of development. or if, instead of speaking thus in the abstract, we will but recollect that it is to the great author of life that man owes the possession, and is responsible for the use, of his innate faculties, education should not simply decide what is to be made of a child, but rather inquire what it was intended that he should become. what is his destiny as a created and responsible being? what are his faculties as a rational and moral being? what are the means for their perfection, and the end held out as the highest object of their efforts by the almighty father of all, both in creation and in the page of revelation?”

§ 89. education, then, must consist “in a continual benevolent superintendence, with the object of calling forth all the faculties which providence has implanted; and its province, thus enlarged, will yet be with less difficulty surveyed from one point of view, and will have more of a systematic and truly philosophical character, than an incoherent mass of ‘lessons’—arranged without unity of principle, and gone through without interest—which too often usurps its name.”

the educator’s task then is to superintend and promote[358] the child’s development, morally, intellectually, and physically.

§ 90. “the essential principle of education is not teaching,” said pestalozzi; “it is love” (r.’s g., 289). again he says, “the child loves and believes before it thinks and acts” (ib. 378). and in a very striking passage (ib. 329), where he compares the development of the various powers of a human being to the development of a tree, he says, “these forces of the heart—faith and love—are in the formation of immortal man what the root is for the tree.” so, according to pestalozzi, a child without faith and love can no more grow up to be what he should be than a tree can grow without a root. apart from this vital truth there can be no such thing as pestalozzianism.

“ah yet when all is thought and said

the heart still overrules the head.”

it is our hearts and affections that lead us right or wrong far more than our intellects. in advocating the training of the minds of the people, lord derby once remarked that as chairman of quarter sessions he had found most of the culprits brought before him were stupid and ignorant. it certainly cannot be denied that the commonest kind of criminal is bad in every way. he has his body ruined by debauchery, his intellect almost in abeyance, and his heart and affections set on what is vile and degrading. if you could cultivate his intellect you would certainly raise him out of the lowest and by far the largest of the criminal classes. but he might become a criminal of a type less disgusting in externals, but in reality far more dangerous. the most atrocious miscreant of our time, if not of all time, was a man who contrived a machine to sink ships in mid-ocean, his only object being to gain a sum of money on a[359] false insurance. this man was a type of the élite of criminals, had received an intellectual training, and could not have been described by lord derby as ignorant or stupid.

§ 91. pestalozzi then, much as he valued the development of the intellect, put first the moral and religious influence of education; and with him moral and religious were one and the same. he protested against the ordinary routine of elementary education, because “everywhere in it the flesh predominated over the spirit, everywhere the divine element was cast into the shade, everywhere selfishness and the passions were taken as the motives of action, everywhere mechanical habits usurped the place of intelligent spontaneity” (r.’s g., 470). education for the people must be different to this. “man does not live by bread alone; every child needs a religious development; every child needs to know how to pray to god in all simplicity, but with faith and love” (r.’s g., 378). “if the religious element does not run through the whole of education, this element will have little influence on the life; it remains formal or isolated”[160] (ib. 381). and pestalozzi sums up the essentials of popular education in the words: “the child[360] accustomed from his earliest years to pray, to think, and to work, is already more than half educated” (ib. 381).

§ 92. here we see the main requisites. first the child must pray with faith and love. next he must think.

“the child must think!” exclaims the schoolmaster: “must he not learn?” to which pestalozzi would have replied, “most certainly he must.” learning was not in pestalozzi’s estimation as in locke’s, the “last and least” thing, but learning was with him something very different from the learning imparted by the ordinary schoolmaster. pestalozzi was very imperfectly acquainted with the thoughts and efforts of his predecessors, but the one book on education which he had studied had freed him from the “idols” of the schoolroom. this book was the emile of rousseau, and from it he came no less than rousseau himself to despise the learning of the schoolmaster. but when he had to face the problem of organizing a course of education for the people, pestalozzi did not agree with rousseau that the first twelve years should be spent in “losing time.” no, the children must learn, but they must learn in such a way as to develop all the powers of the mind. and so pestalozzi was led to what he considered his great discovery, viz., that all instruction must be based on “anschauung.”

§ 93. the germans, who have devoted so much thought and care and effort to education, greatly honour pestalozzi,[161] and as his disciples aim at making all elementary instruction[361] “anschaulich.” we english have troubled ourselves so little about pestalozzi, or, i might say, about the theory of education, that we have not cared to get equivalent words for anschauung and anschaulich. for anschauung “sense-impression” has lately been tried; but this is in two ways defective; for (1) there may be “anschauungen” beyond the range of the senses, and (2) there is in an “anschauung” an active as well as a passive element, and this the word “impression” does not convey. the active part is brought out better by “observation”—the word used by joseph payne and james macalister; but this seems hardly wide enough. other writers of english borrow words straight from the french, and talk about “intuition” and “intuitive,” words which were taken (first i believe by kant) from the latin intueri, “to look at with attention and reflection.”

§ 94. i think we shall be wise in following these writers. on good authority i have heard of a german professor who when asked if he had read some large work recently published in the distressing type of his nation, replied that he had not; he was waiting for a french translation. if the germans find that the french express their thoughts more clearly than they can themselves, we may think ourselves fortunate when the french will act as interpreters. i therefore gladly turn to m. buisson and translate what he says about “intuition.”

“intuition is just the most natural and most spontaneous action of human intelligence, the action by which the mind seizes a reality without effort, hesitation, or go-between. it is a ‘direct apperception,’ made as it were at a glance. if it has to do with some matter within the province of the senses, the senses perceive it at once. here we have the simplest case of all, the most common, the[362] most easily noted. if the thing concerned is an idea, a reality, that is, beyond the reach of the senses, we still say that we seize it by intuition when all that is necessary is that it present itself to the mind, and the mind at once grasps it and is satisfied with it without any need of proof or investigation. we advance by intuition whenever our mind, acting by the senses, or by the judgment, or by the conscience, knows things with the same amount of evidence and the same amount of speed that a distinct view of an object affords the eye. so intuition is no separate faculty; it is nothing strange or new in the mind of man. it is just the mind itself ‘intuitively’ recognising what exists in it or around it” (les conférences péd. faites aux instituteurs, delagrave, 1879, p. 331). so the “intuitive method” (to keep the french name for it) is of very wide application. “it appeals to this force sui generis, to this glance of the mind, to this spontaneous spring of the intelligence towards truth.” it sets the pupil’s mind to work in following his own intellectual instincts. if in our teaching we can use it, we shall have gained, as m. buisson says, the best helper in the world, viz., the pupil. if he can be got to take an active part in the instruction all difficulty vanishes at once. instead of having to drag him along, you will see him delighted to keep you company.

§ 95. according to m. buisson there are three kinds of intuition—sensuous, intellectual, and moral. similarly m. jullien (esprit de pestalozzi, 1812, vol. j, p. 152) says that there are “intuitions” of the “internal senses” as well as of the external: the “internal senses” are four in number: first, the sense for the true; second, the sense for the beautiful; third, the sense for the good; fourth, the sense for the infinite.

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§ 96. without settling whether this analysis is complete we shall have no difficulty in admitting that both body and mind have faculties by means of which we apprehend, lay hold of, what is true and right; and it is on the use of these faculties that pestalozzi bases instruction. no englishman may have found a good word to indicate anschauung, but one englishman at least had the idea of it long before pestalozzi. more than a century earlier locke had called knowledge “the internal perception of the mind.” “knowing is seeing,” said he; “and if it be so, it is madness to persuade ourselves we do so by another man’s eyes, let him use never so many words to tell us that what he asserts is very visible” (supra p. 222).

§ 97. thus in theory pestalozzi was, however unconsciously, a follower of locke. but in practice they went far asunder. locke’s thoughts were constantly occupied with philosophical investigations, and he seems to have made small account of the intellectual power of children, and to have supposed that they cannot “see” anything at all. so he cared little what was taught them, and till they reached the age of reason the tutor might give such lessons as would be useful to “young gentlemen,” the avowed object being to “keep them from sauntering.” his follower rousseau preferred that the child’s mind should not be filled with the traditional lore of the schoolroom, and that the instructor, when the youth reached the age of twelve, should find “an unfurnished apartment to let.” then came pestalozzi, and he saw that at whatever age the instructor began to teach the child, he would not find an unfurnished apartment, seeing that every child learns continuously from the hour of its birth. and how does the child learn? not by repeating words which express the thoughts, feelings, and[364] experiences of other people,[162] but by his own experiences and feelings, and by the thoughts which these suggest to him.

§ 98. elementary education then on its intellectual side is teaching the child to think. the proper subjects of thought for children pestalozzi held to be the children’s surroundings, the realities of their own lives, the things that affect them and arouse their feelings and interests. perhaps he did not emphasize interest as much as herbart has done since; but clearly an anschauung or “intuition” is only possible when the child is interested in the thing observed.

§ 99. the art of teaching in pestalozzi’s system consists in analyzing the knowledge that the children should acquire about their surroundings, arranging it in a regular sequence, and bringing it to the children’s consciousness gradually and in the way in which their minds will act upon it. in this way they learn slowly, but all they learn is their own. they are not like the crow drest up in peacock’s feathers, for[365] they have not appropriated any dead knowledge (“angelernte todte begriffe,” as diesterweg has it), and it cannot be said of them, “they know about much, but know nothing (sie kennen viel und wissen nichts).” their knowledge is actual knowledge, for they are taught not what to think but to think, and to exercise their powers of observation and draw conclusions from their own experience. the teacher simply furnishes materials and occasions for this exercise in observing, and as it goes on gives his benevolent superintendence.

§ 100. they learn slowly for another reason. according to pestalozzi the first conceptions must be dwelt upon till they are distinct and firmly fixed. buss tells us that when he first joined pestalozzi at burgdorf the delay over the prime elements seemed to him a waste of time, but that afterwards he was convinced of its being the right plan, and felt that the failure of his own education was due to its incoherent and desultory character. “not only,” says pestalozzi, “have the first elements of knowledge in every subject the most important bearing on its complete outline, but the child’s confidence and interest are gained by perfect attainment even in the lowest stage of instruction.”[163]

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§ 101. we have seen that pestalozzi would have children learn to pray, to think, and to work. in schools for the soi-disant “upper classes” the parents or friends of a boy sometimes say, “there is no need for him to work he will be very well off.” from this kind of demoralization pestalozzi’s pupils were free. they would have to work, and pestalozzi wished them to learn to work as soon as possible. in this way he sought to increase their self-respect, and to unite their school-life with their life beyond it.[164]

§ 102. pestalozzi was tremendously in earnest, and he wished the children also to take instruction seriously. he was totally opposed to the notion which had found favour with many great authorities as e.g., locke and basedow, that instruction should always be given in the guise of amusement. “i am convinced,” says he, “that such a[367] notion will for ever preclude solidity of knowledge, and, for want of sufficient exertions on the part of the pupils, will lead to that very result which i wish to avoid by my principle of a constant employment of the thinking powers. a child must very early in life be taught the lesson that exertion is indispensable for the attainment of knowledge”[165] (to g., xxiv, p. 117). but he should be taught at the same time that exertion is not an evil, and he should be encouraged, not frightened, into it. healthy exertion, whether of body or mind, is always attended with a feeling of satisfaction amounting to pleasure, and where this pleasure is absent the instructor has failed in producing proper exertion. as pestalozzi says, “whenever children are inattentive and apparently take no interest in a lesson, the teacher should always first look to himself for the reason”[166] (ib.).

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§ 103. but though he took so serious a view of instruction, he made instruction include and indeed give a prominent place to the arts of singing and drawing. in the pestalozzian schools singing found immense favour with both the masters and the pupils, and the collection of songs by n?geli, a master at yverdun, became famous. drawing too was practised by all. as pestalozzi writes to greaves (xxiv, 117), “a person who is in the habit of drawing, especially from nature, will easily perceive many circumstances which are commonly overlooked, and will form a much more correct impression even of such objects as he does not stop to examine minutely, than one who has never been taught to look upon what he sees with an intention of reproducing a likeness of it. the attention to the exact shape of the whole and the proportion of the parts, which is requisite for the taking of an adequate sketch, is converted into a habit, and becomes productive both of instruction and amusement.”

§ 104. i have now endeavoured to point out the main features of pestalozzianism. the following is the summing up of these features given by morf in his contribution to pestalozzi’s biography:—

1. instruction must be based on the learner’s own experience. (das fundament des unterrichts ist die anschauung.)

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2. what the learner experiences and observes must be connected with language.

3. the time for learning is not the time for judging, not the time for criticism.

4. in every department instruction must begin with the simplest elements, and starting from these must be carried on step by step according to the development of the child, that is, it must be brought into psychological sequence.

5. at each point the instructor shall not go forward till that part of the subject has become the proper intellectual possession of the learner.

6. instruction must follow the path of development, not the path of lecturing, teaching, or telling.

7. to the educator the individuality of the child must be sacred.

8. not the acquisition of knowledge or skill is the main object of elementary instruction, but the development and strengthening of the powers of the mind.

9. with knowledge (wissen) must come power (k?nnen), with information (kenntniss) skill (fertigkeit).

10. intercourse between educator and pupil, and school discipline especially, must be based on and controlled by love.

11. instruction shall be subordinated to the aim of education.

12. the ground of moral-religious bringing up lies in the relation of mother and child.[167]

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§ 105. having now seen in which direction pestalozzi would start the school-coach, let us examine (with reference[371] to england only) the direction in which it is travelling at present.

§ 106. for educational purposes we may, with lord beaconsfield, regard the english as composed of two nations, the rich and the poor. let us consider these separately.

in the case of the rich we find that the worst part of our educational course—the part most wrong in theory and pernicious in practice—is the schooling of young children, say between six and twelve years old. before the age of six some few are fortunate enough to attend a good kindergarten; but the opportunity of doing this is at present rare, and for most children of well-to-do parents there is, up to six years old, little or no organised instruction. pestalozzi would have every mother made capable of giving such instruction. froebel would have every child sent to a skilled “kinderg?rtnerin.” it seems to me beyond question that children gain immensely from joining a properly-managed kindergarten; but where this is impossible, perhaps the mother may leave the child to the series of impressions which come to its senses without any regular order. according to the first lord lytton, the mother’s interference might remind us of the man who thought his bees would make honey faster if, instead of going in search of flowers, they were shut up and had flowers brought to them. the way[372] in which young children turn from object to object, like the bees from flower to flower, seems to show that at this stage their intellectual training goes on whether we help it or not. there is no doubt an education for children however young, and the mother is the teacher, but the lessons have more to do with the heart than the head.

§ 107. but the time for regular teaching comes at last, and what is to be done then? let us consider briefly what is done.

hitherto, the only defence ever made of our school-course leading up to residence at a university, has been that it aims not at giving knowledge but at training the mind. youths then are supposed to be engaged, not in gaining knowledge, but in training their faculties for adult life. but when we come to provide for the “education” of children, we never think of training their faculties for youth, but endeavour solely to inculcate what will then come in useful. we see clearly enough that it would be absurd to cram the mind of a youth with laws of science or art or commerce which he could not understand, on the ground that the getting-up of these things might save him trouble in after-life. but we do not hesitate to sacrifice childhood to the learning by heart of grammar rules, latin declensions, historical dates, and the like, with no thought whatever of the child’s faculties, but simply with a view of giving him knowledge (so-called) that will come in useful five or six years afterwards. we do not treat youths thus, probably because we have more sympathy with them, or at least understand them better. the intellectual life to which the senses and the imagination are subordinated in the man has already begun in the youth. in an inferior degree he can do what the man can do, and understand what the man[373] can understand. he has already some notion of reasoning, and abstraction, and generalisation. but with the child it is very different. his active faculties may be said almost to differ in kind from a man’s. he has a feeling for the sensuous world which he will lose as he grows up. his strong imagination, under no control of the reason, is constantly at work building castles in the air, and investing the doll or the puppet-show with all the properties of the things they represent. his feelings and affections, easily excited, find an object to love or dislike in every person and thing he meets with. on the other hand, he has only vague notions of the abstract, and has no interest except in actual known persons, animals, and things.

§ 108. there is, then, between the child of eight or nine and the youth of fourteen or fifteen a greater difference than between the youth and the man of twenty; and this demands a corresponding difference in their studies. and yet, as matters are carried on now, the child is too often kept to the drudgery of learning by rote mere collections of hard words, perhaps, too, in a foreign language: and absorbed in the present, he is not much comforted by the teacher’s assurance that “some day” these things will come in useful.

§ 109. how to educate the child is doubtless the most difficult problem of all, and it is generally allotted to those who are the least likely to find a satisfactory solution.

the earliest educator of the children of many rich parents is the nursemaid—a person not usually distinguished by either intellectual or moral excellence.[168] at an early age[374] this educator is superseded by the preparatory school. taken as a body, the ladies who open “establishments for young gentlemen” cannot be said to hold enlarged views, or, indeed, any views whatever, on the subject of education. their intention is not so much to cultivate the children’s faculties as to make a livelihood, and to hear no complaints that pupils who have left them have been found deficient in the expected knowledge by the master of the next school. if anyone would investigate the sort of teaching which is considered adapted to the capacity of children at this stage, let him look into a standard work still in vogue (“mangnall’s questions”), from which the young of both sexes acquire a great quantity and variety of learning; the whole of ancient and modern history and biography, together with the heathen mythology, the planetary system, and the names of all the constellations, lying very compactly in about 300 pages.[169]

unfortunately, moreover, from the gentility of these ladies, their scholars’ bodies are often treated in preparatory schools no less injuriously than their minds. it may be natural in a child to use his lungs and delight in noise, but[375] this can hardly be considered genteel, so the tendency is, as far as possible, suppressed. it is found, too, that if children are allowed to run about they get dirty and spoil their clothes, and do not look like “young gentlemen,” so they are made to take exercise in a much more genteel fashion, walking slowly two-and-two, with gloves on.[170]

§ 110. at nine or ten years old, boys are commonly put to a school taught by masters. here they lose sight of their gloves, and learn the use of their limbs; but their minds are not so fortunate as their bodies. the studies of the school have been arranged without any thought of their peculiar needs. the youngest class is generally the largest, often much the largest, and it is handed over to the least competent and worst paid master on the staff of teachers. the reason is, that little boys are found to learn the tasks imposed upon them very slowly. a youth or a man who came fresh to the latin grammar would learn in a morning as much as the master, with great labour, can get into children in a week. it is thought, therefore, that the best teaching should be applied where it will have the most obvious results. if anyone were to say to the manager[376] of a school, “the master who takes the lowest form teaches badly, and the children learn nothing”; he would perhaps say, “very likely; but if i paid a much higher salary, and got a better man, they would learn but little.” the only thing the school-manager thinks of is, how much do the little boys learn of what is taught in the higher forms? how their faculties are being developed, or whether they have any faculties except for reading, writing, and arithmetic, and for getting grammar-rules, &c. by heart, he is not so “unpractical” as to enquire.

§ 111. with reference to the education of the first of our “two nations,” it seems then pretty clear that pestalozzi would require that the school-coach should be turned and started in a totally different direction.

§ 112. what about the education of the other “nation,” a nation of which the verb “to rule” has for many centuries been used in the passive voice, but can be used in that voice no longer? a century ago, with the partial exception of scotland and massachusetts, there was no such thing as school education for the people to be found anywhere in europe or america. but from 1789 onwards power has been passing more and more from the few to the many; and as a natural consequence folk-schools (for which we have not yet found a name) have become of vast importance everywhere. the germans, as we have seen, have been the disciples of pestalozzi, and their elementary education in everything bears traces of his ideas. the english have organised a great system of elementary education in total ignorance of pestalozzi. as usual, we seem to have supposed that the right system would come to us “in sleep.” but has it come? the children of the poor are now compelled by the law to attend an elementary school. what[377] sort of an education has the law there provided for them? the education department professes to measure everything by results. let us do the same. suppose that on his leaving school we wished to forecast a lad’s future. what should we try to find out about him? no doubt we should ask what he knew; but this would not be by any means the main thing. his skill would interest us, and still more would his state of health. but what we should ask first and foremost is this, whom does he love? whom does he admire and imitate? what does he care about? what interests him? it is only when the answers to these questions are satisfactory, that we can think hopefully of his future; and it is only in so far as the school-course has tended to make the answers satisfactory, that it deserves our approval. schools such as pestalozzi designed would have thus deserved our approval; but we cannot say this of the schools into which the children of the english poor are now driven. in these schools the heart and the affections are not thought of, the powers of neither mind nor body are developed by exercise, and the children do not acquire any interests that will raise or benefit them.

§ 113. an advocate of our system would not deny this, but would probably say, “the question for us to consider is, not what is the best that in the most favourable circumstances might be attempted, but what is the best that in very restricted and by no means favourable circumstances, we are likely to get. the teachers in our schools are not self-devoting pestalozzis, but only ordinary men and women, and still worse, ordinary boys and girls.[171] it would be of[378] no use talking to our teachers (still less our pupil-teachers) about developing the affections and the mental or bodily powers of the children. all such talk could end in nothing but silly cant. as for character, we expect the school to cultivate in the children habits of order, neatness, industry. beyond this we cannot go.”

and yet, though this seems reasonable, we feel that it is not quite satisfactory. if so much depends in all of us on “admiration, hope, and love,” we can hardly consider a system of education that entirely ignores them to be well[379] adapted to the needs of human nature. if pestalozzi was right, we must be wrong. we have never supposed the object of the school to be the development of the faculties of heart, of head, and of hand, but we have thought of nothing but learning—learning first of all to read, write, and cipher, and then in “good” schools, one or more “extra subjects” may be taken up, and a grant obtained for them. the sole object, both of managers and teachers, is to prepare for the inspector, who comes once a year, and from an examination of five hours or so, pronounces on what the children have learnt.

§ 114. the engineer most concerned in the construction of this machine, the right hon. robert lowe, announced that there could be “no such thing as a science of education;” and as when we have no opinion of our own we always adopt the opinion of some positive person, we took his word for it. but what if the confident mr. lowe was mistaken? what if there is such a science, and the aim of it is that children should grow up not so much to know something as to be something? in this case we shall be obliged sooner or later to give up mr. lowe and to come round to pestalozzi.[172] science is correct inferences drawn from the facts of the universe; and where such science exists, confident assertions that it does not and cannot exist are dangerous for the confident persons and for those who follow them. even[380] if “there is no such thing as a science of education,” such a thing as education there is; and this is just what mr. lowe, and we may say the english, practically deny. they make arrangements for instruction and mete out “the grant” according to the results obtained, but they totally fail to conceive of the existence of education, education which has instruction among its various agents.

§ 115. in one respect the analogy between the educator and child and the gardener and plant, an analogy in which pestalozzi no less than froebel delighted, entirely breaks down. the gardener has to study the conditions necessary for the health and development of the plant, but these conditions lie outside his own life and are independent of it. with the educator it is different. like the gardener he can create nothing in the child, but unlike the gardener he can further the development only of that which exists in himself. he draws out in the young the intelligence and the sense of what is just, the love of what is beautiful, the admiration of what is noble, but this he can do only by his own intelligence and his own enthusiasm for what is just and beautiful and noble. even industry is in many cases caught from the teacher. in a volume of essays (originally published in the forum), in which some men, distinguished as scholars or in literature in the united states, have given an account of their early years, we find that almost in every case they date their intellectual industry and growth from the time when they came under the influence of some inspiring teacher. thus even for instruction and still more for education, the great force is the teacher. this is a truth which all our “parties” overlook. they wage their controversies and have their triumphs and defeats about unessentials, and leave the essentials to “crotchety educationists.” in such questions as whether the church[381] catechism shall or shall not be taught, whether natural science shall or shall not figure in the time-table (without scientific teachers it can figure nowhere else), whether the parents or the government shall pay for each child twopence or threepence a week, whether the ratepayers shall or shall not be “represented” among the managers in “voluntary” schools, in all questions of this kind education is not concerned; and yet these are the only questions that we think about. in the end it will perhaps dawn upon us that in every school what is important for education is not the time-table but the teacher, and that so far as pupil-teachers are employed education is impossible. elsewhere (infra p. 476) i have told of a man in the prime of life (he seemed between 40 and 50 years old) whose time was entirely taken up in teaching a large class of children, boys and girls, of six or seven years. he most certainly could and did educate them both in heart and mind. he made their lessons a delightful occupation to them, and he exercised over them the influence of a good and wise father. here was the right system seen at its best. i do not say that all or even most adult teachers would have exercised so good an influence as this gentleman; but so far as they come up to what they ought to be and might be they do exercise such an influence. and this of course can be said of no pupil-teacher.

§ 116. as regards schools then, schools for the rich and schools for the poor, the great educating force is the personality of the teacher. before we can have pestalozzian schools we must have pestalozzian teachers. teachers must catch something of pestalozzi’s spirit and enter into his conception of their task. perhaps some of them will feel inclined to say: “fine words, no doubt, and in a sense very true, that education should be the unfolding of the[382] faculties according to the divine idea; but between this high poetical theory and the dull prose of actual school-teaching, there is a great gulf fixed, and we cannot attend to both at the same time.” i know full well the difference there is between theories and plans of education as they seem to us when we are at leisure and can think of them without reference to particular pupils, and when all our energy is taxed to get through our day’s teaching, and our animal spirits jaded by having to keep order and exact attention among veritable schoolboys who do not answer in all respects to “the young” of the theorists. but whilst admitting most heartily the difference here, as elsewhere, between the actual and the ideal, i think that the dull prose of school-teaching would be less dull and less prosaic if our aim was higher, and if we did not contentedly assume that our present performances are as good as the nature of the case will admit of. many teachers (perhaps i may say most) are discontented with the greater number of their pupils, but it is not so usual for teachers to be discontented with themselves. and yet even those who are most averse from theoretical views, which they call unpractical, would admit, as practical men, that their methods are probably susceptible of improvement, and that even if their methods are right, they themselves are by no means perfect teachers. only let the desire of improvement once exist, and the teacher will find a new interest in his work. in part, the treadmill-like monotony so wearing to the spirits will be done away, and he will at times have the encouragement of conscious progress. to a man thus minded, theorists may be of great assistance. his practical knowledge may, indeed, often show him the absurdity of some pompously enunciated principle, and even where the principles seem[383] sound, he may smile at the applications. but the theorists will show him many aspects of his profession, and will lead him to make many observations in it, which would otherwise have escaped him. they will save him from a danger caused by the difficulty of getting anything done in the school-room, the danger of thinking more of means than ends. they will teach him to examine what his aim really is, and then whether he is using the most suitable methods to accomplish it.

such a theorist is pestalozzi. he points to a high ideal, and bids us measure our modes of education by it. let us not forget that if we are practical men we are christians, and as such the ideal set before us is the highest of all. “be ye perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect.”

the pestalozzian literature in german and even in french is now considerable, but it is still small in english. the book i have made most use of is histoire de pestalozzi par r. de guimps (lausanne, bridel), with its translation by john russell (london: sonnenschein. appleton’s: n. yk.). in henry barnard’s pestalozzi and pestalozzianism are collected some good papers, among them tilleard’s trans. from raumer. we also have h. kruesi’s pestalozzi (cincinatti: wilson, hinkle, & co.). i have already mentioned miss channing’s leonard and gertrude. the letters to greaves are now out of print. a complete account of pestalozzi and everything connected with him, bibliography included, is given in m. j. guillaume’s article pestalozzi, in buisson’s dictionnaire de pédagogie. (see also pestalozzi par j. guillaume (hachette) just published.)