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HERBAET
OFTHE
UNIVERSITY
OF
JOHANN FRIEDRICH HERBART
PIONEERS IN EDUCATION
HERBART
AND EDUCATION BY INSTRUCTION
BY
GABRIEL COMPAYRE
CORRESPONDENT OF THE INSTITUTE J DIRECTOR OF THE ACADEMY
OF LYONS; AUTHOR OF "PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO
EDUCATION," "LECTURES ON PEDAGOGY,"
"A HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY," ETC.
TRANSLATED BY
MARIA E. FINDLAY, B.A.
NEW YORK
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
PUBLISHERS
C 5
COPYRIGHT, 190T,
BY THOMAS T. CKOWELL & COMPANY.
PUBLISHED, SEPTEMBEB, 1907.
CONTENTS AND SUMMAET
PAGE
PREFACE .......... vii
I. Life of Jean-Frederic Herbart (1776-1841). His early
places of residence : Oldenburg, Jena, Bremen, Gottin-
gen. The successor of Kant at the University of
Konigsberg (1809-1833). He returns to Gottingen
and ends his life there (1833-1841). Forming of his
intellect. His natural gifts and the multiplicity of his
aptitudes. His mother's influence. His precocity in
philosophy. How he became a teacher. His years
as a tutor in Switzerland (1797-1800). Influence
of Pestalozzi on his theories. Points of resemblance
and of contrast between the two teachers. Practice in
teaching joined to the theory of education. The
Konigsberg Pedagogical Seminary. Few vicissitudes
in Herbart 's quiet life. His marriage (1811). His
death (August 11, 1841) 1
II. Herbart's psychology and its pedagogical consequences,-
Pedagogy based on psychology. Exposition of
Herbart's psychology. A matter apart from his
mathematical speculations. His conception opposed
to idealism. Absence of faculties. There are in the
mind representations gained from experience. Her-
bart 'a spiritualism. The soul a monad lacking con-
tents and without original activity. Struggle of ideas
for consciousness. Static and dynamic states of mind.
Attraction and repulsion of ideas. Fusions and com-
plexes. Psychical mechanism. Sentiments and vo-
iii
1 65083
iv CONTENTS AND SUMMARY
PAGE
litions. Sensation a mode of intelligence. Criticism
of Herbart's psychology. Pedagogical intellectualism
a result of psychological intellectualism. Power of
education. Its limitations. The body the physio-
logical obstacle. Criticism of formal culture.
"Knowledges" not valuable for themselves. Theory
of apperception. Its importance. Home education
superior to public education. Disadvantages of public
instruction. Reestablishment of the individuality in
Herbart's system. Necessity of studying the disposi-
tion of each individual. Diversity of temperaments.
Abnormal children. Pedagogy the goal of all the
sciences. Necessity of uniting practice and theory.
Science and the art of education 17
III. Herbart's intellectual pedagogy. Its complexity.
Difficulty of a brief exposition. The foundation of edu-
cation is instruction. To instruct the mind is to con-
struct it. Interest the essential condition of instruc-
tion. Two fundamental sources of interest : acquaint-
anceship with nature, and dealings with mankind.
Various forms of interest. Empirical interest.
Speculative interest. ^Esthetic interest. Sympa-
thetic interest. Social interest. Religious interest.
All the forms of interest should be cultivated. The
"many-sided interest." Exclusiveness and narrow-
ness of mind. The full life. Can a single individual
attain it? New distinction: "direct" and "indirect"
interest. Direct interest springs from the things
themselves. Relation of direct interest and of involun-
tary attention. Criticism of attention called voluntary.
Primitive attention and apperceptive attention.
Important role of apperceptive attention. The point of
departure for instruction is experience. Rules to follow
to arouse attention. Nothing should be taught which
CONTENTS AND SUMMARY v
PAGE
is entirely new. The four "moments" of instruction :
clearness, association, systematization, and method.
Intuition. It should be completed by description.
The three "methods" or "modes" of instruction.
Descriptive, analytic, and synthetic methods. Analy-
sis arranges and defines the intuitions. It proceeds
above all by questions. Synthesis occurs particularly
in didactic expositions. Defects and virtues of Her-
bart's pedagogical theories. Excessive systematiza-
tion and artificial methodizing. Integral education.
The perfect man. All matters of instruction in-
cluded in his schedule of studies. Preference for the
positive sciences. Herbart's opinion of the study of
ancient languages 44
IV. Moral culture. Man measured by his desires.
Will depends on knowledge. Special rules of moral
culture. Its point of departure in experience. Dis-
cipline or " control of children." Preparatory period
before moral culture should begin. Aim and char-
acteristics of discipline. Threats. Watching.
Disciplinary punishments. Corporal chastisement.
"Pedagogic" punishments. Herbart and Mr. Her-
bert Spencer. Authority and affection. The
mother's role. Virtue the supreme aim in life.
Herbart's moral system. Attraction of goodness
substituted for the categorical imperative. Criticism
of transcendental freedom. A moral system without
free will and without obligation. The five moral
ideas. Inner liberty. Perfection. Good-will.
Law. Justice. The moral ideas result from the re-
lationships of the ideas and the volitions. Morality,
like mentality, is the product of experience. The
"aesthetic necessity." Conscience and taste. Moral
judgments are none other than aesthetic judgments.
vi CONTENTS AND SUMMARY
PAGE
Intellectual conditions necessary to the formation
of aesthetic judgments. Character. Formation of
character. " Obj ective " character. " Subj ective "
character. "Memory of the will." Role of action
in moral culture. Criticism of Herbart's moral sys-
tem. Special processes of moral culture. It is neces-
sary to control the child. It is necessary to direct his
mode of action. Rules or maxims of conduct.
Calmness and serenity of mind. Approval and blame.
Warning and exhortation. Religious education . 82
V. Herbart's influence. A Herbartian library. The
Herbartian pedagogical school in Germany. Its lead-
ing representatives. Ziller (1817-1883). The peda-
gogical seminary at Leipzig. Original and bizarre
methods. Ziller's concentration plan. Reasons
given for the coordination of studies. Stoy (1815-
1885). The seminary at Jena. M. Rein, Stoy's suc-
cessor at Jena. Otto Frick and the Halle Institute.
Slow spread of the ideas of Herbart. Reasons for their
success. The United States another centre of the Her-
bartian pedagogy. American Herbartians : Mr. de
Garmo, Mr. McMurry, Colonel Parker, William James,
etc. Causes of Herbart 'a success in America. In-
fluence of Herbart in England, in Italy, and in France.
Conclusion : why the Herbartian movement will last.
Herbart had faith in education. He had faith in
instruction. He had imagined a society based on the
progress of individuals 113
BIBLIOGRAPHY . 141
PREFACE
WE desire to call attention to a thinker who is
worthy of being placed in the very first rank of
educationists, both as theorist and practical teacher.
Kousseau was a romance writer; Herbert Spencer,
a brilliant essayist in the field of education. ^Her-
bart was at once a schoolmaster and a profound
philosopher; and if it could be said of him that he
was "JJie father of modern psychology/' he has no
less a claim to be considered the founder of a scien-
tific pedagogy, with psychology iLs fas basis.
Pestalozzi, a man of admirable natural gifts, but
gifts which lacked the support of a sound psy-
chology, had only dim perceptions and "partial
intuitions " ; and, also, his theory concerned almost
entirely the education of little children and ele-
mentary instruction.
Herbart had all the resources of a subtle dialecti-
cian and of a learned psychologist, and he built up
with hands powerful, but somewhat awkward, a
whole system; a system wide and full, which em-
braces the whole field of education and is applica-
vii
viii PREFACE
ble to every style, to youth as well as to
childhood. His works no longer present to us
disconnected opinions, disjecti membra poetae, but
a solidly linked and harmonized doctrinal whole.
Parts of it are certainly open to criticism, but
every one must acknowledge and admire its firm,
well-marshalled order. In addition to this, we
note that he was not satisfied with theorizing and
arguing about the general laws of education; he
studied narrowly and with infinite care the small-
est details of applied pedagogy; he did not keep
the science apart from the art of education; he
extended the same watchful care over both
together; his science was replete with abstract
conceptions and bold generalizations; his art de-
scended to the smallest details and abounded in
methods and practical devices.
We shall try to give an idea of this vast system,
with the intention of throwing light on a theory
of education, which is at times obscure and always
complicated ; we shall, so to say, try to make this
somewhat muddy stream clearer; and this not
without the fear of weakening it by our abridg-
ment and of making it shallower by our explana-
tions.
The reasons, in our opinion, why Herbart's
system of education is to be recommended is, in
PKEFACE ix
the first place, because lie claims to haveestab-
lished it on experience, on the natural history
of the mind. But if Herbart is a realist who
breaks with the metaphysical dreams of his age,
in his own way he is also an idealist; and educa-
tion as he conceives it, education aiming above__all_.
at forming the individual, the human creature, is ,
in no way utilitarian. It is in a high degree moral,
proclaiming as the Qhief ends of instruction, morality |
and virtue. It is a universal education, offering/
'invitations to all men. Finally, it is a democratic/
education, which counsels children to seek the
company of workmen and peasants; like to the
education which made Edgar Quinet, our fellow-
countryman, a simple, free soul, loved by the people
from his earliest years in a rural district of his
native land.
It is a hundred years since Herbart published
his treatise on General^ Pedagogy : it dates from
1806. And yet, this book, now old, answers per-
haps better to the needs and aspirations -of the
hour than any other. At this time, in fact, when
democratic peoples are seeking more and more to
base their morality on science, it is surely worth
while to listen to the voice of a philosopher who
believed, and tried to demonstrate, that all educa-
tion depends alone on instruction, and that ideas
x PREFACE
and knowledge are the source of good feeling and
virtue. When we feel that faith in education is
increasing every day, and, too, the hope that as it
advances it will guarantee to human societies a
better future, might we not think that only yester-
day were said these noble words of Herbart : " The
interest which we take in education is one of the
forms of interest which we take in human beings.
Our hopes find refuge in the hearts of the young,
in the expectation that men, when they are more
carefully educated, will attain to things yet beyond
our view."
HERBART
THERE is little to tell about the life of Herbart.
It was an unbroken, simple, and peaceful life,
comparable to that of Kant; the noble life of a
thinker wholly devoted to study, who never let dis-
tractions withdraw him from meditation. There
are few events to be recorded from the laborious
years of a professor who left his study only for his
lecture-room, other than changes of residence and
the publication of his books.
Herbart was born at Oldenburg on the 4th of
May, 1776; he died at Gottingen, the llth of
August, 1841. He differed from Kant in this, that
he travelled, either as student or professor, to all
quarters of Germany, while Kant never left Konigs-
berg, his native town. During the years 1788 to
1794, he took his first course of higher studies at the
Gymnasium of Oldenburg, where his grandfather
had been head-master. Then, from 1794 to 1798,
he attended the University of Jena. Jena was at
that time one of the most brilliant centres for the
i
2 HERBART
study of German philosophy, and Fichte was teach-
ing there. After completing his university course,
Herbart became a tutor, and from 1797 to 1800 he
educated the three sons of the governor of Inter-
laken, M. de Steiger. It was while he lived in
Switzerland that he had the good fortune to meet
Pestalozzi, and to visit his school at Burgdorf in
1798. After a short stay at Halle, and a two years'
residence at Bremen, where he studied and taught
specially mathematics, he settled, from 1802 to
1809, at Gottingen. He was admitted to the doc-
tor's degree there on theses purely pedagogical, 1 and
he began his career as university teacher in the
capacity of Privat Docent (private lecturer); after
having declined an ordinary professorship which was
offered to him at the University of Heidelberg, he
became special lecturer at Gottingen.
To this period belongs the most important of his
pedagogical writings, General Pedagogy deduced
from the Aim of Education; 2 it was published in
1 Allgemeine Paedagogik aus dem Zweck der Erziehung abgeleitet,
which Herbart dedicated to his friend John Smith, senator of
Bremen.
2 These are the titles of the theses put forth by Herbart for
his Doctorship: (1) Ars pedagogica non experientia sola nititur;
(2) In liberorum educatione matheseos et poeseos maxima vis est;
(3) Institutio liberorum a Greeds litteris incipienda et quidem ab
Homeri Odyssea, nullo omnino prosaico, minime autem chrestomatico,
libra proemisso.
HERBART 3
1806. Already in this he was formulating the fun-
damental principles of his system of education, and
in his subsequent works he only developed and ex-
plained the theories which he had projected before
his thirtieth year. These theories were full of new
ideas ; this is seen especially in his Outline of Peda-
gogical Lectures, 1 which appeared in 1835, and which
crowns all the others.
It was the period when Germany was winning in
the world of thought a fine revenge for its defeat on
the battle-field. Kant, it is true, had just died in
1804, and his successor was Krug, a man of no
account. But Schelling was lecturing on philosophy
at Wtirzburg, and Hegel at Jena. Celebrated
additions were being made to the literature of edu-
cation. In 1803 appeared Kant's short essay On
Pedagogy. Schwartz was beginning the same year
the publication of his treatise on pedagogy, the
Theory of Education. In 1807 Jean-Paul Richter
published his Levana. Niemeyer was the heir of
Francke, and Director of the Educational Institute
at Halle; Francke greatly esteemed Herbart's
work, quoted him often, and tried to keep him at
1 Umriss paedagogischer Vorlesungen, 1835; 2d edition, 1841.
The list of Herbart's pedagogical publications is long, but the two
essential works are the General Pedagogy and the Outlines of
Pedagogical Lectures. Let us add the Aphorisms on Pedagogy
collected by Hartenstein.
4 HERBART
Halle. Niemeyer, in 1806, was issuing the fifth
edition of the third volume of his Fundamental
Principles of Education and Instruction; Fichte was
then delivering at Berlin his famous Discourses
to the German Nation. Everywhere an intellectual
movement of rare power was stirring and gathering
strength. The young professor at Gottingen at-
tached himself to this movement with all the ardor
of an intellect matured already by patient reflection,
and with the boldness of an exceptional originality,
he resolved to occupy a position apart, and deliver
severe attacks on the dominant philosophy. In the
midst of idealists lost in dreams of metaphysical
| pantheism, Herbart at once announced himself an
individualist and a realist who put faith only in
-experience. Already, in 1795, a philosopher only
twenty years old, he had dared to measure himself
( with Schelling and to criticise his theories, and to
break with Fichte, whose course of lectures he was
following. In 1802 he had openly rejected the doc-
trine of Kant in his doctor's theses ; he there ar-
dently opposed the theory of " transcendental
liberty," and that of " forms of a priori intuition."
Yet it was this same man who was called seven
years later to occupy the chair of Kant at the
University of Konigsberg. He accepted it, so it
would seem, rather to oppose the work of his prede-
HERBART 5
cessor than to continue it. Herbart in no way
concealed his joy at succeeding the greatest philoso-
pher of modern times, dissent from his doctrine in
no way diminishing the profound admiration in-
spired by his genius. "How great was my happi-
ness," he said, "in occupying this most celebrated
of all chairs of philosophy, the chair dreamt of in
ambitious youth, when I was studying the works
of the sage of Konigsberg. . . ."
For more than twenty years, from 1809 to 1833,
Herbart brought honor in his turn, in a new spirit,
to the chair held by Kant with so much fame from
1770 to 1797. In 1831 another great honor just
missed him, that of following Hegel, who had
recently died, and occupying after him the Chair
of Philosophy in the University of Berlin. But he
was suspected of liberalism, and the spirit of reaction
was triumphant in Prussia : he was not nominated.
So it was to Gottingen that he returned, to take the
place of Schulze, who also was an opponent of Kant.
How was the powerful intellect of Herbart formed ?
Certainly by grace of natural gifts. He was~a
striking refutation of his own psychological doc-
trine, defective in this respect, that it does not \
acknowledge anyjpower whatever as innate in the
souE The forclTof his insight into philosophy re-
vealed itself early with extraordinary precocity;
6 HERBART
and circumstances, however favorable they may
have been, would not suffice to explain the rapid
expansion of his genius. To the college graduate
at Oldenburg in 1793 was assigned for the custom-
ary leaving oration this weighty subject : " Causes
of the growth and decay of morality amongst the
common people/ 7 and his speech made a great
impression. The Jena student in 1796 wrote an
important monograph, On the Duty of the State in
Education. 1
In his youth Herbart was specially remarkable
for an extraordinary variety of pursuits : on the one
hand for an aptitude for understanding science, phys-
ics as well as mathematics, and on the other for an
equal delight in literature and the fine arts. "Poe-
try and mathematics," he said in one of his theses,
"are the two fountains of education." Already in
his play as a child he revealed the mental gift of
the mathematician, before he applied it boldly to
measuring psychological phenomena. Music had
attractions for him, and this taste lasted all his life ;
he played different instruments, the harp and vio-
lin, piano and violincello. He composed a sonata
(1808), and he wrote a treatise on harmony. He
was an eager student of antiquity, and yet imbued
1 Herbart returned to this subject in an essay published in 1810,
On the Task of Public Authorities in Education.
HERBART 7
with the modern spirit. In conclusion, it might be
said that he found in himself, in the manifold diver-
sity of his own aptitudes, the germ that inspired
his favorite theory, the theory which perceives in
" many-sided interests," in a variety of tastes, the
first condition for the successful training of the
intellect.
The work of nature in forming the genius of Her-
bart was completed by intense personal effort and
persistent application. In the midst of the disturb-
ances of those troublous times, and while the wars of
Napoleon were thundering their cannon, he buried
himself in quiet study and solitary meditation.
Finally, the tender solicitude of a devoted mother
also helped and sustained him in his life of study.
His father, a state councillor in Oldenburg, a cold
and severe man, does not appear to have exercised
any influence on the formation of his mind. It was
otherwise in regard to his mother, a woman of
superior mental gifts despite some defects of char-
acter. In fact, she was of a capricious and irritable
disposition; in 1801 she separated from her husband
and went to live in Paris, where two years after-
ward she died. She had directed the education of
her son during his early years, with pleasure, herself ;
not, however, without severity and with some harsh-
ness of the Protestant type. On account of his
8 HERBART
delicate health (when quite a child he burnt him-
self in a vessel of boiling water) she delayed send-
ing him to the grammar school until he was thirteen.
She learnt Greek in order to work with him. Ar-
dently longing for the honors which she saw would
be his in the future, she would not leave him even
during his adolescent years. She followed him to
Jena when he entered the university. She helped
him to make acquaintance with noted people, for
example, with Schiller. Certainly Herbart partly
owed to her to the enlightened care with which she
surrounded his entrance into life the unfolding of
his faculties, or, to use his own expression (since he
rejects the notion of faculties), the cultivation of
his intellect and the early acquisition of a wealth of
ideas. He was not an ungrateful son. He tenderly
returned the affection of his mother. During his
residence in Switzerland, in 1799, she was seriously
ill ; he was wretched at not being able to be with
her, and he wrote to his friends: "My excellent
mother, and eternal benefactress, how much suffer-
ing she has borne for me ! How much I wish I could
repay all her trouble ! With what joy I would
lighten her pain if that were possible ! . . ."
It has been said that Herbart was a born school-
master, that he bore the sign on his forehead.
That is quite true ; but it must be added, and there
HERBART 9
is no contradiction in this, that he was also born a
philosopher. At twenty years of age he had ex-
plored all systems, the most ancient as well as the
most recent. He was not less familiar with the
philosophy of Plato, and even with that of Cicero,
than with modern philosophy. Before he turned
his attention to new speculations, and attempted
to grasp the bold conceptions of his great con-
temporaries, he had had as his first master in his
own home a disciple of Wolf, who initiated him into
classical philosophy. Studied almost from child-
hood, during adolescence philosophy grew to be
his only passion, and it continued a constant sub-
ject of reflection and research, no side of it being
neglected. In 1808 he published a book on ethics,
General Practical Philosophy; in 1816, his Manual of
Psychology; in 1824, Psychology as Science, founded,
according to a New Method, on Experience, Metaphys-
ics, and Mathematics; in 1828, General Metaphysics.
But all these essays at constructing a comprehensive
philosophy tended, however, toward one end only,
an end that lay nearer to his heart than any other,
to establish a science of education, the aim and
completion of all other sciences.
If the philosopher Herbart was primarily a teacher,
if he became a teacher in youth to remain a teacher
until his last hour, this was in a great degree owing
10 HERBART
to the practical knowledge which a three years'
experience as tutor enabled him to acquire when
a youth of twenty years. Circumstances made him,
in 1797, the tutor of the three sons of M. de Steiger,
the oldest of whom was barely fourteen. This was a
most fruitful experience, for he took his duties as
/instructor very seriously. He studied the characters
/ of his pupils closely; he gathered observations,
I combined methods, thought out principles. The
reports which he sent twice a month to M. de Steiger
to keep him informed about the studies, the con-
duct, and progress of his children, five of these
reports have been preserved and published,
bear witness to the delicacy of his observing power,
the clearness and fulness of his views, as well as
to the nobility of the sentiments which inspired him
in accomplishing a task which possessed his whole
heart. He left his beloved pupils with regret; he
never forgot them ; their old tutor remained their
friend ; he corresponded with the eldest, Karl, until
1817. There is no doubt that it was this first
contact with children, this practical initiation into
the duties of a teacher, that decided forever the
destiny of Herbart, determining the pedagogical
tendency which was henceforth to control all his
labors.
His residence in Switzerland was also the occa-
HERBART 11
sion of his contact with Pestalozzi, and the influence
exerted by the humble teacher of Burgdorf on the
greatest of modern education philosophers is un-
deniable. Doubtless there are profound differences
between them, all the distance which exists between
the floating, vague enthusiasm of a dreamer, about
whom it has been said justly that he had more
heart than head, and the scholarly reflection, the
methodical reasoning, of a profound and subtle
psychologist. On the one side excessive and ill-
regulated sentiment; nothing beyond "partial
intuitions/' flashes of genius, no well-defined sys-
tem; on the other, an astonishing gift for abstrac-
tion and excessive systematization. In spite of
these differences of temperament, the two had
much in common. 1 * Both accepted sense-perception
as their starting-point. ' ' Sense-perception," said
Herbart, "is the great inspiring idea of the noble
Pestalozzi ; but he applied it over a narrow sphere,
only that of elementary education." Herbart
wanted it to illuminate all parts of teaching and
education. "The essential element in Pestalozzi's
method of instruction," he wrote again, "is that he
1 The importance that Herbart attached to the work of Pesta-
lozzi is shown by the fact that he devoted to him three pamphlets
in succession : On the Recent Book of Pestalozzi, How Gertrude, etc.,
1802; The A B C of Sense-perception, 1802; and finally, A
Criterium for judging Pestalozzi's Method of Instruction, 1804.
12 HERBART
understood that the business of teaching is to con-
I struct the mind of the child by dint of definite and
(clear experiences." And that is also the essential
/ element of Herbart's method. VThey ^greejr^gajd -
ing the necessity of selecting and adapting the
arious subjects of instruction in logical coordination
needs of the child as he
develops^ naturally. The points of contact between
them are numerous, the descent is clearly marked.
But what in the case of Pestalozzi a man un-
skilled, after all, in psychological questions was
only an outline, a kind of instinctive divination,
this grew through the industrious application of
Herbart into a scientific doctrine, a complete pic-
ture, all the details of which had been sought out
and examined with minute care.
The pedagogy of Herbart aspires, in short, to
become a science. Here, for the first time in the
history of education, we see ourselves confronted
by a strongly organized body of doctrine. In con-
ceiving his system Herbart was guided by abstract
ideas; but, be it stated also, he was something
more than a pure theorist. During the whole of
his career as professor he was not satisfied to ex-
pound the result of his reflections ex cathedra; he
always endeavored to control and justify his ideas
by experience./ His first care on assuming the
HERBART 13
chair at Konigsberg, was to organize a kind of
practical laboratory as companion to his lectures. 1
Kant had already thought of this when he said:
" We need normal schools and experimental schools."
It was this plan which Herbart made an effort to
carry out by establishing a pedagogical seminary,
where a few university students, eight or ten at
most, prepared themselves to teach under his direc-
tion ; and also a practice school, where a small num-
ber of children (at most fifteen) gave opportunity
for experiment and for putting to proof and testing
the theories of the master. Such was the origin of
those institutions for pedagogical apprenticeship,
which have been founded in Germany 2 during the
last century at Halle, at Leipzig, and elsewhere;
above all, at Jena, where first Stoy, the direct pupil
of Herbart and a student in the Konigsberg Semi-
nary, and then Rein, one of the most eminent repre-
sentatives of the Herbartian tradition, have followed
their master.
His days being divided between occupations
which were complements the one of the other, so
1 See the details furnished by Rein about the pedagogical semi-
nary in the Encyklopddisches Handbuch der Padagogik, t. v. p. 208.
2 See the recent interesting work of M. Chabot, La Pedagogic au
Lycee, notes de voyage sur les seminaires de gymnase en Allemagne,
Paris, Golin, 1903. See also, La Preparation professionelle a
l'enseignement secondaire, Paris, 1902, by Ch. V. Langlois.
14 HERBART
arranged that he could at the same time both
think and act, Herbart led a happy life: that
is the usual lot of men who study and act both.
Nothing in his life recalls the dramatic and vexed
career of a Comenius or a Pestalozzi. Nevertheless,
he suffered some reverses. About the year 1800, he
passed through a wretched attack of pessimism. He
lost his health ; he felt as if each winter as it came
would be his last. Also at the beginning of his
career he was poor. At Gottingen, he was forced
to exert himself to the utmost to make a bare
living, wearing himself out by giving private
lessons. And when the government demanded
five hundred francs as his contribution to the
war fund, he had difficulty in making both ends
meet. A more lasting trouble was the small
measure of success which attended his ideas of
reform amongst colleagues indifferent and even
hostile. He had to suffer and be vexed by the
opposition of elderly professors, who were sunk in
routine. He was struggling, he said, "against
wind and tide." 1 And again, "My poor pedagogy
has not been able to lift up its voice." But calm
and patient by nature, Herbart followed his course,
without letting himself be disturbed beyond meas-
1 See the pamphlet published in 1814, On my Struggle against
the Prevailing Philosophy.
HERBART 15
ure by public opinion. ' ' Although he was not averse
to winning honor," wrote one of his biographers, 1
"he preferred to await it even vainly, rather than
gain it by the methods of the charlatan methods
which he judged unworthy of philosophy, and which,
in the case of some of his contemporaries, he severely
castigated." 2
For the rest, a union which he contracted in 1811
at Konigsberg helped to render his life happy and
fortunate. He married a young lady gifted with an
intelligence which fitted her to be his intellectual
companion. It was & marriage of mutual affection.
Herbart is represented by his biographer Har-
tenstein as an active man, of short stature, large
blue glancing eyes, and resolute gait. At a party
in Konigsberg, one evening, the company was en-
gaged in the innocent amusement of playing cha-
rades. The word selected was "Herbart." The
first syllable was represented as signifying "a
1 The chief biographers of Herbart are Hartenstein and Fr.
Bartholomai. Bartholomews biography has been republished in
the series of Pddagogische Schriften, edited by von Sallwiirk; we
quote from this edition at present.
2 We pass over without comment the regrettable incident which
occurred at Gottingen in 1837, consequent on the coup d'etat
of the king of Hanover. Herbart separated himself from his
colleagues, many of whom resigned their chairs. The position he
took up was regarded as a weak acquiescence in the tyranny of
the government. To justify himself, he published a memorandum
entitled, Recollections of the Catastrophe at Gottingen in 1837.
16 HERBART
gentleman" (Herr)j the second as "the ornament
of the face" (Bart, beard). Miss Drake, a young
English lady, educated in Germany, was present,
and when she was asked what the whole word
represented, she exclaimed in earnest, "The whole,
that is the ornament of the University." Herbart
smiled. A few days later he asked and obtained
the hand of the agreeable lady who had declared her
sentiments so prettily. Their union of heart and
mind lasted undimmed by any cloud for nearly
thirty years. It was severed by the death of
Herbart in 1841; a death swift and easy, which
overtook him almost in his lecture-room. On the
9th of August he delivered a lecture, as usual,
before a large audience. On the llth he was
attacked by apoplexy. "Blessed apoplexy," a great
French surgeon called it.
ii
IN the system in which Herbart sought to con-
struct a new metaphysics, psychology, logic, aesthet-
ics, and ethics, everything is interdependent and
connected; and his pedagogy is only a fragment of
the great whole. It is wrapped in a general con-
ception of nature and humanity, which determines
and explains it. It is, above all, directly dependent
upon and derived from his psychology. If his
General Pedagogy, at the time of its appearance in
1806, appeared obscure to his readers, that was
because Herbart left the principles of his philosophy
too much concealed in it : he had not yet explained
them separately.
Although this is not the place either to study in
detail or to criticise thoroughly Herbartian philoso-
phy, it is yet necessary, if we wish to understand
his pedagogy, to make a rapid review of his psy-
chology : we shall select from it only what is indis-
pensable.
The psychology of Herbart is usually represented
as an attempt more or less useless to apply the cal-
17
18 HERBART
culus to the measurement of mental phenomena. 1
In fact, Herbart considered the states of conscious-
ness as so many forces, isolated and independent of
each other, which, since quantity forms one of their
elements, may be valued and numbered mathe-
matically. But this is, however, merely a peculiar
aspect of his theory, and the one most disputed.
Herbart 's general psychology is a matter apart from
these mathematical speculations ; it is new, profound,
and lays claim to originality, although it is allied
to the empiricism of Locke, of Hume, and Condillac.
To Herbart we owe, at least, the first attempt
to frame a scientific psychology a psychology
which seeks to establish a definite order and a
determined sequence amongst the states of con-
sciousness. It is a bold rejoinder to the idealism
of Kant and Fichte. To the philosophers who
regarded the world, time, and space, as a purely
1 It was especially in the Letters on the Application of Psy-
chology to Pedagogy, addressed to Professor Griepenkel , and written
towards 1831, that Herbart indulged in mathematical speculation
and in abstract digressions. Although we owe thanks to M. Dereux
for having conscientiously analyzed this work in his articles in the
Revue Pedagogique in 1890, we must not look to that work to find
the essential ideas of Herbart or, at least, the ideas which ought to
live. The Letters are an incomplete work, and the author treats in
them only the preliminaries of education ; he examines the diverse
temperaments which condition the degree of education possible to
the child. The projected work was to comprise three parts, of which
he composed only the first.
HERBART 19
subjective creation of the intellect, Herbart opposed
a conception which, on the contrary, sees in the
mind only a reflection of things outside, a construc-
tion from sense experiences. To the metaphysicians
who represented everything as issuing from within
the soul and the thinking subject, a realist replied,
who, by way of extreme reaction, claimed to estab-
lish that everything emanates from objects and from
the external world, and who was bent on discover-
ing in sense-perception all the conditions of the birth
and development of mind.
The point of departure of the psychological
conception of Herbart is that there are no faculties
in the soul. This must be accepted in its strictest
sense. Herbart does not admit in the mind any
original force, any native energy. Others had dis-
missed to the land of dreams the old machinery of
innate ideas: Herbart went farther, he rejected
not only ideas but innate faculties. The faculty
theory is, in his view, only a mythology. Faculties
are idols that must be overthrown. In the soul
there are only successive happenings. The mind,
in its original state, js^ merely a tabula rasa. It
has no content. It is created bit by bit, thanks
to representations or ideas (Vorstellungeri) brought
to it by sense-perception. According to the popular
view (and whatever Herbart thought, this is the cor-
20 HERBART
rect view), nature has endowed the mind with latent
powers, inherited or innate, and these mental predis-
positions, developing with the help of the senses, give
birth to the inner world of thought. Mind is thus
conceived as a primitive force which puts something
of its own more or less, according to the system
into its successive acquisitions. In Herbart's theory
thetfe is nothing of this sort. To Euclid you grant his
axioms and postulates, and he produces from these
a whole geometry. In the same way you grant to
Herbart his sense representations, and by an in-
genious manipulation of these representations, from
their interplay and reciprocal reactions, he claims to
build a mind, sensibility, and will as well as in-
tellect. According to him it is not mind which,
preexisting at least as power, pursues ideas; it is,
on the contrary, representations or ideas which,
following each other and uniting together, in a way
pursue mind, and which, by forming groups, end
by fashioning it. They enter the soul through the
avenue of the senses, and they become conscious by
accident, as it were; they pass out and return as
they please, or rather, as it pleases other ideas,
which now summon them, now repulse and replace
them, in a perpetual coming and going.
Let us say at once that it is not easy to under-
stand how Herbart, with such a conception of in-
HERBART 21
tellectual development, could deem himself justified
in holding to a belief in the existence of a soul. It
is vain to say that the soul is a " monad," simple and
homogeneous, superior to the myriads of monads
which people the universe; this undefined being,
this hypothetical substratum, appears to be a pure
negation, for it has no activity of its own, possesses
at most a vis inertice, power to enter into relation-
ship with the world of sense through the medium
of the nervous system. The monad of Leibniz
was quite a different thing: isolated and shut in,
having no opening to the external world, its prin-
ciple of activity was in itself. Herbart's monad, as
he himself defined it, "has originally no ideas, desires,
or feelings. Itself knows nothing of itself, nothing
of the external world. Still more, it has no forms of
perception, as Kant thought, no laws of will or action,
no sort of predisposition remote even from all that ;
its nature is entirely unknown." * One might just
as well say that it does not exist; and if Herbart
grants to it a power of "conservation," in face of
other monads which try to destroy it, one wants to
ask him what has it to conserve ? To deny to it all
preformation, impoverish and empty it, so to speak,
1 Text-book of Psychology, Part III, 152, 153. In addition he
says: "I would not admit any kind of germs, or any kind of
natural predispositions; such predispositions are the death of
psychology."
22 HERBART
to the point of depriving it of all initial force, does
not this, in fact, amount to denying its existence?
Nevertheless, Herbart represents himself as a
spiritualist; he calls materialism an " absurdity."
The soul which he has reduced to nothing, he de-
scribes as mistress of the body which she rules ; and
this preeminence he attributes to the place which he
assigns to it in a locality of the brain: "a splendid
situation where all the nerves meet and end."
However that may be, such is the way in which
Herbart reconstructs the soul and builds a scaffold-
ing for his intellectualism on the ruins of the innate,
without any primitive foundation, with nothing
except the deposit of sensations; for his system
might be defined as absolute intellectualism on
an empirical basis. I Mind, as we have said, is a
vague and empty place, into which are introduced
one after another different representations of the
external world, " presentations" of the senses.
Mind cannot be said to be conscious of these repre-
sentations or ideas, since it is itself nothing but the
whole group of ideas; but each is conscious of itself,
and it remains so until it yields place, as it were, to
other ideas. Then it falls back below what Herbart
calls the " threshold of consciousness." When they
have returned to the region of shadows, all the ideas
acquired form in the depths, one might say the crypt,
HERBART 23
of the soul, as it were, an unconscious or subcon-
scious underground region. They are not, indeed,
"annihilated, nor have they disappeared forever";
they are merely latent ; they continue in a condition
'of tendency, and they aspire to reproduce and re-
instate themselves, as soon as a favorable occasion
will permit this to occur. Amongst all the represen-
tative elements which have gradually enriched the
mind, there is in progress a sort of struggle for con-
sciousness, analogous to the struggle for life amongst
individuals in society.
I/ But it is not by chance or regardless of law that
: the ideas stored up reappear in order to again take
possession of the light. There are both static and
dynamic states of mind. Static, when ideas have,
so to speak, fallen asleep and entered a state of
rest or repose; dynamic, when circumstances set
them free and recall them to conscious life. Ideas,
moreover, find in themselves the power to render
mutual assistance, or to struggle with each other.
They are mental forces which act on each other by
attraction or repulsion, though it is not easy to
understand how an idea, which is only a passive
representation of an external object, can become
active, when there is no feeling and willing subject
who communicates activity to it. v But the power
which Herbart has withdrawn from the soul and
24 HERBART
the faculties he must discover somewhere, and he
attributes it to ideas. If ideas are more or less
alike, they tend to form groups and unite : that is
what we call a " fusion." If they are merely dif-
ferent, unlike, they get mixed and entangled, form-
ing a " complex." If they are contrary, opposed to
each other, they cannot coexist, and they drive
each other out.
The soul, then, is like the stage of a theatre, on to
which the actors come in their turns to occupy
the front place before the footlights. The first
person appears, and stays until another, entering
in his turn, either expels him by violence and throws
him back behind the curtain, or, on the contrary,
tells him to stay, and, if they can find a common sub-
ject of conversation, makes friends with him. The
soul, in other terms, is only a series of states of
consciousness, a flow and ebb of ideas, which now
emerge like rising stars above the horizon, now
vanish into night. Ideas agree with each other or
struggle together : the soul, a dumb creature, has no
objection to raise. Hence Herbart thought that ideas
might be subjected to quantitative determination;
that was a chimerical notion which we may wholly
reject in spite of the importance which Herbart him-
self may^have attached to it ; but when the notion is
transferred from the realm of pure ideas to that of
HERBART 25
sensations and psychological phenomena (so far as
they are allied with physiological manifestations) it
may lead to solid and certain results ; hence we may
say that Herbart, by one of his errors, even opened
up the road for the fruitful researches in psycho-
physiology of Lotze, Fechner, Helmholtz, and Wundt. 1
Everything, then, with Herbart is reduced to
psychical mechanism; " fusions" and " complexes"
of representations explain all phenomena of the in-
tellect : abstraction, judgment, comparison, reason,
the notion of self, not leaving out memory and im-
agination. The other phenomena of the soul, sen-
timents, desires, volition, are adequately accounted
for by the relation of ideas to each other. Senti-
ments are no longer elementary and primitive states,
but states transitory and derived : fleeting modifica-
tions of ideas. They are the shadows that pass:
the foundation of the mind remains, and this founda-
tion consists of ideas. Education, therefore, must
be constructed on ideas, and not on the shifting
sands of sensation.
Sensation, and this opinion of Herbart has
maintained its prestige in the German philosophy of
the nineteenth century, sensation is only a mode,
1 On the relation of the doctrine of Herbart to experimental
psychology, see the recent work of Th. Jehen: Das Verhaltniss
der Herbartischen Psychologic zur physiologisch experimentellen
Psychologic, Berlin, 1900.
26 HERBART
a function of the intellect. Pain arises from a con-
flict, an antagonism of two ideas, and from the result-
ing state of tension. Pleasure is the consequence
of the union of two ideas which are in accord.
Pleasure comes from the forward movement of
thought, pain from its arrest. Desire is only a
strong, vivid representation, which tends to maintain
itself above the " threshold of consciousness"; and,
finally, volition, a special form of desire, appears
when a representation which tends to reappear is
assisted by other representations, and, in addition,
belief that it can be realized is present.
The psychological system of Herbart, as far as
one can judge from this short study, is extremely
ingenious; but it is difficult to perceive in it any-
thing but a work of his imagination. It proceeds,
in fact, neither from the old method of introspective
observation, the evidence for which may be sought
in the testimony given by the consciousness of
others (and this may or may not confirm what you
believe you have discovered in your own conscious-
ness), nor the method of modern psychology, the
psychology which seeks the conditions of mental
life in the study of the nervous system.
Physiologists may rightly say to Herbart: You
neglect and slight the function of the brain. At
least you make very rare allusions to it. You forget
HERBART 27
that ideas are only conscious manifestations of
molecular movements and vibrations of the cerebral
masses. On the other hand, an objection may be
raised by the spiritualists : You reduce to nothing
the activity of the soul ; you leave it only the func-
tion of King Log (roi faineant). In ascribing to ideas
alone the duty of explaining mental movement,
you annihilate the thinking subject. We can see
how they come one after the other, brought in by
the senses ; but there is no one to receive them. . . .
Herbart is wrong on both counts. He eliminates
at one stroke the double framework : the brain and
the general consciousness, the material substance,
and the intellectual principle of psychic phenomena.
If " representations" pass back and forth in the mind
like marionettes on the stage of a Guignol theatre,
or Chinese shadows behind a screen, that is riot, as
he thought, because of relationships between them.
If they obey a settled order of succession, it is be-
cause they are directed by an invisible hand; that
is to say, either by the brain or by the soul. Thus,
as M. Fouillee has expressed it: "A cloud in the sky
does not take the form of a tower because it had
previously the form of a mountain, but it took the
two forms successively under the action of the wind
which drives it." *
1 M. Fouillee, L'tvolutionnisme des ide es-forces, p. 34.
28 HERBART
To convince oneself that the hypotheses of Her-
bart are false, it suffices to confront them with a few
facts from experience. Let us recall, for example,
any moment of our lives when we felt a keen sorrow
or great joy. Immediately after this emotional dis-
turbance, whether painful or pleasant, is it not a
fact that some interior force, the emotion still thrill-
ing us, summons incessantly to consciousness ideas
which correspond to our feeling, ideas connected with
sorrow or pleasure? Is it possible that the mere
resemblance of these ideas, whether sad or merry,
to the idea dominating our mind, explains their
union ? No ; what proves that the force of attrac-
tion does not lie in the ideas alone, that its source
must be sought where it resides, in an inner feeling,
is the fact that the busiest occupations and repre-
sentations, quite new and unlike, of such a nature
as completely to turn aside the current of thoughts,
do not hinder the wave of wretchedness or satis-
faction from overtaking us again in the middle of
cares of quite another kind. We may work, or we
may seek distraction in vain, or even succeed for
several hours in turning our attention to objects
which have no relation to the happy or unhappy
event which has disturbed our life, but that does
not hinder the sorrowful or joyful ideas from gain-
ing the ascendant again, at a moment when we
HERBART 29
are thinking least about them. What can be said,
except that ideas do not control themselves by
virtue of their relations ; that above them there is
a hidden power which governs them, and which
intervenes to disturb the order of their succession.
Let us consider another case, recalling an ex-
perience somewhat as follows : during hours of soli-
tary meditation, when the senses were mute, even
when we were controlling the stream of ideas with a
strong hand, the thread of thought to use Herbart's
expression was suddenly interrupted and cut short
by an idea quite foreign to the matter which occupied
us. An unexpected reminiscence, a landscape long
ago passed from our vision, the image of some one we
have not seen for years, these come and disturb
us by their sudden apparition. They come from I
do not know where, and they have no relation what-
ever to the reflections which were absorbing us. An
internal spring was touched, a latent activity of the
imagination, or modification of the cellules of the
brain, and caused a sleeping image to awaken. In >
any case, the logical association of ideas does not
hold good here, and the theory of Herbart regard-
ing an intrinsic interlacing, a normal union of ideas,
falls once more to the ground.
But, true or false, the psychology of Herbart is
the foundation of his pedagogy, and it is possible
30 HERBART
already to discern, according to what has just been
said, what will be the general characteristic features
of his system of education.
In the first place, from a psychological intellec-
tualism which explains the soul as consisting only
of a series or a network of representations or ideas,
arises a pedagogical intellectualism which makes
instruction, that is, the acquisition of ideas, the only
basis of education. Even the formation of charac-
ter will depend on forming the intellect. There
will be no manner of separation or scission between
intellectual and moral education. The understand-
ing will be the principle of the will, and actions will
conform to ideas.
A second consequence of this psychological em-
piricism of Herbart is that the influence of education
.sets up a claim to be considered omnipotent. Since
^,the souls of men are originally alike, it depends
bn education alone to form them. If there are no
inborn intellectual tendencies which assist the
educator, neither does the soul inherit vicious or
adverse inclinations to hinder his efforts. He can
write at will on the white pages of the child's
understanding ; on this condition, however, that the
supposition in the education of the solitary Emile
is made actual, viz., that from his infancy only one
master controls the pupil. The destiny of each
31
individual depends on the grouping of ideas which
the wisdom of his parents or the ability of his
teachers has been able to bring about in his mind
when a child. From this the conclusion inevitably
follows that education is the mistress ruling the
future of mankind; if, by a strange contradiction,
Herbart did not restore to the body the innate pre-
dispositions of which he was content to rob the soul,
and attribute to the organism, the physical tem-
perament, those individual characteristics, defects,
or virtues, which sometimes favor the action of edu-
cation, sometimes oppose it, and thus fix in a meas-
ure the character and destiny of individuals in
advance, now by over-exciting intellectual activity,
now by checking it. "Bodily differences are re-
flected in psychical manifestations." The body is
the physiological obstacle, the hereditary enemy.
It is to the body that individuality belongs. In
consequence, Herbart does not indulge that simple
illusion that one could produce geniuses or even
talented men at will. He admits that the best
education sometimes fails, that great men have edu-
cated themselves, that men of moderate ability re-
main such, in spite of all the efforts of their masters.
None the less Herbart is warranted by his system
as a whole in ascribing very great influence to edu-
cation. In his pedagogy, therefore, he belongs to the
i
32 HERBART
believers, the men of faith. "Without the joyful
hope inspired by meditating on youth, how could one
overcome the benumbing impressions made by the
idea that the world might remain always what it is
now."
A third point, and one of the most important:
there can no longer be any question about the culti-
vation of faculties in a system which denies that they
exist. Although in current psychology " faculties"
are no longer held to be anything beyond conven-
tional terms, labels for connecting a series of phe-
nomena, methods of education are none the less still
in part adjusted to suit the old faculty theory.
Hence we still witness examples of mischievous
educational procedure. We speak, for example, of
developing the memory as such, as if there were a
memory independent of the successive ideas that
enter consciousness. Regarding judgment and rea-
son, the same is true. Who amongst us has not
made sacrifice to this ancient prejudice of classic
psychology? In that case it would then matter
little what knowledges were used to cultivate the
so-called faculties, whether or no they were inter-
esting. Some science or other, arithmetic, for ex-
ample, would be taught, not in order to know it, but
to exercise the reasoning faculty. Herbart's posi-
tion in this paramount and delicate question is alto-
HERBART 33
gether different. In his opinion, the knowledges are
valuable onfy for themselves by reason of their
intrinsic utility, and not for the doubtful profit
which formal culture might claim to derive from
them.
It seems an argument on his side, that an aptitude
acquired in one branch of knowledge does not appear
applicable to studies in general, without losing any
of its power and with like results, yet this should be
the case if faculties really existed. Certain children
have good memories at home and none at school.
That would be enough to prove that there is no
memory faculty applicable without distinction to
all objects; that there are only groups of recollec-
tions; hence we may have acquired with ease a
knowledge series in a certain sphere, and be quite
incapable of acquiring fresh knowledge in another
field. A certain study cultivates the mind in a
certain direction, not in all directions.
In the same way we have known children who at
twelve years of age gave clear proofs of the strength
of their reasoning power in mathematical science;
that was because they had just been studying,
mathematics. Afterwards they neglected this study.
They exercised their reason in other studies, histori-
cal or philosophical. At eighteen years of age they
found themselves quite unskilled in understanding
\
34 HERBART
mathematics. Herbart, then, has some reason to
maintain that the general cultivation of hypotheti-
cal faculties is absurd, that the only real education
is such as furnishes the intellect with positive knowl-
edge. As an English humorist has said, "The
prescription for developing digestive power is not to
chew elastic rubber, it is to grow strong on good
beefsteaks." In the same way intellect is cultivated,
not by purely formal and empty exercises, but by
solid, substantial, and nourishing instruction.
Let us note in the fourth place in Herbart's
psychology an assumption of very wide bearing in
pedagogy: his theory of "apperception," a term
that has found favor in modern philosophy. It
was not new, for Kant employed it to signify the
elemental knowledge of self, anterior to all percep-
tion. Herbart, however, gave it a different mean-
ing. His apperception must be understood as
applying to sense-perception, in so far as it is made
clear and complete by representations already ac-
quired by the mind. As a matter of fact, the new
expression was, perhaps, not quite necessary; the
term "conception" would have sufficed, if conception
is, as sometimes defined, the apprehension of an
object by the intellect. You look at a rose : your
senses tell you its form, color, and convey to you
its perfume. But with these simple, immediate, per-
HERBART 35
ceptions others are united that have been formerly
acquired, and which are more or less distinct:
that this small round thing, red or white, is called
a rose, that you have seen others similar in other
gardens, etc.; this is, then, an apperception. Mr.
Stout, one of the commentators of Herbart who
has given an excellent exposition of his psychology, 1
has said that apperception is "the act by which a
mental system appropriates a new element:" one
might define it more clearly yet as the act by which
ideas already acquired assimilate and incorporate
a new idea. In consequence, they modify and alter
the perception : whence it may be inferred that two
persons never have an identical apperception of the
same object. Above all, ideas facilitate or hinder
the acquisition of knowledge : groups of ideas pre-
viously acquired do or do not lend themselves to
further acquisitions. From this way of conceiving
the mind at work acquiring knowledge, Herbart
derived the inspiration of some of his methods of
teaching which do the most honor to his pedagogical
insight, notably as regards the necessity of rendering
the mind ready to receive instruction. In order
that a new representative may be received into the
circle of ideas, that it may find its way with ease
and security amidst the network of knowledges,
1 See Mind, 1888, 1889.
36 HERBART
the teacher, at the beginning of each lesson, must
prepare the ground; he must, so to speak, summon
up a mental escort into the presence of the newcomer
to welcome and introduce him. In other words,
the teacher must put before the child only such
notions as can easily combine with those he already
has, and thus form groups of ideas associated logi-
cally and united strongly ; on this will depend not
only wealth of mind but also strength and force of
character. The old faculty psychology taught us that
when pupils enter the class-room they had at their
disposal an intelligence and memory quite ready to
learn anything whatever. But this view is false;
it is necessary to summon, to awaken and set in
order, those ideas to which the topic selected for the
day's lesson can be adjusted; we must eliminate and
crowd out all preoccupations which might hinder
the effect of the teacher's words, his instruction, from
penetrating ; we must thus clear the road for distinct
and fruitful apperception.
If it was his own psychology which suggested to
Herbart those processes in instruction which he
extols, it also led to his definite conclusion regarding
the preference to be given to public or to home edu-
cation. He rejected the opinions of his master at
Jena, the famous Fichte, as much in pedagogy as
in philosophy. Fichte, having specially in view
HERBART 37
national and civic education, sketched his plans for
regiments of young men in the gymnasiums ; Herbart,
on the contrary, is concerned above all with the
individual himself, with the man rather than with
the citizen. He makes the reproach against the
State as educator that it thinks only of preparing
bureaucrats. Home education, if that were always
possible, would be superior to all other. "That boy,"
said he, "is infinitely more accessible to the influ-
ences of education who has been a long time educated
by one person, especially if he has had the good for-
tune to be educated by his mother." He was here
recalling a personal experience. When a child passes
from hand to hand, it is difficult for the masters
who follow each other to establish authority over
him. For the rest, Herbart recognized that domestic
education is, as a rule, an unrealizable ideal, that
the family is too much occupied otherwise to fulfil
its duty in this respect, and besides it is often
too noisy and gay to fulfil it well. But since
parents must send away their children, let them
at least be followed in thought, and never lost from
view. These are truths worth recalling at a time when
families abandon their children to the State more
and more, and shift on to it the burden of caring for
and educating their children. The great mischief
of the public school, according to Herbart, is that it
38 HERBART
collects together children who are very different,
unequal morally and intellectually, for the pur-
pose of giving them a uniform education. Even
supposing that all had in the beginning the same
starting-point, they have already had time when
they become scholars to undergo very different im-
pressions, whether at home or in society, and these
have modified their character and intellect. Hence
the inferiority of public-school education, which,
bending all heads under the same yoke, cannot
mete out and adapt the rules of discipline and
methods of instruction to the many and various
aptitudes of the scholars as would a teacher in con-
versation with a single child. No matter whether
they are ailing or strong, it presents to them the same
difficulties to conquer ; whether their pace is rapid
or slow, it conducts them along the same road and
in the same order. The disadvantage of public
instruction is still more marked when, following
the theory of apperception, we consider that in-
struction can bring forth all its fruit only when the
teacher knows how to impart it skilfully with all
kind of precaution, adjusting it to the complicated
network of ideas of which the intellect of each child
is composed.
A philosopher who, like Herbart, denies all innate-
ness and mental heredity, would seem condemned,
HERBART 39
in consequence, to ignore the special and individual
elements in human personality. But by reason of
the influence ascribed by him to the physical or-
ganism, an influence varying from one child to
another, Herbart reestablishes the individuality,
which his system appeared at first to compromise.
To this subject he devotes long chapters. Hence
he does not admit that to be an educator it is suffi-
cient to have studied abstract psychology and its
general principles. Since it is the individual that
we have to educate, it is the individual that it is
necessary to know. As an English humorist has
said, it is not a matter of grinding in a pedagogical
mortar the sixty pupils of a class of which John is a
member, until they have been reduced, so to speak,
to the state of a mass of uniform youth, in order
to obtain the average. John is not a quotient; he
is an actual individual being, who must be studied
in his own character, with the virtues and faults
which mark him off from all his comrades. 1
From the writings of Herbart one could gather
precious contributions for the psychology of the
adolescent yet to be written, and which, when once
in existence, will render not less service to the art and
science of education than the psychology of the little
1 John Adams, The Herbartian Psychology applied to Education,
London, 1898.
40 HERBART
child. I mean a descriptive psychology, in which
different temperaments will be distinguished, causes
of their diversity analyzed, and then the means
pointed out which should be used as remedy for the
deficiencies or mental defects of youth according to
the particular case. Herbart traced out the charac-
teristic differences between children, and also those
marking young men, with delicate insight. He
deserves to be considered one of the forerunners
of the science called "ethnology." He shows us, for
example, children of a contradictory humor, " an in-
tellect that always replies no," whom nothing suits,
who mix with everything, as it were, a drop of bit-
terness. With these morose and peevish natures,
special precautions must be taken; in order to in-
spire them with respect, or even fear, they should be
subject to severe discipline. On the other hand, there
are children who see everything rose-colored, and
Herbart considers this superficial optimism also a
kind of disease which needs appropriate attention.
Herbart, like a good psychologist, had listened to
doctors and health experts, and the question of
physical temperament attracted and held his at-
tention. He distinguished seven classes of tem-
peraments four normal, three abnormal. Here are
children muscularly feeble, but with a well-shaped
head and active intellect. They prefer intellectual
HERBART 41
occupations to games and physical exercises. They
are, as Plato would have said, " musicians "as opposed
to "gymnasts." We must take books away from
their hands, force them to play and be active. But
the nature of the physical organism is not the only
source of diversity of temperament. Circumstances,
the conditions of education and life, may modify the
primitive disposition. There are, for example,
blunted temperaments which Herbart calls " Boeo-
tians"; and this intellectual languor, this mental
heaviness, is often the effect of the mode of life of
the individual and of the habits he has contracted.
Thus the peasant whose thoughts are imprisoned in
a narrow and predetermined circle, whose imagina-
tion passes regularly from seed-time to harvest, and
harvest to seed-time, he is condemned by the yoke
of his monotonous life, to become in every land a
" Boeotian," whatever may have been the original
wealth of his temperament. In the same way a
child, naturally of very sweet temperament, will
become, perhaps, irritable and cross under the in-
fliction of repeated annoyances. The most san-
guine and ardent man will succumb to melancholy
if he is subjected to a kind of life which undermines
his natural gayety.
But it is impossible for us to follow Herbart's
footsteps along all the roads whither his observant
42 HERBART
intelligence led him. Let it suffice to have shown
the important place that his psychology holds in
his system of education. Since Herbart's time, the
assertion that psychology and pedagogy cannot
mingle, that they are "like oil and water," is no
longer admissible. Herbart employed his life and
all his thinking-power to prove the contrary.
That psychology is enough to prepare and form a
teacher, however, cannot be said. The science of
education can be the goal only of the whole range
of research of the human mind. In order that
pedagogy may at last leave behind the " gross
empiricism" where it has so long languished, it must
have recourse to all forms of knowledge; it will
" erect its scaffold on a united group of all sciences."
The educator will, then, be a theorist above all else,
-a scholar, a philosopher. Nowhere else is the
necessity of having wide philosophic views and
broad general ideas so imperative as in pedagogy;
for the hard daily toil imposed on teachers tends to
narrow their horizon.
Without theory, practice ends in routine ; but on
the other hand, without practice, theory may lose
itself in the clouds of abstraction. There is at one
and the same time a science of education and an art
of education. Herbart does not separate them.
No one has understood better than he the complex
HERBART 43
and delicate conditions under which the teacher
of infancy and youth is formed, what a heavy price
he pays. No one has contributed more than he to
discredit and destroy the traditional prejudice that
the teacher is born, that a man is a professor by
the grace of God. Too often it is imagined that to
become a good schoolmaster it is enough to have
knowledge and ability. Herbart believed, on the
contrary, that skill, pedagogical efficiency, is ac-
quired only by prolonged effort, that long practice
and exercise are necessary, experience gained
through failure as well as success ; at the same time
there must be the continuous hard work involved
in a philosophic investigation of the laws of edu-
cation.
"It is by meditation," said he, "it is by reflection
and research, it is through scientific study, that the
educator must prepare his mind and heart to fit
himself to conceive, feel, and judge rightly the par-
ticular incidents, the special cases, which he must
meet in his career as a teacher."
Ill
THE pedagogy of Herbart is a whole world of
thought, and a big volume would be necessary for an
analysis and exposition covering the whole ground.
There is not a question, whether of pedagogical
theory or practice, which he has not attacked and
solved. By the side of general notions, conceptions
in which he delights to revel with exceptional power,
he furnishes abundant special rules. He abounds
in methods, processes, devices. He is not satisfied
to skim over the surface of his subject; he descends
to the details of a matter with minute accuracy.
' Moreover, a brief exposition of the theories of
Herbart is rendered difficult by his peculiar mode of
thought. Some one has said, " We do not read Her-
bart, we must study him." So one might say,
"We do not make a synopsis of Herbart, we are
forced to examine him thoroughly." His penetra-
tive power makes him subtle, and at times his
extreme abstraction renders him obscure. He
analyzes beyond measure. His writings bristle
with endless distinctions, divisions, subdivisions.
44
HERBART 45
jv^vr
His central thought is constantly overlaid with
incidental considerations which hamper and con-
ceal it. To use his own term, he does not suffi-
ciently sharpen ' 'the point " of his ideas. He hardly
makes any assertion without immediately gathering
round it corrections and reservations. Doubtless,
in the delicate matters of which he treats, there are,
perhaps, modes of approximation to truth. All the
same, one would like greater clearness, clearer-cut
conclusions. At the beginning, the reader loses
himself amid the twists and turns of his elaborated
reflections. The first impression is painful, confus-
ing, and even annoying. But provided we return
to the study of the pages which at first repelled
us, one becomes attracted, fascinated, and we be-
gin to think we may become Herbartian. We end
by moving at ease through the windings of thoughts
which are endlessly complex, and of which we did
not at first apprehend the strict logic. Diamonds
are not less brilliant because effort must be exerted
to separate them from their bed; so Herbart's ideas,
some of them at least, do not appear less sound or
less admirable, because they must be loosened from
a somewhat rough case, and from the scholastic
form in which he embodied them. Certainly in the
thick growth of his theories there is more than one
dead branch ; but these branches may fall and yet
46 HERBART
the trunk remain healthy and unshaken ; and when
one is allowed to neglect those parts of his work
which to-day are of interest only from the historic
and curious point of view, there yet remain enough
living ideas for it to be worth while to gather and
bring them to the light.
The governing idea of Herbart's pedagogy, the
\ idea which should guide us if we wish to understand
\ it, is that the foundation, the only foundation of
' the whole of education, is instruction. There exist,
then, no longer two distinct educations, an intellec-
tual and a moral education, as those necessarily
were tempted to believe who acknowledged distinct
faculties, and who, in consequence, had to provide
for the intellect, the senses, the will, and their sep-
arate cultivation each by themselves. Above all,
there is no education as distinct from instruction.
No ; the mental nature is a unity, and consequently
there is only one education, education by instruc-
tion, or educative instruction.
We are acquainted with the new force which the
word " instruction" gains in Herbart's writings. To
i instruct the mind is, he considers, to construct it.
It is no longer a question, as under the old hypothe-
sis of faculties bestowed by nature, of overlaying
a more or less trustworthy memory, of causing
literary or scientific knowledge to enter an under-
HERBART 47
standing more or less open. Knowledge is no longer
a mental ornament, it is a mental element. Knowl-
edge builds up and produces mind. According to
the old theory, since mind existed prior to expe-
rience, it conditioned the unity of consciousness.
But if it is true that there is no intellect apart
from successive ideas, henceforth we must seek the
bonds that unite them in the cohesion, the interlac-
ing of the ideas themselves. "Whatever is isolated,"
said Herbart, "is valueless." It is a consequence
of this theory that instruction assumes a profound
and delicate meaning, and that quite new duties
are imposed on teaching; its office is no longer
confined to developing the intellect, since it must
create it, and since by the association, of memories,
by regular " series" of ideas, those mental forces
are aroused whence spring not only strength of
intellect, but also strength of will.
The essential condition of fruitful instruction is
that it excites " interest" and attracts it. A peda-
gogical theorist may be allowed to be dull (and it
must be acknowledged that Herbart sometimes per-
mits himself this), but the practical teacher, the
schoolmaster, commits a fatal sin if he is dull;
the first duty of a master is to be interesting.
Interest is the watchword, the word to conjure
with in Herbart's pedagogy. Just as in ethics he re-
48 HERBART
jects the categorical imperative, and as guide for
souls seeking virtue he desires to substitute for the
hard law of Kant the pure but arid bond of duty,
the pleasant and attractive notion of the ideal, so
in pedagogy he excludes constraint, and he tones
down effort almost to the degree of suppressing it.
" All is lost," said he, "if from the beginning we have
been clumsy enough to make study a source of
misery and torment." The charm of the true,
like the charm of the good and of the beautiful,
this is the chief principle of education.
Interest (die Interesse) is the liking one may
conceive for a thing, and that causes one to take
pleasure in it. To interest is to arouse the hunger
of the intellect. Let us mark well that its aim is
not to amuse or divert, and make teaching into a
play. Herbart marked himself off clearly from the
educationists of his time, called " Philanthropists,"
who claimed to make of instruction a recreation.
He will not have "soft pedagogy," or let a teacher
stoop to construct an infantile world for his pupil.
Interest, as he understood it, is at once the charac-
teristic of things which captivates the attention, and
a feeling of curiosity, of alertness and activity of
intellect, manifested in the mind. The term inter-
est, then, is two-faced; it belongs at the same time
to the object which arouses the taste and the sub-
HERBART 49
ject in whom the taste is aroused. It is interest
which is the spring of mental activity, the principle
of intellectual life. It keeps the attention of the
class centred on the lips of a skilful master, and like-
wise fixes it and holds it to the observation of things
that please them, or to carrying out attractive pieces
of work to the end. The activity which Herbart
denied to the soul itself, he revived under the form
of interest ; for interest summons up old ideas, calls
for new ones, and, in short, determines the move-
ment of the intellect.
There are, moreover, two fundamental sources of
interest: first, the feeling of questioning attention >
provoked by experience (Erfahrung), by the study
of nature, and by the search for knowledge ; and ,-.
also interest springing out of social life, the presence
of human beings and communication with them
(Umgang). Hence education, or instruction, must
have a double aim: to give knowledge of things,
and love of humanity. But Herbart divides only in
order to subdivide; and the two forms of interest
are each presented under three successive aspects.
The interest belonging to knowledge has three ^
phases: empirical interest, speculative interest,
and aesthetic interest. Empirical interest takes its u\
rise in the direct sense-perception of things, from
variety amongst the concrete objects which nature
50 HERBART
or instruction presents to the wondering eyes of
childhood. Speculative interest follows empirical:
it has its source in prolonged reflection on the objects
of experience, the need for an explanation of phe-
nomena and inquiry into causes and effects. This
type of interest is already manifest in the ever-
recurring "why" of the child. It is the pleasure felt
by the mind in understanding the reason for things,
the laws of nature. To enjoy the sight of the sky
studded with stars, that is empirical interest : to re-
flect on the origin of the stars, on the causes of their
movements, that is speculative interest. Finally,
^ it aesthetic interest is fed by the contemplation of
beauty in nature, in works of art, or in moral actions.
To this kind of interest Herbart gave a large share
of his attention. He claimed that sesthetic taste
should be cultivated early, as the source of the purest
joys that life reserves for mankind, that it should
be cultivated in every child without exception, re-
gardless of the social rank to which he belongs; for
the day will come and it is our duty to try to
hasten that day when the artisan will be in his own
fashion an artist, and when beauty will become the
charm and enchantment of existence for every one.
Turning now to the interest occasioned, not by
knowledge, but by human relationships, which the
child derives from his environment, his relation to
HERBART 51
his fellows, in his family, in the school, in church,
and in society, this also appears wider under three
distinct aspects. In the first place, there is sym-
pathetic interest, the interest the chijd feels when it
takes part in the joy or grief of the people who
surround him: this is developed at home, in the
social life of the school. In the second place, there is
social interest, an extended form of family sympathy
or school comradeship; it springs from reflection
on the important facts about social cooperation;
it is the root of philanthropy, of all the social virtues,
of what to-day we call human solidarity. Finally,
religious interest is the crown, the last rung of the
ladder which the human mind ascends to reach
complete living, and to exercise its activity in the
fullest way. Herbart, who would not have religion
excluded from education, declared that the order of
the world would remain unintelligible, if one did not
admit that a divine spirit has presumably willed
and conceived its plan, and a divine power realized
it. Yet however incomprehensible and undefinable,
God appears to Herbart as "the father of man-
kind " ; and it is in the feeling of filial respect that
the first elements of religious humility, of divine
veneration and adoration, germinate in the child's
heart. "God is thought of by the child as the
father of his father and mother."
52 HERBART
Not one of the six forms of interest just enumer-
ated may be neglected. In schools of the lowest as
well as of the highest rank, all these sources of mental
activity must be either simultaneously or successively
drawn upon ; each must gush forth in a stream of
ideas that the soul may be filled. Interest is, in
all kinds of study, a necessary condition of mental
fruitfulness and value; and manifold interest, "a
many-sided interest" (Vielseitigkeit des Interesse),
is not less demanded, in order that education may
reach its end and correspond with the high calling
of man. What Herbart requires, is that minds
should be broad and wide, awake to everything,
active in every direction, that the intellect should
have, so to speak, "many sides/' and should, in con-
sequence, escape exclusiveness, the great stumbling-
block to a complete plan of education.
This exclusiveness, in other terms narrow-minded-
ness, is the inevitable consequence of education when
it develops only one type of interest. It is evident,
for example, that a mind will remain imperfect and
limited if it is confined to speculative or religious
interest without room being made for sympathetic
interest. The understanding will then be hard, and
the soul without heart. Hence how often must
we acknowledge a kind of insensibility regarding
affairs of the world in men whose religious devotion
HERBART 53
leads to asceticism, or in scholars who let themselves
be entirely occupied in meditation, and who spare
no glances for what is passing around them. On
the other hand, the exigencies of practical life too
often lead men to shut themselves up in their pro-
fession or trade; a grave error; a profession should
not isolate a man. However much a man's own
occupations may play the tyrant over him, he should
not remain unconcerned and a stranger to the oc-
cupations of others. His interest should extend to
the labors of all his fellows. When an individual
wraps himself up in himself, a frost penetrates his
egoistic soul; it then warms itself only at one
hearth, that of personal well-being. The true destiny
of each man is to take interest in everything human,
and, so to speak, to bear and to honor all humanity
in himself.
Further, the mischievous effect of exclusiveness
does not emanate only from the fact that some of
the six forms of interest are sacrificed in order that
the man may devote himself entirely to the others.
Each of them tends to develop special tastes in its
own domain, and these lead to intellectual or moral
excesses, against which education cannot strive too
strongly. Thus it may happen that empirical, or
speculative, or aesthetic interest may be centred on
one favorite study, and this causes all others to be
54 HERBART
neglected; one may wish to be only a botanist or
zoologist, or mathematician, or metaphysician,
painter, or musician. Sympathetic interest, in the
same way, may unite the child only to his parents,
or to his school or comrades. In the same way,
again, social interest may fall into regrettable ex-
clusiveness, when it inspires passionate attachment
to any special political party, to which the man is
given up to such a degree that he measures every-
thing by its value to the party. Finally, even
religious interest has a tendency also to mutilate the
soul, when it induces a believer in religion to despise,
and even perhaps to hate, all those who do not think
with him, and who belong to other faiths.
Many-sided interest, then, is the safeguard of a
broad, well-balanced education, the only kind which
can guarantee fulness of mind and heart. It is true
that if wide interests save and preserve the soul from
partiality and narrowness, they expose it to another
danger, that of enfeebling it by dispersion. Wealth
may result in weakness: the calyx of a flower is
broken by trying to enlarge it too much. But
Herbart thinks it will be possible to steer clear of
this rock, if, through an equal division of the dif-
ferent interests, balance is maintained, and if we
can unify the subjects by coordinating them and
strictly systematizing them.
HERBART 55
It must be acknowledged that Herbart's goal is
very high. What more desirable, if it were possible,
than to call upon all men to slake their thirst at
every source of interest, that is to say, to profit by
all forms of instruction, all the subjects taught?
But how could one single man accomplish a task
so immense ? Herbart has sketched his fascinating
picture not from the individual, but from humanity
as a whole, its collective activity exerted in different
directions. In practical life time passes too rapidly,
school life is too short, professional necessities too
urgent, to entirely escape the inevitable specializa-
tion and limitation, to indulge the hope in the educa-
tion of the individual, of attaining to the universality
of interests and tastes which would be perfection,
but which remains, unhappily, an inaccessible ideal.
However that may be, interest, wherever it can
serve as agent in exciting mental activity, is subject
to certain delicate conditions which it is important
for us to analyze. Herbart proposes, first of all, a
new distinction, and a very true one. There is a
"direct," and an "indirect" interest. Only the
first is really fruitful. Indirect interest, which we
impose on the child through praise and blame,
through exhortation and threats, through hope of
reward and fear of punishment, just because it is
commanded and imposed, leaves the mind in a
OU H r j r\, H A r\. J.
relatively passive condition. It necessitates an
effort, sometimes a painful effort, and Herbart dis-
likes effort. It corresponds to the kind of attention
which he improperly calls voluntary (artificial would
be a more correct designation), and which, in hi3
opinion, is not the best. " In the case of children,
the desire to be attentive is uncertain and waver-
ing, and in the effort which they make to maintain
it, they expend part of their strength, thus injuring
the smoothness and clearness of their perceptions."
We must not have recourse to indirect interest,
except when it is impossible to do otherwise, for
example, in oral lessons and in memory exercises,
which have no attraction in themselves, but are,
nevertheless, indispensable ; for Herbart rightly con-
siders that in every study some parts must be
learnt by heart.
Direct interest is the true interest; it springs
spontaneously from the things themselves, from the
knowledge which the child gathers from his daily
experience at home and in school, and from interest
which wells up naturally from pleasant sensations
and skilled instruction; these captivate the mind
and hold it prisoner, while at the same time they
arouse, inspire, and quicken it.
With this direct interest is united voluntary at-
tention, which at bottom is nothing but curiosity:
HERBART 57
the need of understanding, the desire to see and
know. Only, in the theory of Herbart, curiosity,
which the old psychology considered an instinct of
the intellect aspiring spontaneously after knowl-
edge, becomes merely the result of interest. We are
justified in saying it is provoked, rather than for
holding it fully spontaneous.
Herbart has thrown the most vivid light on the
doctrine of attention. On the whole, he is in agree-
ment with modern psychologists, who, like Ribot,
maintain that the cause of attention is always some
emotional condition. Interest, in fact, which keeps
the mind alert, must be regarded as an emotional
condition, since it provides pleasure and renders
study agreeable.
But this involuntary and natural attention, which
Ribot says is "the true and fundamental form of
attention," 1 may, according to Herbart, cover two
distinct forms: it is either "primitive" or "apper-
ceptive."
Primitive attention depends on the strength of
sensations. The mind becomes the immediate prey,
as it were, of vivid sense impressions. Hence Her-
bart, following Pestalozzi, accords a large place
to intuition, that is to say, to the direct perception
of sounds, colors, forms. The presentation of the
1 Ribot, The Psychology of Attention, p. 3.
58 HERBART
objects themselves is worth more than an image
representing them, because it strikes and stirs the
mind to a greater degree by conquering the atten-
tion ; and the image is worth more, in its turn, than
a verbal description.
But in instruction the principal role is played by
involuntary attention of the second degree, by ap-
perceptive attention. This theory of apperception
is the most interesting innovation in Herbart's psy-
chology, and the application he has made of it in
education is the luminous point in his pedagogy.
Apperceptive attention has its origin not in the
excitement caused by sensations emanating from
the outside, but from representations previously
acquired, these being aroused by the approach of a
new representation which has points of contact
and attachment with the former. Existing ideas,
asleep in the soul, mount guard, as it were, around
consciousness, ready on the one hand to repulse
ideas which do not meet with approval, or at least
to let them pass by with indifference; on the other
hand, disposed to welcome those which appear
as friends, bearing marks, so to say, which will
render intimacy and union easy. Ideas already
assimilated by the mind prepare for new assimila-
tions. Like so many magnetized points they at-
tract those ideas which ask to enter consciousness,
HERBART 59
making it a condition that these, in their turn, shall
be affinity between what is already known and what
is going to be learnt.
This way of viewing mental progress and the
increase of knowledge is big with pedagogical con-
sequences. Apperceptive attention should be active
during the whole period of study. It illuminates
every part of instruction. Interest will favor it
~a'hd come to its assistance ; it is from the theory of
apperception, combined with that of interest, that
Herbart evolves the greater part of his methods of
instruction.
Thus, his first recommendation is that the teacher
should not present to the child anything quite new
to him. We must not teach ex abrupto. There
must always be connective links and relations be-
tween what one is now teaching and what has been
previously taught. New impressions, suddenly
made, create intellectual disturbance, produce violent
sensations of shock. The links of consciousness are,
in consequence, broken, the movement of mind
checked. There is no true instruction except when
a new notion is introduced exactly in its right
place in the series of notions already fixed, when
it forms one of the loops in the tissue, one of
the rings in the chain. A mind cannot be dis-
cerned at all amid a mere collection of fragmentary
60 HERBART
pieces of knowledge, a heap of stones placed haphaz-
ard one upon another. Mind derives its substance
only from the coherence of the ideas it contains ; it is
like a mosaic, of which all the little stones are closely
adjusted and tightly compacted together to form a
complete structure.
Since old knowledge must blaze the pathways for
new knowledge, the point of departure for regular
instruction is none other than the personal ex-
perience of the child: all that he has learnt by
himself, at home or at school, in his walks or play.
School lessons only intervene to supply the gaps in
this slender and limited experience ; this it is which
supplies the true starting-point for the teacher's
efforts. Knowledge of nature and of humanity
began for the child in his first manifestations of
interest, empirical interest and sympathetic interest ;
and it is by utilizing the beginnings of spontaneous
instruction that the teacher will succeed in inspiring
a taste for the sciences, insuring a full instruction, a
many-sided and harmonious culture: on the one
hand, those natural sciences with which Herbart
associated mathematics, and on the other, the sci-
ences of humanity, history, languages, and literature.
When once school studies have begun, many pre-
cautions should be taken to facilitate the play of
apperceptive attention and to sustain interest. The
HERBART 61
general rule, which Herbart holds to be the chief
rule, is that the teacher, before beginning to instruct,
should busy himself with placing the minds of his
pupils within the circle of ideas related to the special
subject in hand. The pupils come to the class in a
mood of indifference or mental distraction. They
are no longer thinking of the studies of yesterday;
they have forgotten them. At home and in the
street they have been thinking of other things, and
during their recreation their minds have been
wandering. It is, then, necessary to bring them
back to the line of thought, to prepare them to
profit by the lesson. Their intellect is not like a
clean slate upon which chalk will write any ex-
pressions whatever without difficulty. In the first
place, let all ideas, all preoccupations, be excluded
from their minds which might bar the way to the
knowledge which we are going to put before them.
And next, let us awaken those ideas which, since
they are related to the approaching lesson, will
render a comprehension of it more sure and easy.
Representations which are asleep in the mind are
like the force which sleeps in an electric current:
turn a button, and light leaps forth. But to cause
light to spring forth in the intellect, that is to
say, to awaken interest and fix attention, is not so
simple an operation. The master will have recourse
62 HERBART
to various expedients. In the first place, he will
take care that the topic which he selects is con-
nected with those that he has treated previously.
It would be dangerous to jump suddenly from one
subject to another. Concepts that have taken pos-
session of the soul do not willingly yield their place
to intruders. In the next place, in order that the
connection which exists amongst the subjects studied
may be established also in the mind that studies
them, the master will take pains from the very
beginning of to-day's lesson to recall the ideas pre-
sented in yesterday's lesson. He will announce and
recapitulate beforehand what is going to be said,
and also what is going to be read. Then, thanks to
all these precautions, and above all, if he knows
how to express himself simply and vividly, as Her-
bart counsels, in popular language, avoiding the use
of too many new and technical words, he will succeed
in arousing curiosity and a kind of expectation.
Thus the intellect of the pupil, inclined in the right
direction, will be disposed to listen, and the instruc-
tion, thrown on to a well-prepared soil, will bear
the fruit which he expected.
The above are, however, only the preliminary steps
in the scientific (too scientific) system of didac-
tics expounded by Herbart. On the ' ' moments " and
"modes" of instruction, on the order of the studies,
HERBART 63
he held views that are extremely complicated;
nevertheless, of these we must try to give some
notion. Seeing that these courses of instruction are
now a hundred years old, they consist, no doubt,
largely of lifeless abstractions, of empty generaliza-
tions, set forth with minute but fruitless attention
to order. Yet sometimes, when you have cracked
the shell of the almond and taken away its rough
envelope, you find solid and palatable fruit, on
which you feast with pleasure.
According to Herbart, there are four moments or
steps to pass in instruction. Since he himself felt
that the distinction he draws is not very clear, he
varies and multiplies expressions to distinguish these
stages, without finding possible fitting and exact
terminology. Thus, for instance, he says that the
four stages of instruction are clearness, association,
systematizationj and method. Elsewhere, translating
his thoughts into other terms, he proves that teach-
ing should successively show, associate, teach, and
philosophize. Some of Herbart's disciples, little
satisfied with this terminology, in their turn hold
that distinction must be made between intuition,
comparison, abstraction or generalization, and finally,
application.
From another aspect, to complete the description of
Herbart's scheme-table, if there are four moments or
64 HERBART
periods in instruction, there are three modes, or three
methods, to be used, more or less, during each of the
four moments of instruction ; viz., descriptive method,
analytic method, and finally, synthetic method.
Let us say it at once : the mistake of Herbart, as
of all philosophers who carry abstraction too far,
is to desire to subject the differences amongst real
things to an arbitrary and fictitious unity, and in
consequence to establish amongst studies an in-
flexible and unbending order. Is it quite certain,
as Herbart believed, that all branches of instruction,
instruction consisting of concrete facts, such as
natural history and geography, instruction by reason-
ing, such as geometry and algebra, lend themselves
to a uniform and unvarying treatment? How can
the course of instruction be always the same, when
the roads to be pursued are so different ? Since, for
the construction of the sciences there are profoundly
distinct methods, how can there be only one for
instruction in them? Herbart, like Pestalozzi,
" mechanics" instruction. He plans the order of
lesson-giving on an invariable pattern ; and by dint
of commands, prescriptions, regulations, he runs the
risk of compromising the originality of the teacher
and the spontaneity of the scholar, of suppressing,
in short, life and liberty in instruction.
1. On certain points, however, it is impossible not
HERBART 65
to agree with Herbart; for example, in regard to
what concerns the first step in instruction, clear-
ness. We must comprehend in that all the light
that a direct view, "intuition," in a word, throws
on a subject. Intuition is the prelude necessary for
every study, and Herbart speaks of it with enthu-
siasm. Intuition, he says, opens before the child's
eyes large and vast spaces : his gaze, when it has
recovered from its first surprise, distinguishes, ana-
lyzes, associates, is active in every way ; then it stops,
it rests, and then begins again. Touch, and the
other senses now act in their turn. Sensations are
multiplied, ideas come in a crowd, experiences
begin and bring new thoughts: " Everywhere there
is life, life full and free, everywhere delight in be-
holding the multitude of scenes which are unfolding
themselves before the child."
But to the free intuition of the earliest years
should succeed the intuition, so to speak, of the
learner, the intuition provoked by the teacher.
Thus, in teaching history, we shall make use of every
means for representing to the eyes by way of sensa-
tion the things belonging to the past : portraits of
great men, images, and pictures, walks through
museums, visits to monuments, to ruins of ancient
castles, not forgetting the reading of works contem-
poraneous with the epoch studied, especially poems,
66 HERBART
for these illuminate the bald narrative of facts. In
geography, the district where teacher and scholar
reside, and the surrounding neighborhood, will be
the point of departure, and from this, little by little,
the horizon of the imagination will stretch right
across the world. In physics, before any direct
teaching, we must cause the children to observe the
simplest of the natural phenomena; we shall point
out to them mills and the movements of the clock;
we shall give them electric toys. In natural science
we shall accustom them to make collections of plants
and insects; if they cannot see the animals them-
selves, we shall put into their hands books with
pictures representing the zoological types; before
talking of the tiger, we shall make them recall what
they know of the cat. There is no science, not even
the science of mathematics, in which this intuitive
initiation is not both necessary and possible: we
shall let the children practise measuring distances,
counting objects ; in geometry, we shall develop their
imagination by constructive plays. And this prepa-
ration through the senses for abstract reasoning in
the future will begin very early. Herbart required
that even in the child's cradle, different models
of triangles l should be put before his eyes, the form
1 Herbart substituted the triangle for Pestalozzi's square, as
elementary geometric form.
HERBART 67
being made with brightly shining nails, which would
attract and fix his gaze.
It was perhaps superfluous after Pestalozzi, it
certainly is so after Herbart, to recommend intuition
and object-lessons. But Herbart has this special
merit, that he sets forth clearly in detail every ques-
tion which he examines; he specifies everything
with remarkable exactitude. At this point, for in-
stance, he takes pains to observe that on the one
hand, immediate intuition is always cut short in
some direction or other, since it is closed in by the
limits of time and space; it must, therefore, be
completed by description; and, on the other hand,
intuition is always complex, the object being com-
posed of different elements ; it must, then, be rendered
clear and simple by analysis.
Herbart attaches great significance to the method
of description. When the child has seen all that he
can see, it is necessary for the teacher to enlarge the
circle of his ideas by relating to him historical events,
by talking to him of regions which he cannot ex-
plore; he must extend the child's experience in
space by descriptions, in time by narrations.
Herbart far prefers oral exposition to the narrations
and written descriptions that abound in books,
provided that the teacher can manifest some skill
in speech. In order that the description of a coun-
68 HERBART
try, the recital of an event, should interest and lay
hold of the mind, the teacher must know how to
put color and life into it ; to do this he must borrow
analogies and comparisons from objects known and
already familiar to the child. Intuitive elements
should mingle, as far as it is possible, continually in
instruction. We should be careful to arrange for an
agreement and easy union between what is recounted
or described and the facts of experience. For ex-
ample, in history lessons, we should not carry the
imagination back to a far-distant past all in a trice ;
we should cause it to ascend gradually to events
that happened not very long ago, by following the
life-thread of aged people who surround the child.
A well-given historical description should cause, in a
way, an illusion of present time ; and we must bring
about this result, that the pupil imagines that he
really sees, that he has before his eyes, the people
and the events about which we are talking to him.
I Analysis, like description, is a mode of teaching,
and one cannot do without it even during the first
period of instruction. It is necessary for the purpose
of disentangling the confused mass or, so to speak,
the chaos of intuitions which the child has accumu-
lated. However clear and captivating these intui-
tions as a matter of fact may be, they are never
absolutely simple; complex and entangled, they
HERBART 69
have invaded in confusion the mind of the child, who
sees and looks, but does not know how to observe.
If impressions arising from the free experience of
the child have the advantage of being personal and
vivid, they have the defect of following one another
without order, of being mixed up, confused one
with another; they float in the mind at haphazard,
without logical connection. It is the province of
analytic instruction to remedy this twofold mischief.
In the first place, it is analysis which will distinguish ^
and arrange diverse intuitions by singling out the
objects from which they have been derived; which
will help the child to make, so to speak, an inventory
of his intuitive knowledge of the wealth which he
has thus far appropriated. In the second place,
analysis will decompose each intuition ; it will make
out a list of its elements, and will enumerate the
qualities even of these elements, such as number
and form. Analytic instruction is then, as it were, ~~*f*<
the first step of instruction; it should introduce"
every exposition of a didactic nature. The teacher
intervenes then only with a view to leading his
pupil to see himself in his own experiences; the
inverse of what takes place in synthetic instruction,
when the teacher transmits knowledge which tran-
scends the scholar's own experience, either in the
world of nature or in the life of mankind. Let us
70 HERBART
add that analysis has to play more than one role
in order to unravel the bundle of primary intuitions ;
it will be found useful and necessary during all the
steps of instruction. However different it is from
synthesis, neither mode of instruction should ex-
clude the other ; the two should always be associated.
2. The second "moment " of instruction is that of
association, work in comparing which leads the stu-
dent to apprehend the relations between intuitions.
From this time, the extension given to experience by
descriptions, thanks to experience, are broad and
numerous; thanks to analysis, they are clearly
defined. The ground is thus well prepared for the
ascent to general ideas; these become detached as
isolated notions approach each other. Pestalozzi
was little but a "man of intuitions/' incapable of
generalizing with exactitude. Herbart, on the
contrary, said of himself that he was "a man of
concepts"; that is to say, of general notions. And
all instruction worthy of the name presupposes this
ascent of the intellect from the particular to the
general, from intuition to concept. Thought, in-
deed, has no real existence, so long as it is limited
to gathering particular notions; it must lead to
the conception of rules, laws, principles. Kant
had already said, "Concepts without percepts are
empty, but percepts without concepts are blind."
HERBART 71
In every concrete reality there is embodied an
abstract notion which must be disengaged, the
universal and essential must be extracted from
the unity of individual things. The second effort of
instruction must aim at forming such concepts, and
here again it will not be a question of formal instruc-
tion. The best method is that of conversation and
interrogation. The child will be practised in finding
similarities and relations, amongst the notions which
he possesses, for himself. If he makes a mistake,
and if he lets himself be deceived by relations more
apparent than real, he must be set right. It is in
the act of guiding him that we shall lead him gradu-
ally to conceive for himself abstract and general
ideas.
3. It is more troublesome to render an account
of the third step in instruction, the step described
as systematization. It would seem, however, that
Herbart means by that a systematic exposition given
by the teacher. Here the synthetic method at last
appears. Until now the master has kept the pupil
contributing, and has confined himself to guiding
him in his business of analysis and generalization,
while teaching him how to develop and define what
was already in his mind. Now he expounds at
greater length ; he teaches what the pupil could not
discover for himself. And how much wise, practical
72 HERBART
advice might we gather from the works of Herbart
on this part of instruction, if space permitted ! For
example, he puts the teacher of history on his guard
against an error common amongst beginners, of being
"diffuse," of losing himself amongst details. In
geography he requires an exposition of facts after
the manner of travellers, that is to say, in exact
and vivid language. From all teachers, in short, he
asks vivid and attractive instruction. Whatever
may be his confidence, a confidence somewhat
bigoted in the mechanical efficiency, so to speak,
of the methods he suggests, he upholds the personal
qualities of the teacher ; he requires of him talent,
that he be a good speaker. He knows how deadly
is the abuse of a dogmatic instruction which fetters
the activity and initiative of the child. Such instruc-
tion he compares most ingeniously to a long, fine,
and flexible thread, which is broken by the striking of
the clock at school, and knotted together again when
the clock strikes afresh; which, unwinding slowly
year by year, fastens and binds the child, without
leaving him either freedom of movement or repose
of mind. Moreover, synthetic instruction must be
employed with discretion, and it must be made
living and fruitful by constant return to perception,
to experience. "To desire to shut out experience
and social life, in order to confine the child in a class-
HERBART 73
room, condemning it to find instruction from books
alone, or from the dull lessons of a master, this,"
said Herbart forcibly, "is to affirm that one can
do without the bright light of the day and be
satisfied with the feeble glimmer of a candle."
4. The four moments of instruction overlap and
complete each other. The last is the inverse of the
first three, which had the common feature of pre-
paring for and developing theoretic instruction; it
brings us back to practice. For the rest, one cannot
see why, in the strange terminology of Herbart,
the word "method," or the term "to philosophize,"
is introduced into the business at all. 1 The last
stage is, in fact, only an affair of application or
of practical exercises. The teacher has finished his
lesson, he is silent. It now behooves the pupil to
again do something, to show by his personal work
that he has profited by the instruction which he has
received, that he can move at ease amongst the
notions now acquired, that he can handle them
successfully, that he is ready to use them profitably.
He will show this in reviewing them, in original com-
positions, in the solution of problems, or in various
1 It is true that Herbartians sometimes interpret this fourth
operation in a sense which may justify the expression " to philoso-
phize" ; it then consists in uniting the particular subject of the les-
son to the general system, and to the whole circle of knowledge
of the same kind.
74 HERB ART
kinds of written exercise. Here, as always, uniting
his theory with advice regarding technical details,
Herbart tells us that written exercises should not be
too long, too easy, or too difficult; that we must not
impose on our pupils too heavy tasks to be done at
home; that compositions will be of service only if
they are based "on a rich store of exact ideas,"
which have already been placed at the pupil's
disposal.
But let us stop before we exhaust the subject.
We have said enough to make both the virtues and
defects of the pedagogy of Herbart plain before all
eyes. We cannot deny to him the merit of having
constructed a complete system, with relationships
well planned, full of symmetry, all the parts holding
together, leaving no gaps. We certainly do not
do justice to this vast conceptual whole when we
limit ourselves to presenting in a short and dry
review only the skeleton of a mighty and very Active
organism. To appreciate Herbart's pedagogy ac-
cording to its merits, it is necessary to turn to the
original sources. But we must yet recognize that
Herbart, in his laborious effort, has sometimes
taken great pains to say over again in systematic
form truths known to all the world. It will be
readily granted that in his pedagogy there are su-
perfluous arguments and a measure of artificiality.
HERBART 75
How can we resign ourselves to thinking that such
a complicated method, such rigorous regulations, are
the last word in the art of educating human beings,
that the mind must be enmeshed by the inflexible
threadwork of the manifold operations of the four
"moments" of instruction, and that, in a word, edu-
cation must cost all this ? Is it not possible that
Herbart has confused the course of instruction with
the evolution of science ? Science, indeed, takai its
rise in experience, advances next to general laws,
and finally coordinates its generalizations in a
system embracing all science. But to form and
instruct a mind, is that necessary which builds
science ? Notice besides that according to Herbart
the four periods of instruction ought to reappear
invariably in every study. What ! even in reading
and writing ? In each of his lessons, and within the
time-limit of class instruction, the teacher must
pass always through four successive series of exer-
cises. 1 That is absolutely impossible.
1 In one of the very interesting discussions conducted by Pro-
fessor Chabot with the pupils of the normal schools of Lyons, we
made notes of a lesson-plan prepared according to Herbartian
method: Subject of the lesson, "Courage" : (1) First stage of in-
struction, clear ideas or perceptions : an act of courage by a pupil
of the school or an inhabitant of the town, who, for example, has
thrown himself into the water to effect a rescue, who has stopped a
horse, etc. (2) Second " moment," comparison : other courageous
acts will be put side by side before the mental vision of the pupils
76 HERBART
We have not said all, far from it, nor have we
pointed out all the refinements in the pedagogical
instruments of Herbart. We have not spoken of
"reflection" nor of "concentration," two opera-
tions of the mind which he expressly distinguishes :
concentration (Verliefung), of which the disciples
of Herbart make great use, consists in uniting all
subordinate ideas to one chief idea; for instance,
grouping all the events of an epoch around one great
historical name ; reflection (Besinnung), calling forth
again ideas already imprisoned in consciousness;
nor of ideas "called forth" or "spontaneous" ideas,
the former demanding an effort, and appearing
chiefly during lessons, the latter being freely self-
aroused in consciousness; nor yet of syntheses
that unite, and syntheses that construct. . . .
We should never end. Herbart is the father of that
heavy and pedantic methodizing which has caused
with this particular act, acts of which they have heard reports,
those of soldiers on the battle-field, firemen at a fire, doctors in an
epidemic, etc. (3) Third "moment," system: courage in gen-
eral is defined. (4) Fourth "moment," method or "philosophiz-
ing" : courage, the particular virtue, is united with the whole group
of virtues; or, if the other interpretation of the fourth stage of
instruction, as marked by Herbart, is adopted, the pupil will
be asked how, in such or such a given circumstance, he himself
would show his courage. See, also, in the Revue pedagogique of
June 15, 1903, an article in which M. Chabot explains the manner
in which M. de Sallwiirk applies Herbart' s method in a liberal
spirit.
HERBART 77
the production of so many big, useless, and fruitless
volumes.
But, to compensate, how many useful researches
has he not inspired? He has forced a legion of
disciples to reflect; some are fervent and docile,
others are independent, and in their turn innovators.
If he has not succeeded in establishing a definite
system of instruction, he has at least proved the need
of one. If he has applied and misapplied the ideas
of connectedness and unity, that was not in order
to establish mechanical teaching ; it was, on the con-
trary, to penetrate to that well of life, interest, in-
terest which can be maintained only by connected-
ness of ideas. Advance in instruction, indeed, is
measured by this : that new ideas penetrate deeply
into the mass of already existing ideas. Thus,
although girt about, as it were, with a formid-
able armor of logic, the theory of Herbart is sim-
ple, wise, and well-balanced. He is, more than all
else, a man of a free spirit, who, within the rigid
lines of his method, desires to introduce life and
movement. Was it not he who said that a man could
work serviceably in the education of others only
on condition of working at the same time at his own
education ? He desires young and enthusiastic edu-
cators. Away with melancholy and morose disposi-
tions. Education is not the business of such men.
78 HERBART
Herbart would have been unfaithful to his prin-
ciples, and to the idea of " manifold interests/ 7 if
he had narrowed the field of studies open to the
child. He did not discuss, like Herbert Spencer, J
the question of finding out " which kind of knowledge [
is the most worth." He did not ask it, because he
admits that all are necessary to form a complete
man. He is already on the side of the theory of
an all-round education. And as well as seeing in
this universality of studies the condition of mental
equilibrium, he has yet another" reason for recom-
mending it, one of the gravest reasons: education
has no right to hinder or limit in advance a man's
future activity, and in consequence to narrow the
attention of a child by keeping it on special studies.
Shall we object that the intelligence of all pupils
does not lend itself equally well to all kinds of instruc-
tion? No; for Herbart considers that no study is
above the reach of children, if one knows how to
choose the opportune moment for beginning it, if
one takes care to begin early,"to present it skilfully,
according to the law of evolution natural to the
mind. It is an illusion to believe, for instance, that
mathematical aptitude is naturally more rare than
any\pther. It is so, in fact, because preparatory
elementary work has been too much delayed and
neglected.
HERBART 79
Every subject, then, should be taught, as
Comenius already desired, and all subjects to all
children in all schools. The same subjects for in-
struction will appear on the programme except
Latin and Greek in primary schools as in the
schools for secondary instruction. There should be
no difference in the nature of the studies from one
grade to another of education; that should occur
only in their proportion. The same things should be
taught everywhere, but in the school only the surface
be skimmed; in the gymasium (grammar or high
school) the depths should be sounded.
The concrete, positive sciences, realien, the
Germans call them, the humanities, equally with
the natural sciences, are the basis of instruction.
The study of ancient languages is not an essential
element. Herbart certainly was a lover of Greek; it
is known that he put the Odyssey into the hands of
children at ten years of age, that he used it as a
first reading book, and that he did not believe that
there was a better means of forming the mind than
to continue this study for ten months or more. 1
He liked Latin less, the writers of Rome not being
suitable, in his opinion, to initiate the child into the
classic ages. This initiation into classic ages weighed
1 " It took us a year and a half to read the Odyssey." See
the reports to M. de Steiger, 1797-1798.
80 HERBART
with him far more than a philological study of dead
languages: " Latin and Greek/' he said, "a source
of torment for pupils, a necessary evil in secondary
schools now, ought to disappear entirely from the
curriculum of the schools, if we could acquire with-
out knowing these languages an exact view, a living
representation, of antiquity." Without doubt, the
classic writings are the immortal models of beauty,
purity, and style, and the progress or decadence of
modern languages is linked with the maintenance
or suppression of the study of ancient languages.
But Herbart at the same time called attention to
the fact that this is not the business of the school,
that it does not fall to most men to look after the
fate of their language, and that the aim of school
studies is only to attend to the function of literature.
Greco-Latin studies will be, then, in the future,
only the favorite task of a few privileged educators.
"Let us put aside the superstitious belief that to be
really cultivated a modern man must be able to
decipher Greek and Latin texts." The labor
required by a study is rewarded for its pains only
in the case of those who display a marked apti-
tude and a firm intention of reaching a high degree
of culture. "Also, it is necessary to begin this
labor early, at seven or eight years of age, before
the circle of ideas closes." Languages, ancient or
H K/ryriA H- L 81
modern, all systems of symbols, are a burden in
teaching; we should endeavor to lighten it by
interest in the things which the signs represent.
Greek should be studied before Latin, a con-
sequence of the principle that pedagogical evolution
should correspond to the historical. For the same
reason, modern languages will not be learnt before
ancient: "this would be to put the cart before the
horse." The study of texts should be connected
with the study of ancient history; this is the only
possible basis for a really pedagogical study of
Latin and Greek, a consequence of the principle
of connectedness amongst ideas. And thus the old
humanities, subjects which are not necessary to
every one, but which will remain the ideal of a few,
should be given their right place. No one has
felt more fully the value of classic culture than he
who, with deep insight, said : "Who, then, has really
received classic culture? Only those who praise it.
. . . For it could not be granted that those who
malign classic culture can claim to have received it."
IV
"THE worth of a man," said Herbart, "is measured
not by what he knows, but what he desires to do."
That is the same as saying that moral culture, cul-
ture that forms the will, is still more important than
intellectual culture, the source of knowledge. In-
struction is of value only when it tends to moral
ends. The moral idea ought to dominate all in-
struction. Virf.np in flp aiipremfl end of education.
Now, in the system of Herbart, instruction and
education are found commingled, united in one.
Will depends on knowledge. If each act of the will
is only an idea in action, an idea energized (idee-
force) according to the expression dear to M. Fouill6e,
moral character itself is only a collection, a group-
ing, of ideas that tend to become active. Whoever
forms enlightened men, forms at the same time
moral and virtuous men. Thinking rightly is the
source of willing and acting rightly.
Moral culture does not the less lay claim to
special attention, and Herbart has considered it
apart in a series of chapters in which he scatters
82
HERBART 83
delicate observations and judicious counsel from
full hands. Herbart, who had a blind faith in his
theories and systematic notions, is most valued by
us for detail in special subjects and wealth of prac-
tical observations. ^Tn trying to summarize his
views, we are liable to distort them. We ought to be
able to cite these pages, so profoundly thought out
in their entirety; for in them the question of moral
education is discussed in all its heights and depths ;
and the goodness of heart of a talented thinker is
revealed with a sweet seriousness.
Moral as well as intellectual culture has its point
of departure in the experience of the child. Her-
bart, without doubt, has no wish for the " natural
man " of Rousseau's type. He makes the just obser-
vation that the word " nature" is vague and equivo-
cal, since both stoics and epicureans could appeal to
it in theories of morals quite opposed to each other.
But he still less desires a " school man," one who
has had no contact with moral realities, who has not
steeped his soul in the relations of social life. " The
world and nature do much more for the pupil than
education, properly so called." The moral experi-
ences of the child, like his intellectual experience,
is narrow and limited. The relations that he can
establish within the circle of this family or the school
are necessarily inadequate; they dispose him to
84 HERBART
develop only one sentiment, to the exclusion of all
others, love of family at the expense of love of
country, or the latter at the expense of love of
humanity. It is indispensable, then, that instruction
should widen the field of experience, and that a
" many-sided interest" should help to enlarge the
heart, fight the tendency toward social exclusiveness,
and form a full and complete soul. And again,
this is also necessary to correct the bad effects of
experience, to provide a remedy for the egoistic
feelings, antipathies, aversions, which may be
bred by the chances of life in school and family,
for the scars and bruises, caused not seldom by the
earliest relations of the child with its parents or
tyrannical masters, and which hinder the upspring-
ing of sympathetic interest.
But before moral culture can begin with advan-
tage, there is a preparatory and provisional period,
that of the " control of children" (Reg wrung der
Kinder), of what is called by us discipline. 1 For-
merly, discipline might have been considered as the
whole law of education, in days when teachers
believed they had only to oppress and constrain
dispositions rebellious and wholly bad. Herbart,
who considers that wickedness in children proceeds
1 Let us note that Herbart reserves the word " discipline " (Zucht)
to designate " moral culture."
HERBART 85
for the most part from defects in parents, and who
aspires to form an inner man capable of self-govern-
ment, permits discipline and coercive measures only
during early years. It should last only for a season,
and should give place as soon as possible to real
education, for which it should, moreover, prepare.
Its end is to maintain provisional order. It pre-
vents the child from injuring itself, and from being
unbearable to others. It imposes passive sub-
mission while awaiting the birth of the will. It is
necessary because of the petulance and lack of re-
flection of young children. It renders the first
instruction possible; for one cannot instruct in-
subordinate and undisciplined children. It works
for the present ; education works for the future^
The discipline recommended by Herbart is in no
way severe or oppressive. It should be already
steeped in the liberal spirit that will animate educa-
tion. Herbart, we may be certain, was a kind,
sweet-tempered, and patient genius. If he consents
to authorize threats, watching, punishment, he
introduces into the application of these disciplinary
agencies all kinds of restrictions, which soften their
severity and guard the spontaneity of the child.
Upon occasion, however, he can advise vigorous
though not angry repression, when, for instance, it is
a question of falsehood, of which he had a horror.
86 HERBART
Threats, he recognized that they are often
ineffective, even when they are regularly followed
by deeds, and parents or masters do not, before the
tears or entreaties of the child, weakly retract them.
And above all, he desires that refusals and pro-
hibitions be reduced to a strict minimum. They
should leave a free field for the need of activity in
the child, on every occasion when no danger is in-
curred by giving him a loose rein.
Superintendence, he permits that, too, but with
all sorts of restrictions. At the bottom he dislikes
it. "I dare hardly say what I think about it."
He will have no companion, no severe tutor who
follows the child step by step, who holds him like
a slave by a chain, who robs the child of all liberty
by sacrificing to him his own. Excess of superin-
tendence has, besides, this drawback, that it
stimulates the child to employ trickery and subter-
fuge. He recalled that during the years of his own
tutorship he had been merely the guide and benevo-
lent friend to his pupils, that he had placed confi-
dence in them, and never hesitated to leave them to
themselves, to their games and sports. " Children/ 7
he said, "must be exposed to danger, if one wants
them to become men." Those who growup under the
tyranny of a superintendence that is strict, constant,
and indiscreet, will possess neither courage nor self-
HERBART 87
reliance. They will lack spirit and initiative.
The strong, firm character which we should develop,
and the formation of which is the essential end of
moral culture, is prepared only by action, by ex-
ercise of the will. Discipline, then, must not make
an improper use of police-like superintendence ; it
must be prudent, do nothing which will hinder the
earliest manifestations of the will, and finally, while
governing the child, it must prepare him to govern
himself.
Punishments, Herbart thinks them necessary.
But he distinguishes between several kinds : those
which are the instruments of government, others
which are of use still after a liberal education has
begun. There are, in the first place, disciplinary
punishments, those which insure order, which oblige
children to remain quiet: all sorts of privations,
privations of food, liberty, and even corporal chas-
tisement. The Germans have never had much
delicacy about this matter, and Herbart does not
absolutely reject the old customs. The rod and
hands tied behind the back do not shock him.
"It is not bad for a child to recall that he was
whipped when little." But to purely disciplinary
corrections should follow those which have educative
virtue, and which will render the child prudent by
habituating him to calculate the consequences of his
88 HERBART
acts. These are the punishments which Herbart
calls "pedagogic"; and it is worth noting that the
famous theory of Herbert Spencer on natural
punishment, the consequences and reactions of our
acts, exists already in germ in the writings of Her-
bart. 1 The gormand who has eaten too many
dainties should take a bitter medicine to cure his
indigestion. The neglectful child who has soiled his
Sunday garments should be obliged to do without
them. . . . There is, finally, a third and higher
kind of punishment, in which a moral idea appears :
punishment which the culprit accepts, when he is re-
pentant, as a deserved expiation of the sin committed.
Herbart, to tell the truth, considers discipline
only as a necessary evil ; the proof of this is that, if it
were possible, he would remove the burden of it from
the educator. It is an inferior duty, not suitable to
the high calling of men who take charge of the instruc-
tion of the child. The educator is, in his way, an
artist ; and if a painter, a sculptor, can only rise to
1 This is fresh evidence of the regrettable condition that in the
science of education there is no understanding, no continuity of
effort amongst the workers of different nationality, the conse-
quence being that one of them believes he has discovered a theory
that is more than half a century old. Mr. Herbert Spencer, in
writing to me, has stated that before composing his remarkable
essay, he had read neither the Entile of Rousseau, nor any work on
education except a bad commentary by the Englishman, " Biber, "
on Pestalozzi.
HERBART 89
perfection by means of a concentrated force of genius,
entirely absorbed in its art, freed from all the ac-
cessory and inferior work of his trade; so it is
desirable that a teacher whose mission it is to educate
the inner being of the child, should not have to dis-
sipate a part of his mental power and energy on the
cares and anxieties of discipline.
The government of children approaches to moral
education when it is based upon and supported by
"authority" and "affection": two auxiliaries the
action of which is so much the more important,
since by permeating discipline they tend to render it
useless. That is, again, another reason for preferring
domestic to public education.
What teacher could rival parents, who would lay
claim to excel or even equal them in matters of
authority and affection? If authority is naturally
vested in the father, does not the mother claim first
place in affection, "the mother who, at the price of
endless sacrifices, succeeds in discovering the needs
of her child better than any one else could do, who
communicates with him in his first speech, of which
she alone has the secret, who, favored by the re-
finement of her feminine nature, knows how to find
the familiar accent which harmonizes with the tender
feelings of the child, and whose gentle control, if it
is not clumsily exerted, never fails of its end" ?
90 HERBART
From a stranger, from any educator whatever,
it is evidently not possible to ask the same love, the
same penetrating force of affection. How could the
passing teacher exert the same ascendency over his
pupils as the abiding family, which from birth has
wrapped the child in tenderness, in a sustained
bond of feeling and habit ? Authority and love are
not the less at school than at home precious co-
workers with discipline, so far as the school can
make use of them, and they will endure, forming a
solid base for true education and moral culture.
The period arrives, in fact, and we hasten
toward it, when government should disappear;
or at least should relax its imperious authority, in
order to give place to an education which will pre-
pare the child to direct himself. It is here that Her-
bart reaches the culminating point of his pedagogical
doctrine, the part that is most essential and impor-
tant in his system. The child should be freed as
soon as possible from the swaddling-clothes which
outside influences have woven, in order that he may
become an autonomous being, a moral person, who
draws from internal forces his rules of conduct and
moral laws, without having, henceforth, need to ask
them from external guardians. " Education would
be a tyranny if it did not lead toward freedom."
But just as it was impossible to understand Her-
HERBART 91
hart's theory of instruction without a preparatory
review of his psychology, so a glance at the principles
of his ethics is indispensable for finding the key to
his pedagogy of morality. 1
Herbart moralizes outside the beaten paths.
His moral theories are exceedingly personal, closely
associated, in fact, with his system as a whole. He
aspired, he says, to continue and complete the prac-
tical philosophy of Kant, and while doing so to cor-
rect it ; in reality he demolishes it, leaving nothing
standing. His ethics, in fact, is a morality with-
out free will, a morality without obligation. He
admits neither transcendental liberty, nor the cate-
gorical imperative, the very foundations of morality
such as was conceived by the author of The Criticism
of the Practical Reason. Transcendental liberty,
considered from the pedagogical point of view alone,
and understood not purely as a dream, renders all
education useless and impossible, just as much
as an absolute fatalism would do. It may be
taken for granted that the fatalism of Spinoza, since
it views all things as ruled a priori by the decrees of
an inexorable destiny, condemns to failure all educa-
tional effort. But it is interesting in other respects
1 See the remarkable articles of M. Dereux : " On the foundations
of morality according to Herbart," in the Critique philosophique,
for December, 1888, and January, March, and May, 1889.
92 HERBART
to prove that Kant, too, with his strange conception
of a super-sense freedom, independent of experience,
active before time began and beyond time, sterilizes
and paralyzes the power of education. How affect
a being whose destiny has been fixed beforehand by a
mysterious will, by a miraculous coup d'etat, causing
in advance a break in empirical determinism, in
the chain of human actions? When a man
enters into this world he has already voted for
good or evil in his future actions. Nothing will be
able to influence him. The man who thinks he can
be made better is only dreaming. One man can
no longer affect another; instruction, warning, pun-
ishments, these accomplish nothing. If, then,
transcendental liberty has the power to modify a
man's acts, independently of all reason and well-
reflected motives, it is clear that the characteristic
feature of the ethics of Kant is nothing but em-
pirical determinism, hanging, one knows not how,
fronTa first postulate of metaphysical freedom ; and
consequently it destroys all attempts at reform and
moral progress ; it denies the possibility of education.
Herbart, a realist in philosophy, could not admit
in any way such an arbitrary and unreal hypothesis
as that of transcendental liberty. Neither is one
surprised that he refuses to bow down before the
categorical imperative of Kant, and, in general,
HERBART 93
before any idea of moral obligation. To believe
in obligation, that is to say, in a command addressed
by reason to the will, we must begin by believing in
reason itself ; for the same argument there must also
be a will. Now, we know that the psychology of
Herbart does not admit any primitive faculty;
reason and a moral conscience he excludes as much
as intellect and sensibility; there is nothing but a
confused mass of representations, and, as it were,
a dust-cloud of ideas, the confusion of which allows
'the construction of mental unity, a form of activity
not granted by nature. The child, then, is bor
without moral ideas, as without will. Practical / /
reason, as well as theoretical reason, arises gradually /
from objects represented in consciousness, and from
the relation of these objects. It is in no way a first
principle, a fundamental law. It is deduced and
derived. In consequence, duty (of this Herbart
does not even pronounce the name) is no longer the
sovereign rule of our actions, established on an idea
of the good. Good in itself does not exist. Moral-
ity, like understanding as a whole, is only the re- '
sultant from a series of operations, the product of
experience.
It would seem, however, at the first glance, that
Herbart admits a different conception. He speaks
of a moral ideal, and he distinguishes five ideas as
94 HERBART
being the elements of it. But these ideas, as we
shall see, are neither anterior nor superior to ex-
perience; they spring from it. They are the effect
rather than the cause of morality. It is not they
which determine us to be virtuous ; but it is because
we are virtuous that they take shape in the mind.
That is to say, that a good man forms a conception
of them as the ideal standard for his actions, by a
sort of abstraction from his virtues; but it is not
they which form the good man.
Let us enumerate and define these five moral
ideas, which Herbart separates absolutely from one
another, and which he considers irreducible. They
are, indeed, not simple notions. In Herbart's phi-
losophy there is nothing simple except the soul,
which is unknowable and inert. Everywhere there
is connection, relation, function. Thus the first
moral idea, inner liberty, is only a relation between
the judgment and will when they agree. A desire
is conceived; the judgment approves of it; con-
sciousness of this harmony is liberty, as Herbart un-
derstood it : not an independent power which weighs
different motives and selects, but simply the pressure
exerted by one idea over another to bring about an
action. The mind is then at peace with itself. The
man who acts deliberately in conformity with his
thoughts, is free inwardly and subjectively.
HERBART 95
The notion of perfection takes the second place, and
is again only a relation between two ideas, two acts
of the will, of which one surpasses the other in no-
bility because it is the better of the two ; in intensity,
if it is the stronger; in extension, if it comprehends
a greater number of objects; finally, in concentra-
tion, if it firmly coordinates this diversity of objects.
A mathematical bent of mind always directed
the speculations of Herbart, and moral perfection,
one can see, is for him only a question of quantity,
we were going to say of dimensions, in the amount
and force of will power.
However that may be, the first two moral notions
concern only the relation between acts of "will in one
and the same person ; they belong to what is known
as individual morality; they concern personal
progress, of which the maxim is, "Make yourself
perfect." The three other ideas good-will, law, and
justice regard, on the contrary, social morality;
they presuppose will relationships between two or
more different persons. Let us place ourselves in the
presence of our kind; if our own will conforms
to the will of others, if we desire that this external
will finds satisfaction and reaches its end, we have
then a kind or benevolent notion. If of two wills
desiring the same object neither will yield, there is
a conflict; this conflict is disagreeable, contrary to
96 HERBART
order ; it must be avoided, the struggle ended ; that
is the notion of law (droit). Finally, if the strife has
not been adjusted, if one person has transgressed his
rights, the order that has been disturbed and injured
must be restored, and agreement between the wills
be reestablished, thanks to the sanctions and com-
pensations which render to each what belongs to
him : that is the notion of justice.
. We need not delay to criticise this particular
classification of moral concepts: what is alone of
importance to us, is to prove that they claim in no
way to be the first principles of moral conduct.
They do not derive their force from a direct and
original revelation to consciousness. If one might
compare them with the " Ideas" of Plato, for they
also are models or examples of moral beauty, they
are not reminiscences, reflections of a world of super-
sensible realities. They are purely mental construc-
tions, and follow upon action more than they deter-
mine it. Just as representations, when associated,
form the intellect, so acts of will, when repeated,
construct the moral ideal. There is perfect par-
allelism between the development of theoretic reason
and of practical reason. We begin by action ; then
we reflect, and from reflection come the great ideas
which henceforth give direction to human conduct.
Once conceived, in fact, they contribute to en-
97
lighten our judgment, and in a certain measure they
become the agents of moral culture. They are
lighthouses which illuminate the pathway of life as
long as a man acts ; they do not shine when he starts,
but their light accompanies humanity on its march.
Since it is not in moral ideas, as Herbart under-
stands them, that we must seek the principle of
virtue, where shall we, then, find it? He replies
without hesitation, in an aesthetic necessity. In his
view, the good and the beautiful are not sep-
arable. A moral judgment is an aesthetic judg-
ment. That is a singular conception, which was
suggested to Herbart, so it would seem, by the
theory of music. He was a good musician, as we
have already said, and it was the study of sound-
relationships which in part suggested to him his
theory of the relationship of acts of will. According
to him, aesthetic judgments are absolute. They
do not require demonstration. They assert them-
selves with complete authority. "If we ask a pro-
fessor of counterpoint for a demonstration of the
beauty of a sound, he could only laugh, or perhaps
pity the stupid ears which have not already ap-
preciated it." Moral judgments, since they are
aesthetic, have the same character. They need only
show themselves to secure our approval, to exercise
over our resolutions a gentle constraint. They per-
98 HERBART
suade at once. "As soon as an aesthetic judgment
springs up in the soul, it is felt as a force. This is
the gentle pressure that mankind calls conscience."
We are explaining Herbart's theory, not criticising
it. To how many objections is he not exposing him-
self in attributing to taste, to aesthetic judgment,
the authority which his system did not permit him
to require from moral law, from a command of the
reason, resting'upon a notion of the good, or of duty ?
It will suffice to put forward only one such objection :
that this authority appears very precarious, very
fragile, and without any assured efficacy. How
could a judgment pronounced by taste become
a principle of obligation? How could an appre-
ciation of beauty suffice to determine action?
Still, accepting Herbart's theory as it stands, more
ingenious than solid, let us try to understand how
this theory of a morality interchangeable with
aesthetics, can be reconciled with the great principle
of educative instruction. Moral education, let us
not forget, is in direct and strict correlation with
intellectual education. In order, then, that moral
education, thus accepted, be possible, aesthetic
judgment must itself be formed by instruction. At
first approach, it appears as if there were here two
distinct theories, and that to reconcile them would
be a matter of some difficulty. This is the fashion,
HERBART 99
however, in which Herbart explains the possibility
of such a union, of the required articulation. To
form the aesthetic judgment, certain mental states
must be brought about. Objects must be clearly
represented and sharply defined; also calmness,
order, and stability must reign amongst representa-
tions as they succeed each other. In a word, char-
acter has to be formed. Now, character is a system
of regular representations, desires, and acts of will,
all firmly united, the result of instruction that is
solid and full.
Character consists of a man's desires, and he
desires what he persistently thinks about. ^Jn^.
struction, then, is the principle of the formation
of character. _It is true that other elements con-
tribute to the good functioning of voluntary activity.
Herbart admits that assurance and courage are, in
part, the effect of our physical constitution, of good
health. " Feeble and sickly natures feel themselves
dependent; robust natures alone dare to exercise
their will. " It is for this reason, also, that he
deems he may say: "A man usually has more char-
acter than a woman, just because he is superior to
her in physical strength." 1 It is not, therefore,
1 To appease the self-respect of women, let us quote another
passage: "Man is often inferior to woman; as regards wisdom,
she can promptly distinguish and note in social relationships things
that are barely perceptible and escape the observation of men."
100 HERBART
less true that the education of character depends
especially on the education of ideas, and that teach-
ing plays much the heavier role in moral culture.
That is why the child, in his first years, and while
still ignorant, has no character, or at least possesses
only that inferior form of character called by Her-s
bart (who is always drawing distinctions) objective.
Objective character consists of the whole of the
desires, fancies, caprices, and passions to which the
organism gives birth before the thinking will has
made its appearance. In this fluid state of child
nature, at a time when representations, as ill ordered
as the waves of the sea, rush after one another,
covering each other in confusion, the real character,
what in the terminology of Herbart is called sub-
jective character, cannot yet grow firm. That will
reveal itself only when reflection and reasoning
power control and rule the capricious and incon-
sistent desires of the child, by uniting his ideas in
permanent groups.
It is fixity of ideas, rigorous association, that
insures force of character. To designate this per-
sistence of the same representations, Herbart in-
vented the expression " memory of the will." The
term is neat and expressive, but possibly only the
term is new. The memory of the will, that is to say,
a will always in harmony with itself, as opposed to
HERBART 101
wills wavering and failing, or, again, a disposition
to desire always the same things upon the same
occasions, is not this what the old psychology called
custom? There is no character so long as there is
no persistency and constancy of ideas. Herbart
mistrusts dispositions that are unsteady, and there-
fore light. He speaks in a joking way of those young
men who to-day take six courses of study, to-morrow
will work alone, and the next day set out on a
journey. What he approves in the child as a con-
dition favorable to successful education, is a dis-
position to will strongly, even when this is accom-
panied by a measure of obstinacy.
If calm, reflective minds make strong characters,
something else is, however, yet wanting to complete
a moral education: there must be action. And
here Herbart seems to hesitate between his funda-
mental principle, instruction, and a quite different
conception, the importance of exercise, of the part
played by action. If the child is developed merely
passively, under a system of constraint, he will
reach manhood without possessing character. In
consequence, it is right to give free course to the
energy and initiative of the child. To help him to
morality, we ought not to depend on precepts
confided to the memory. A maxim is efficacious
only when it has been, so to speak, lived, when per-
102 HERBART
sonal action has given it life, and it has become,
in a manner, a fragment of our autobiography.
The child who, from his earliest years, has been ac-
customed to give water to the thirsty, or food to the
hungry, is prepared to formulate this general rule
of morality: " Render aid to your neighbor when-
ever he has need of it." And, in an inverse sense,
a defect of character proceeds only by a fault re-
peated several times.
Herbart, in his pedagogy of morality, does not for-
get his pedagogy of the intellect. Thus a many-
sided mterestTappears to him to be one of the es-
sential conditions of morality. A mind unfurnished
with a rich store of ideas is exposed to egoism : its
limited knowledge leaves the field open to base
desires. We are certainly not going to contest that
morality may expect to advance with instruction
and with the widening of the circle of ideas; but
we ask, nevertheless, whether Herbart does not
propose for moral culture an unattainable ideal, in
making variety, extent, and multiplicity of knowl-
edge a condition of virtue. Does not that exclude
from the moral life all whose condition condemns
them to remain more or less ignorant or men of
partial culture? An aesthetic morality having as
foundation universality of knowledge, is that a
morality suited to all the world ? One may doubt it.
HERBART 103
Just as the ancient Greek philosophers moralized
only for the privileged classes and forgot the slaves,
so Herbart, in his conceptions of morality, appears to
have in view only a society of scholars: a morality
that will serve only the select few.
An esthetic intellectualism, that might be a
definition of morality, according to Herbart. We
cannot speak to him of sentiments as sources of
virtue, for sentiments have their origin in ideas.
It is no longer true to say with the ancient moralists
that " great ideas spring from the heart." It is
the contrary that is true : it is the heart that grows
warm and animated under the influence of ideas.
But, whatever may be the confidence professed
by Herbart in the moralizing value of an instruction
which conforms to the rules traced out in his " di-
dactics," he does not the less distinguish special
methods of moral culture. There are, in fact,
precautions to be taken to insure the regular devel-
opment of ideas, and possibly, at times, his reflections
will appear to us to contradict the fundamental
principle of his system, and lead him to search else-
where than in instruction for the conditions of
moral education.
To follow the same order and plan adopted by
Herbart, we shall distinguish with him six things to
be done hi moral culture. This is the list of them :
104 HERBART
(1) support the child; (2) incline him to act ; (3) es-
tablish rules ; (4) maintain in his soul calmness and
serenity; (5) stimulate his intellect with approval
and censure ; (6) warn and correct him.
To tell the truth, that is an arbitrary enumera-
tion rather than an exact and rigorous classification.
They are like six somewhat frail points of attach-
ment, on to which Herbart hangs all the prescrip-
tions suggested by his great anxiety for the training
of character. They are not all new, far from it;
and Herbart is the first to acknowledge that often
he is only deriving inspiration from old traditional
experience, experience that centuries of reflection
have established and rendered trustworthy. 1
The first rule of this scheme of moral culture seems
like a prolongation into education of the need of
discipline. We must, in fact, continue to "control"
(tenir) the child ; that is to say, to keep order, lest
disobedience and disorderliness interrupt and ob-
struct the course of personal education, and the
child, in using his liberty, oversteps the prescribed
limits. Above all else, dissipation and indolence
are to be combated. In consequence, one must take
care that the child is always occupied, and the best
1 Herbart had none of the empty vanity 1 of an inventor :
"Humanity," he wrote, /'has already gathered along the road
a great number of truths; it is our part to profit by them."
HERBART 105
occupations are those which he chooses for himself,
in accordance with his tastes : serious occupations,
other than play; for games quickly weary him.
One must take pains to profit by good tendencies in
the natural character of the child, in order to
strengthen these, the first germs of morality. We
shall rarely command him, and only in cases of ab-
solute necessity. By uniformity in the manner of
life which we prescribe, we shall endeavor to pro-
mote the development of the memory of the will.
A teacher equable in temper, always calm, and in full
control of himself, who does not pass from excessive
indulgence to excessive severity, will contribute to
inspire analogous qualities: tranquil and patient
moderation in the child. Finally, authority and
affection will continue to play an important r&le
both at home and at school; the child must have
a lively sentiment that the approval of parents and
masters is a possession which he can either keep by
deserving it, or risk to lose.
In the second place, moral culture exercises the
child in doing. It teaches him what he must bear
and suffer, in order to possess what he desires or
do what he likes. It teaches him, at the cost of his
own experience, "that the flame burns, the needle
pricks, that falling is dangerous." In a word, it
habituates him to control himself, by furnishing
106 HERBART
him with opportunities of choosing between differ-
ent motives for action. But here one is tempted
to stop Herbart, and to ask him whether his psychi-
cal mechanism, seeing that it covers voluntary acts
as well as manifestations of thought, permits him
to speak of choice or of option. In very fact, there
is no place in his moral mechanism for free self-
determination. It is no longer a question of liberty
to compare different grounds of action, and after
reflection, decide for one or the other. There are
present only different groups of ideas and a struggle
or conflict between them. It is the strongest element,
the dominant group of ideas, which comes off victor
and leads to a decision. To this Herbart will reply
that it is precisely the business of instruction to
cause certain ideas to prevail, and, in consequence,
it forms in us the only real liberty, which is none
other than harmony between what we think and
what we wish.
The third point in moral culture consists of es-
tablishing " rules" and maxims of conduct. Here
is the place for dogmatic instruction in morality.
The five moral ideas may now begin to exert their
sway over conduct. Just as it is imprudent to
reason with children at an age when they themselves
cannot share in an argument, so now it becomes
necessary to discuss with them and to show them the
HERBART 107
consequences of their actions ; to make them, indeed,
understand what is the advantage to them of obe-
dience to the general rules by which they ought to
feel bound.
Moral culture should be inspired by the notion
that peace of mind, if it is the end of virtue, is also
one of its conditions; and hence arises the neces-
sity of maintaining "calmness and serenity." This
end will be attained by encouraging the natural
gayety of the child, by seeking every means of keep-
ing it good-humored, by letting it live its child life,
by excluding the wearisome and fruitless studies
which hamper the free movement of his mind.
Above all, we shall be careful that his desires do not
degenerate into passions through excessive stimu-
lation, and for this reason we shall permit to them
only a moderate measure of satisfaction. At need,
we shall remove the desired object. We shall direct
the activity of the child toward the study of the
arts, music, and painting ; and if he lacks talent, we
shall fall back on other occupations, collecting
plants, insects, or shells, gardening, or cardboard
modelling, or even carpentry. Herbart favors man-
ual work. Emile as carpenter is not a displeas-
ing sight to him. "All men," he says, "should
learn to make use of their hands, for the hands take
honorable rank by the side of speech in elevating
108 HERBART
men above the animals." In such ways we shall
find means of diverting the child from disturbing
passions, passions which darken the mind at the
period when a calm and quiet spirit, ready always
to conceive clearly, is alone in a fit condition to form
aesthetic judgments.
When Herbart recommends recourse to approval
and blame, his fifth rule, it appears to us that
he is departing from his system and destroying its
framework. In fact, he calls to his aid a foreign
agency : the judgment of others. Is it really true
that the child is unable to attain to virtue spontane-
ously, by himself alone, by the energy of his char-
acter, influenced solely by instruction? We must
support him on the right path ; by censure and by
the punishment which follows thereon, we must recall
him to it ; above all, he needs for Herbart desired
that all men should grow up " without one word of
deserved blame falling on their ears" that ap-
proval and its consequent rewards should have influ-
ence on his resolutions and conduct. Let us not
reproach Herbart with a happy contradiction, which
makes him admit that one can, and one should mor-
alize the child by praise and by reprimand ; measures
which will succeed only when the master has known
how to win the esteem and affection of his pupils.
The sixth and last mode of moral culture is hardly
HERBART 109
distinguishable from the previous one : " Warning and
exhortation" ^'approach very closely to reprimand,
and also to correction. Herbart considers, however,
that one can give advice without adding reproach,
and that correction is profitable only when gentle.
The child must be handled humanely ; we must feel
all the noble and good that there is in him, and avoid
all harshness, not only in acts but also in speech.
Moral culture, as defined, is "a continuous treat-
ment" : the personal work of a master who employs,
above all else, benevolent methods, who knows how
to make himself agreeable to a child, and to please
him by the interest that he manifests in him ; who does
not forget that it is a matter not so much of bend-
ing the will but of forming it, having regard to the
reasonable being who one day will develop from
a creature yet feeble in regard to ideas, weak and
unstable in its will; who, in short, knows how to
adapt himself in his role as teacher to that fine
epigram: "We love the child; but in the child we
love the coming man."
Herbart had a multiple mind, called by English
people many-sided, by Germans veilfdltig. He saw
things on all sides. He turned a question round
and round, on all its faces. We are not surprised
then, when, in the laborious and troublesome re-
construction of a moral education of which he had
110 HERBART
destroyed the classic foundations, after having had
recourse to all sources of instruction, even to all
the sciences, and above all else, to aesthetics, Her-
bart turns to religion, to what he calls " religious
interest." He by no means founds morality on
religion, but religion appears to him as a friend and
protectress of morality. He does not say whether
we could do without religion ; but if the case stands
so that we think we ought to have recourse to its
support, then it is useful and effective; there is,
however, one condition : it must be accepted in its
noblest sense. Herbart knew the perils and the
excesses of religious faith, and he denounces them.
He commends a religion of the inner man, stripped
of vain practices. He ridicules children who kneel
after the fashion of little girls, holding a prayer-
book in their hands with the air of young saints. He
scourges the religiou4iypjaerites who think to cover
and excuse bad deeds by acts of devotion. In his
opinion, religious instruction is a general instruction
which underlies and permeates all particular faiths ;
which is essentially Christian, and yet preaches
love for those even of a different faith. Religion,
as conceived by Herbart, is indeed wide and tol-
erant; for he requires that it should be strength-
ened in instruction in the classics by reading the
Dialogues of Plato; and also that religious instruc-
HERBART 111
tion should be united with instruction in natural
science.
What Herbart expects from religious instruction
is that it should assist the teacher to fight against
egoism; that it should develop the feeling of hu-
mility in the child, the feeling of the dependence
of individuals in their relationship to nature and to
a Supreme Being. As to the time when it is right
to begin religious education, about this he hesitates
and remains vague; we must, he says, if we wish
to make deep impressions, neither hasten it nor
delay it too late. He is very emphatic, and in
advance of modern ideas, when he relieves teachers
of the care of the religious instruction, which then
becomes the duty of the family and of theologians,
that is to say, of the ministers of the various sects.
"The church," he says, "may maintain relations with
the school, but it must not dominate it." That
is not yet to separate them ; but it is already a first
step on the road to enfranchising the laity. A sepa-
ration which he proclaims necessary, from the present
in any case, is that of religion and science. It is
doubtless necessary for the soul to have the right
to rest in peace and unity in its religious belief;
but it is also necessary that scientific speculation
should follow its course on its own account with
freedom, without uneasiness, and without hin-
112 HERBART
drance. Philosophy is neither orthodox nor
heterodox; it has its own field; it works outside
dogmas; and religion cannot claim either to hinder
the activity of the reason or to bind the forces
of nature.
IF the worth of a thinker may be measured by the
number of works suggested by him to disciples and
critics, I can well believe that Herbart has no rival.
There is a Herbartian library, the wealth and extent
of which is not equalled even by the Pestalozzian
library. Around the work of a single man a whole
literature has grown up. In his Encyklopddische
Handbuch der Pddagogik, M. Rein, the noted pro-
fessor at Jena, devotes nearly 200 pages to the bibli-
ography of the subject, and he reckons that no less
than 2234 books or pamphlets have been published
on Herbart in Germany and Switzerland alone.
According to Mr. Felkin, the English translator of
Herbart, there are actually about ten periodicals
devoted to spreading the master 's doctrine. A
whole legion of commentators, moralists, psycholo-
gists, philosophers, and teachers have risen up to
interpret the ideas of Herbart, to popularize them,
to carry them farther and put them into practice;
sometimes to correct and oppose them.
113
114 HERBART
But if the ideas of Herbart have made a remarkable
stir in general philosophy, it is in the field of educa-
tion that the impulse given by him has been specially
powerful and promises to endure. This writer, al-
most unknown amongst us, has become amongst
his countrymen the hero and ruling spirit of modern
education. He has formed a school. His disciples
have multiplied, and for fifty years now they have
succeeded each other from generation to generation,
unceasingly, in the chain's of pedagogy, at the Ger-
man universities, in gymnasiums (grammar or high
schools), as well as in normal schools and primary
schools. We have read again recently in a Swiss
journal, VEducateur, this significant passage, "If in
Germany Pestalozzi was the founder, his successor,
the philosopher Herbart, has been the logician and
organizer of modern pedagogy ; and his methodical
work, having rendered service to first one and then
another distinguished man, still maintains its place
intact and full of energy, sanctioned by a hundred
years of experience and success." 1
It would, however, not be exact to say that the
followers of Herbart have maintained the system of
1 UEducateur, the organ of the pedagogical society of Latin
Switzerland, February 28, 1903. The chief editor of this journal,
M. F. Guex, director of the normal schools of Lausanne, is himself
a convinced and practical Herbartian, who applies in his schools
some of the methods recommended by Herbart.
HERBART 115
the master in its integrity. They have rejected cer-
tain parts of their heritage which are obviously out
of date ; they have modified others, either develop-
ing or amending them. They have in their mitigated
or improved Herbartianism remained faithful only
to the dominant ideas of the head of the school.
These have been applied and explained, and to tell
the truth, we know and understand Herbart better
when we have read his successors, be it only through
the exaggerations into which, at times, they have
let themselves be drawn, where the errors of his
doctrine appear writ large and in full relief.
For example, two of the most brilliant representa-
tives of the Herbartian school, Ziller (1817-1883) and )
Stoy (1815-1885), obeyed a common inspiration, for /
the rest, with differences and many personal opinions, /
they were original and inventive, and thus have
contributed the most to popularize the methods of
Herbart. In spite of their disagreements and the
differences which separated them, we find them
in 1868 collaborating at the foundation of a great
pedagogic association, Verein filr wissenschaftliche
Pddagogik, the title of which indicates its aim,
an aim dear to Herbart, to establish a scientific
pedagogy. Also they were not content, either of
them, to write books, give lecture courses, and
revivify the ideas of Herbart: copying what he
116 HERBART
attempted at Konigsberg, they have exerted them-
selves to organize and direct institutes of education,
pedagogical seminaries.
Herbartianism in Germany is a religion, with its
orthodox and heterodox members. Ziller, in fact,
was neither the one nor the other : he was simply
an independent Herbartian, who added to the com-
mon stock a certain number of new things. Stoy,
and after him his successor at Jena, Dr. Rein, are to
be considered rather orthodox Herbartians, faith-
ful preservers, fervent guardians of the doctrine.
It was in 1862 that Ziller established at Leipzig
a pedagogical seminary, which continues still, and
/ to which is attached a practice school. The titles
of his books indicate the Herbartian tradition and
recall its terminology : Introduction to General Peda-
gogy (1856), The Government of Children (1857), Prin-
ciples of the Doctrine of Educative Instruction (1865).
Ziller, like Herbart, believes that in municipal schools
instruction may and should be essentially an instru-
ment for eiliisaJin^ni^^ It is to jus-
tify this claim that he discusses one by one the selection
of the subjects of instruction, their rank and coordi-
nation, "in order to arrive at the most perfect grasp
of science, the highest moral ideal." Ziller certainly
makes great mistakes, and it is not quite without
reason that he has been severely criticised and almost
HERBART 117
mishandled; and Stoy as well, in the articles by
M. Buisson in the Dictionnaire de pdagogie. Even
in Germany the critics have not spared him. Stoy,
although he was a Herbartian too, treated him
as a " Visionary." "All that is good in Ziller," said
Stoy, "is not new, and what is new is not good."
Emancipated disciples generally dispute thus with
each other within the lines of the doctrines of a great
master. ... It is easy to gibe at the concentration
plan invented by Ziller, which consists in making
literature, or perhaps sacred or national history,
the centre of instruction. He connects all the other
studies of each school year with a study in literature
or history : the first year, with twelve fables or stories
from Grimm; the second year, with Robinson
Crusoe; the third year, with the story of the Pa-
triarchs, and so on. That these methods are old,
I grant you; but the end sought by Ziller
though he may not have discovered the true means
of reaching it is not, therefore, the less worthy
of attention and praise. Who can fail to approve
of the effort he made to systematize instruction, to
articulate firmly one with another its different parts
in a unified plan and in harmonious relationship.
Too often teachers and especially is this the case
in the curricula of our French schools pile to-
gether pell-mell all the subjects of instruction with-
118 HERBART
out troubling themselves about establishing con-
nections, or making them converge to a single goal.
There is succession and juxtaposition of studies,
but there is no coordination. Each professor follows
his own path, teaches his own science, without
troubling himself about what his neighbors are
doing. Each pupil passes without transition from
one study to another, from the flowery paths of
literature to the rough ascents of science. We must
honor Ziller that, in dismay at such scattered studies,
he tried to apply a remedy by unifying and fusing
together the two groups which Herbart had already
marked out : the sciences of humanity and of nature.
Ziller, moreover, gave several reasons for this co-
ordination being necessary : two of them are psy-
chological and one is moral. The self is a being that
constantly grows larger; its individuality is estab-
lished and its personality developed] thanks alone
to unity amongst the experiences and to the in-
struction which it receives. There can be no cohe-
sion in mental life if there is no cohesion amongst
the studies. In the second place, the condition
necessary for progress in instruction and education
is that interest should be aroused; and since it is
certain that there is hardly a child who has not a
natural taste for at least one subject or another,
one must connect all the other studies to this fa-
HERBART 119
vorite, in order that interest may radiate from the
first to the second, and thus onwards. But above
all, there is a moral reason to be added on the side
of concentration and unity in teaching. Instruction
being the true principle of moral culture, it is only
when the knowledges have been unified and incor-
porated one with another, that we can hope to pro-
duce that unity of will and action which constitutes
solidity of character. In consequence, we must
avoid that overburdening, that incoherence and
breaking up of curricula, the result of which is to
scatter efforts, to disperse the attention of pupils,
and to make out of them amateurs who apply
themselves to everything in a superficial way and
penetrate deeply into nothing.
What Ziller had done at Leipzig, Stoy repeated at
Jena; he also established a pedagogical seminary,
das pddagogische Universitdts-seminar } whichuudeTthQ
direction of Dr. Rein is still prospering, and bringing
together a large number of pupils. Stoy was a pupil
of Herbart at Gottingen, and he gathered from the
lips of the master himself the principles of education
which he developed in his classes and in his works,
the Philosophic Propedentics and Encyclopedia of
Pedagogy (1861), a second edition in 1878. Like
Herbart, he excludes abstract rules and technical
terms from the beginning of the studies ; he requires
120 HERBART
that the child make at first an abundant provision
of sense-perceptions. To aim at forming the mind
without previously assembling a great many notions,
that, said he, would be "like wishing to play on a
harp without strings." And it goes] without saying
that these notions would be closely linked and associ-
ated according to the Herbartian method. But Stoy,
nevertheless, did not adopt a concentration plan of
studies, such as Ziller formed, on which all the sub-
jects of study had to be grouped around the Holy
Scriptures or secular history. Let us add that Stoy
recalls his master, Herbart, even in his manner of
writing ; that the reader is lost in the mazy windings
of his expositions and subtle distinctions; that he
reaches the point, as some one has said, "of confusing
the most simple things"; and in brief, after reading
him, one may ask how the head of an institution, a
professor, could descend from these clouds of abstrac-
tion to set foot amid the realities of practical teaching.
M. Rein succeeded Stoy in 1885, and he has con-
tinued the Herbartian propaganda. In the kind
of pedagogical laboratory directed by him at Jena, it
is chiefly to primary l teaching, to the schools of the
people, that he applies his methods. M. Chabot,
who recently visited the seminary at Jena, found
1 The school annexed to the seminary at Jena is an elementary
school, comprising three classes, of ten pupils each.
HERBART 121
M. Rein, with his collaborators, occupied in giving a
lesson on the prophets of Israel, and trying to render
this history interesting, intuitive, and intelligible
to children of seven to eight years of age. 1 Dr.
Rein appears to us a wise teacher, very sensible and
practical, and also very energetic. He has put to-
gether eight volumes, corresponding to the eight
years of the elementary school, in which all the
material of teaching is expounded. He has ac-
cepted with conviction, and applies successfully,
the greater part of the methods and processes for
exciting attention thought out by Herbart. Every
well-conducted lesson must begin with a prepara-
tion, just as every play begins with an explanation.
The teacher first refreshes the memory of the pupil,
recalling ideas familiar to him, so that they may
meet the new ideas, and that something from within
may come, as it were, to greet and welcome what is
approaching from the outside.
Herbart lives again in his disciples, not only
because they receive from him the general inspira-
tion for their pedagogy, but also seeing that they
imitate him in a taste for formulae and systematic
distinctions. Is it necessary, for example, to invent,
as Dr. Rein has done, the term method wholej to
explain to us that there are in every study distinct
1 M. Chabot, op. cit. t p. 61.
122 HERBART
divisions which can be approached only in sequence ?
Is it necessary that he should give us as many as
four reasons to prove the necessity of indicating at
the beginning of each lesson the subject about to
be treated ? . . . But Herbart would not have dis-
allowed these slow, heavy modes of thought, he who
complained of the lightness of the French intellect,
about which he said that "it does not permit labor-
ing over and exhausting a question."
It is possible to be Herbartian in education with-
out adhering to the errors in Herbart's psychology.
Such a disciple, for example, was Otto Frick (1832-
1892), who undertook to introduce the ideas of Her-
bart into secondary teaching, but who absolutely
repudiates his empiricism. Frick directed at Halle
the celebrated school founded by Francke in the eight-
eenth century, which, originally intended to receive
poor orphans, has now become an enormous insti-
tution ; it comprises all grades of teaching, and has
gathered together as many as four thousand children
or young people. It was for the higher classes,
especially, that Frick elaborated curricula courses
and model lessons, all permeated with the spirit of
Herbart. But he does not admit that the mind is an
empty re'ceptacle, in which experience stores ideas.
Frick, on the contrary, attributes to the soul a very
rich, innate content.
HERBART 123
We can give only a glance to the history of Her-
bartianism in Germany. Without speaking of the
pure psychologists directly inspired by Herbart, Dro-
bisch, Nahlowsky, Lazarus, Steinthal, and others, 1
how many other noted Herbartians should we not
have to mention amongst German philosophers who
have engaged in educational matters ? The philoso-
pher, Karl Lange, the apperception theorist and
Director of the School at Plauen, is he not Her-
bartian? He, too, has insisted on the strict de-
pendence of education considered as end, on
psychology as means. Lindner, whose Empirical
Psychology (1858) translated into English has
contributed to extend in the United States of
America the ideas of the teacher of Konigsberg,
is also Herbartian. There is Beneke, too (1798-
1854), he who has opposed the tyranny of Kant's
imperative, adopting the theory of Herbart
concerning the derived character of pain and
pleasure, and the intellectualism of emotional
states. 2
1 See the Contemporary German Psychology of M. Ribot.
2 One ought also to mention Waitz (1821-1864) and his Gen-
eral Pedagogy (1852). Amongst living men we should not omit
M. de Sallwiirk, director of the seminary at Karlsruhe, who has
published a fine edition of the pedagogical works of Herbart.
He criticises Herbart willingly, but is, nevertheless, penetrated by
him. See, for example, his last work : Home, World, and School,
Wiesbaden, 1902.
124 HERBART
For the rest, it must be said that the ideas of
Herbart have spread slowly, even in Germany. It
was not until thirty years after his death, three-
quarters of a century after the publication of his
General Pedagogy, that public favor turned to him.
It took time for him to be understood and appre-
ciated. He was not one of those who, like Rousseau
or Herbert Spencer, attract immediately the atten-
tion of people by passionate eloquence or incom-
parably clear, lucid exposition. A system so compli-
cated, so wrapped in mystery and shadow as that
of Herbart, could reach success only slowly.
But once set on foot, the movement - made rapid
and brilliant progress. To-day the Swiss and
German schools in which humble teachers bend
their talents to study and apply the pedagogical
precepts of Herbart may be reckoned in thou-
sands. In 1881, at a German congress on ele-
mentary teaching, a director of a normal school
was charged with a report on the following
question: "Should pedagogy in normal schools be
based on the system of Herbart?" The reply
was emphatically in the affirmative. It was
the same at a congress of directors of gymnasiums
in 1883. On the agenda for the day had been
put the following subject: "How far can the
pedagogy of Herbart be applied in secondary
HERBART 125
teaching?" The conclusions were here also most
favorable. 1
People have sought to find the causes of this ex-
traordinary success. It has been said that even
the errors of Herbart have contributed to it, and
that they were of a nature to win for him the favor
of his countrymen, who enjoy abstruse and abstract
conceptions. But it is not only in Germany that
Herbart has met with admirers: in America,
amongst a people whose intellectual character is,
however, very different, he has found disciples as
enthusiastic. There is little relationship, it would
seem, between the laborious genius of Herbart and
the intellect, clear, but at times rather superficial,
of the Americans. Yet the fact is certain that, in
the United States, Herbart is the fashionable peda-
gogical authority. Dr. W. T. Harris went so far, ten
years ago, as to say, " There are more adherents of
Herbartian pedagogy to-day in America than in
Germany itself." 2 This success, which spreads over
two worlds, this growing popularity, cannot other-
wise be explained except by real merit in the thinker
1 There were, however, some discordant voices in this concert
of approval, notably that of Dittes, who, in 1881, in his Pcedagogium,
attacked Herbart, amongst other things, for the insufficiency of
his statements regarding the relation of instruction to moral
education.
2 Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1894-1895, p. 322.
126 HERBART
who has won it. If Herbart has gained a hear-
ing, it is by the incontestable might of his concep-
tions. It is also because he has a system, a system
rich in formulae : one knows the authority, the fasci-
nation, exerted over men's minds by the despotism
of a systematic doctrine. Human indolence gladly
reposes on the soft bed of a ready-made doctrine,
in which everything, even to the smallest details,
has been foreseen.
It is now fifteen years since the popularity of
Herbart took birth in the United States, and his
doctrines were acclimatized there, so that the Ger-
man teacher became almost an idol for a certain
number of his brethren in America. In the first
rank we note M. de Garmo, director of a college in
Pennsylvania, 1 who has translated several books on
r Tlerbartian pedagogy: the Introduction of the Peda-
gogy of Herbart, by Chr. Ufer, and Lindner's Em-
pirical Psychology, and who has himself devoted
to Herbart, in his list of Great Educators, a work
full of research. 2 It is from Germany that M. de
Garmo derived the spirit of Herbartianism with
1 M. de Garmo is now Professor of Education in Cornell Univer-
sity, Ithaca, N.Y. TRANS.
2 Herbart and the Herbartians, 1895. M. de Garmo is the inde-
fatigable popularizer of the theories of Herbart. He has pub-
lished in the pedagogical reviews of the United States a large
number of articles on the subject.
HERBART 127
which he had thoroughly steeped himself, when he
was following the lectures of Stoy at Jena, or when
he was the colleague of Frick at Halle, where he
taught for two years. But before de Garmo, others
had broken a pathway.
In 1889, Miss M. K. Smith translated the Psychol-
ogy of Herbart. In 1892, the same year when
there was founded at the end of the annual Educa-
tional Congress held at Saratoga by the National
Educational Association, the Herbartian Club, with
one hundred members, Dr. C. A. McMurry, Pro-
fessor of Pedagogy in the University of Illinois,
published the Elements of General Method, in
which he set forth in a sympathetic way the
views of Herbart, as interpreted by Ziller, Stoy, and
Rein. No book could explain better than this of
Dr. McMurry what has attracted Americans to the
pedagogy of Herbart. What they desire, above all/
to derive from him, is the tendency to widen the field
of studies, to form minds rich, well-furnished with
substantial knowledge, rather than penetrating and
refined minds; it is a well-considered intention to
break with the old routine, with the formal culture
which we used to require from a small number of
studies, chiefly languages or mathematics; the cur-
rent now sets toward studies which offer the most
content, history and the natural sciences. Dr.
128 HERBART
McMurry opposes energetically what he calls the
superstition, the fetichism, of "studies of pure form. 7 '
What has further won over the young and modern
American spirit is the fact that Herbart was the
philosopher of interest, of attractiveness, and that
he opposed asceticism in education. It is not at
New York or at Chicago that people resign them-
selves easily to believe that the earth is only ai
"valley of tears," and that instruction is so
much the more profitable as it is disagreeable and
painful.
We could multiply examples. Is not Colonel
Parker, the Director of the Normal School of Cook
County, a man very noted in America, also in-
spired by Herbart, notably, in his plan of "con-
centration" of studies? 1 The term is the same, and
the method analogous. And can we not also con-
sider as enrolled under the Herbartian flag, W. James,
the most celebrated of the psychologists of the
United States? In his recent book, Talks on Psy-
1 Colonel Parker died in 1902. He was then Director of the
School of Education in Chicago University. It seems only fair
to his memory to state that he expressly repudiated the idea that
he was a follower of Herbart; in general educational theory he
was nearer to Froebel. His plan of concentration differed widely
from that of Ziller and Rein, there being no single centre of studies,
the centre he adopted with insistence and persistence being the
child. See Pedagogies, by Francis Parker, in the International
Education Series. TRANS.
HERBART 129
chology, 1 we find the name of Herbart often cited,
and some of his favorite theories reproduced: that
there is no general training of a hypothetical faculty
ofmemory, thatthere can be only special cultiva-
tion of particulargroups of associated meqiorigs^that
th^value oHnat.riip.tion lies in correlation, in a con-
of views to old knowledp;e T and
lastly, that interest in the law of instruction^under
this condition, however, that a seeking after"attrac-
tiveness does not render education too pleasant and
too^_soft 1 and that, without suppressing effort, it
aims only at rendering it possible ancfeasy.
Germany and the Urnted~~States~ are the twa
centres from which Herbartian influence radiates.
But little by little it is penetrating into all the coun-
tries of the world as far as Japan. In England the
translations of Mr. and Mrs. Felkin have won many
disciples; this is proved by different publications:
the humorous volume of Professor John Adams,
The Psychology of Herbart applied to Education; 2
the recent little book of Professor Darroch, Herbart
and his theory of Education? despite its critical tone ;
1 Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on some of
Life's Ideals, by William James, New York, 1899.
2 The Herbartian Psychology applied to Education, by John
Adams, London, and Boston, U.S.A., 1898.
3 Herbart and the Herbartian Theory of Education, by Alexander
Darroch, London, 1903.
130 HERBART
and as is shown by such testimony as that of Mr.
Oscar Browning, "Herbart is a psychologist of first
rank, one might say the founder of modern psy-
chology." l The translations of Mr. Felkin have
largely contributed to this diffusion of Herbartian
doctrine in the Anglo-Saxon world, everywhere where x
the English tongue is spread ; thus it happens th#t
in Australia, the Calendar, the Annual of the "Uni-
versity of Adelaide, for 1903, announces a special
study in the pedagogy of Herbart among the courses
of mental science, and that "the students will read
the Science of Education in the volume by Felkin."
In Italy as well, the works of Herbart have not
failed to attract attention. From 1886 Professor
Fornelli, of the University of Bologna, was publish-
ing La Pedagogia secondo Herbart e la sua scuola; and
in 1900 appeared La Pedagogia di G. F. Herbart, in
which Mr. Luigi Credaro, Professor at the University
of Pavia, comments sympathetically on the theories
of the Universal Pedagogy.
We must admit, then, that in France the great
German educator has been too long neglected. Very
few French philosophers are acquainted with him,
although it might be possible to prove that some-
thing from his doctrine has crept into the writings
of M. Fouille*e or of M. Paulhan, and those who
1 Preface to the translation by Mr. Felkin, p. 11.
HERBART 131
know him have not always given him fair play; for
proof of this, the too severe conclusion to the articles
by M. Dereux already mentioned, or M. Auerbach in
the Dictionary of Pedagogy, edited by M. Buisson.
Herbart has found a better welcome from M. Pin-
loche, to whom we owe a translation, unhappily
fragmentary and incomplete, of the General Peda-
gogy, and of the Sketch; and above all, from M.
Mauxion, who, after having studied the metaphysics
of our author in his doctor 's thesis, 1 published in
1901 under the title, Education by Instruction and the
Pedagogical Theories of Herbart, a substantial and
solid work, to which more than once, in the course
of our own studies, we have had recourse for light
and information. 2
What will become of this almost universal move-
ment, which has carried Herbart's name to all
quarters of the globe? We are convinced it will
last and proceed still farther, that a day will arrive
when there will be found in other lands besides
1 The Metaphysics of Herbart, and the Critique of Kant, Paris,
1894.
2 To complete the list, let us mention also the volume entitled,
Theory of Education according to the Principles of Herbart, Paris,
Delagrave, 1884. The author, M. E. Roerich, has at least the
merit of having been the first in France to call attention to the
pedagogical writings of Herbart. A very kind welcome and sum-
mary was accorded this little work in the Critique Philosophique,
1886, t. I, p. 304.
132 HERBART
Switzerland and Germany, even in the village
schools, hard-working teachers who have recourse to
Herbart for safe guidance, or at least for sugges-
tive inspiration, fitted to sustain them in practical
teaching.
People will then certainly not concern themselves
with his mathematical dreams. They will no longer
talk about the strange comparisons which the author
of Letters to Professor Griepenkel was enjoying, when
he said, "The essential element in childish curiosity
consists in forming the 'vault/ or the 'point' of his
ideas;" or again, "In order to succeed, instruction
should arouse in the mind of the pupil ideas which,
one by one, round themselves out to a 'vault/ or
sharpen themselves into a 'point/" He indulged
himself with the greatest delight in these geometrical
analogies ; evidently they have no value, but to him
they appeared "like a treasure, inexhaustible in
their results." They are mere empty redundancies,
happily not an integral part of the body of the sys-
tem, dross which can be easily separated from the
fundamental conceptions of Herbart, which are thus
rendered more clear and luminous.
Also, and the best of his disciples have set us
the example, we shall gladly cast aside his chief
;5rror concerning the nature of the soul, which de-
Drives it of all self-activity, of all innate or inherited
HERBART 133
power. It is not necessary to have recourse to pro-
fessed philosophers to refute a theory universally
condemned, which common sense rejects as con-
trary to evidence. It seems as if it was to Herbart
that Proudhon was replying when he wrote in his
too much neglected book, Justice in the Revolution
and in the Church: " Just as an external communica-
tion could not by itself create intelligence and cause
winged ideas to dart forth in myriads without the
intellectual preformation which makes concepts pos-
sible, so also the events of social life would have
vainly sought to unfold themselves ; without a cer-
tain preformation of the heart, that secret command
laid by man on himself, which is the origin of justice,
could not have come to pass."
How many other criticisms would one not be
obliged to make regarding even the pedagogy of
Herbart in his endeavors after system ? He would
establish unity of mental life on the unity of science,
the former being, according to him, only a reflection
of the order and interrelationship of the knowledges.
It is relatively easy to establish this interrelation-
ship within the framework of a simple science, and
we must honor Herbart for having insistently de-
manded this. But how can we follow him to the
end, when he nourishes the beautiful illusion of
making one system of all the sciences, the sciences of
134 HERBART
man and of nature ? How coordinate, for example,
the study of historic facts with that of mathematical
reasoning, or again, the teaching of grammar with
that of geography ? A vain dream of unity, an illu-
sory hope of concentration and uniformity, led both
Herbart and his followers astray. When it was
evident that each science has its methods and its
own laws, and that, in consequence, those who teach
it ought to take into account its special character,
they believed it possible by spurious connections and
superficial welding together to mix and melt to-
gether all the subjects taught, and throw into the
same mould all methods of instruction. Unity,
desirable in so far as it is possible, is a dream when
made absolute. The Herbartians have taken the
paradox of Jacotot, "All is within all," too seri-
ously. And supposing that it can be realized, there
is yet to prove that the cohesion, when it has been
established amongst the mass of knowledges, can in
some way be transmitted from the object to the sub-
ject, and there bring about mental unity, without
the help of general consciousness and native reason-
ing power.
But these criticisms, and others besides, it would
be easy to lengthen the list, cannot cause us to
forget the many other grounds on which Herbart
deserves to occupy a place in the first rank of educa-
HERBART 135
tors. His work stands, in our opinion, as one of the
most powerful efforts ever put forth to make "all j
beings with a human face " men worthy of the name, \
and to introduce into the art of education the spirit /
of philosophy and of science.
^He had faith in education, and this well-con-
sidered and philosophic faith was an active faith,
which he testified and proclaimed by fifty years of
reflection. No, not in vain did he devote a long life
to the study of pedagogical problems, bringing to it
not only the resources of a free and profound in-
tellect, but all the warmth also of his heart. He
was before all else skilled in reasoning, but the
abstractions with which his volumes are replete are
based on observation and experience. Reflective
and scrupulous to excess, in both his writings and
his actions, he took up his pen only when he
believed he had reached the truth. And just as
under the stiff formulae in which he enclosed his
thoughts there moves a spirit that is very supple
and resourceful, so under an appearance of cold-
ness there is hidden a generous soul, which at times
reveals itself./ He has his moments of sentimentality.
Might we not think we are listening to one of the
reveries of Rousseau on Emile and Sophie in such a
passage as this? "The greatest of all festivals for
the educator is the marriage of his pupil ; the mar-
136 HERBART
riage-bed is the end and the glory of every educa-
tor. . . ." lEducation, in the opinion of Herbart, is
not a trade like other trades; it is a sacred mission./
All who engage in the education of their kind, if ever
so little fitted for their task, believe themselves below
its claims ; and when they think of the difficulties of
the work which they undertake, of the responsibili-
ties which they incur, they experience, as it were, a
shudder of emotion. Herbart had known this shud-
der. He placed all his hopes of a better humanity in
education; and that is why he expressed the wish
that in each society, in the most secluded village,
just as there is a doctor for the health of the body,
there should be also an accredited teacher for the
health of the soul. He should pay visits to the
families and give them advice, and act as consulting
educator, watching over the intellectual and moral
progress of the young generation^
Herbart had faith in instruction, and on this point
also he was before his time. Certainly it may be
objected that education by instruction is but a
dream, so long as instruction cannot be pushed far
enough and produce all the fruit expected from it
for the common people ; and it is for this reason that
he himself used to say, "The destiny of the world
depends on a small number of people." But why
not count on a better future, when, in a school of
HERBART 137
universal science, virtuous characters will be formed
in all men ? Herbart was right, as compared with
Locke, who declared that, " Instruction is but the
least part of education" ; this, doubtless, was because
he did not comprehend instruction in the large
meaning of Herbart. He is right when compared
with Herbert Spencer, who, indeed, also made the
great mistake of denying the educative power of in-
struction. He will be proved more and more right
in the future, because progress henceforth is bound
up with an increasing spread of instruction, and with
the development of science.
Herbart had, before all else, a mind clear and free.
He considered that "the clear comprehension of
things" is the principle of all education. If he
rejects the "categorical imperative" of Kant, it is
because he sees in it a survival of the old dogmas
which claimed to intimate commandments to men
without giving reasons. Morality, in his opinion,
should no longer be a "barricade " : it is a reasonable
call to complete living, to an expansion, full, free, and
unrestrained, of human nature, under the guidance
of interest and charm. We must not believe that
Herbart, in favor of this guidance, suppresses effort
in life. If he asks less of the child and pupil, he
imposes more on parents and masters. Let us con-
fess that, if until now current pedagogy has demanded
138 HERBART
a great concentration of effort on the part of those
who study, that might well be partly to decrease to
the same degree the burden and ease the pains of
those who teach. What is in any case certain is
this, that the scrupulous application of the methods
of Herbart, with the obligation of carefully prepar-
ing each lesson, of adapting the instruction to the
actual state of the mind of the person who receives
it, of seeking and maintaining interest everywhere,
this demands on the part of the teachers at the
same time more talent, more knowledge, and more
work.
Herbart's own psychology forbade him to be an
adherent of the doctrine of evolution, since, accord-
ing to him, the soul enters into the world naked.
His theories, then, seem little favorable to the
notion of a progress natural and, so to say, pre-
destined, produced in the race by the accumulation
in each generation of successive acquisitions, and
transmitted in a natural way from one generation
to another. But, in return, and just because they
eliminate from humanity thp notion nf hereditary
development, the philosophical conceptions of Her-
bart favor and render necessary tfre personal prog 5 -
ress ol tne individual. Man is horn without in-
tellectual patrimony, without moral capital. His
business is not to cultivate quietly the garden of his
HERBART 139
father; he has everything to acquire. He will be
whatever the continuous toil of his life makes of
him. And is it not thus that the modern spirit tends
to represent the ascending course of progress ? no
free grace from above, not even help from nature,
although on this point Herbart was too exclusive,
in a great measure, if not entirely, it is the individual
building himself, by his own efforts, with the help of
science.
In working for individuals, Herbart worked for
humanity. "Germans," he said, "have no father-
land;" things have changed since then, and Germans
have regained their prestige. He considered him-
self not a man of one nation or one race only. He
constructed philosophic theories for all men, for men
of the future, for citizens of a society to appear which
would unite all human beings in peace and love.
The five moral ideas which he defined, rules of in-
dividual conduct, would, in his opinion, give birth
by deduction to the same number of social ideas,
which would rule over nations and over the world.
Thus he foreshadowed how, by the end of a gradually
expanding flood of instruction, a golden age would
be established and spread its power step by step ; an
age in which conflicts should diminish, benevolence
govern men's actions, right and justice be uni-
versally respected, man attain to perfection; thus,
140 HERBART
finally, the mass of mankind should share in the
same ideas and the same sentiments, and the whole
of humanity form but one society, a society which,
to use his noble expression, "should have one soul."
BIBLIOGRAPHY
THE pedagogical works of Herbart have often been pub-
lished in Germany, either complete or in part. We cite only
the most important editions :
Schriften zur Pcedagogik, Vols. X and XI of the uniform
edition of Hartenstein, which comprises 13 vols., Leipzig,
1850-1852 ; the 13 volumes appeared in Hamburg in 1883.
Pcedagogische Schriften, with a biography of Herbart by
F. BARTHOLOMAI, 2 vols., 1877.
Still another edition was published at Leipzig, in 1878, by
Karl Richter.
STOY, Encyclopaedic der Pcedagogik, 2d edition, Leipzig, 1878.
ZILLER, Einleitung in die allgemeine Pcedagogik, Leipzig, 1856.
Grundlegung zur Lehre vom erziehenden Unterricht, 1865.
REIN, Pcedagogischen Studien, 2 vols., Vienne.
STRUMPELL, Das System der Pcedagogik Herbarts, Leipzig,
1894.
English and French Works :
DE GARMO, Herbart and the Herbartians, London, Heinemann,
and New York, Scribner, 1895.
McMuRRY, The Elements of General Method based on the
Principles of Herbart, Bloomington, 1892.
LANG, Outlines of Herbart's Pedagogy, Kellogg, New York,
1894.
VAN LIEW, Life of Herbart and Development of his Pedagogical
Doctrines, London, 1893.
JOHN ADAMS, The Herbartian Psychology applied to Educa-
tion, 1 vol., London, 1898.
141
142 BIBLIOGRAPHY
HENRY and EMMIE FELKIN, The Science of Education, its
General Principles deduced from its aim and the (Esthetic revelation
of the world, London, 2d edition, 1897. Letters and Lectures on
Education, London, 1901.
A. DARROCH, Herbart and the Herbartian Theory of Education:
a Criticism, London, 1903.
French Works :
EDOUARD ROSHRICH, Theorie de Veducation d'apres les prin-
cipes de Herbart, 1 vol., Paris, Delagrave, 1884.
A. PINLOCHE, Traduction des principals ceuvres pedagogiques
de Herbart, 1 vol., Lille, 1894.
M. MAUXION, L'fiducation par ^instruction et les theories
pedagogiques de Herbart, 1 vol., Paris, Alcan, 1901.
DEREUX, Articles de la Critique philosophique, sur le principe
de la morale d'apres Herbart, 1888 et 1889 ; articles de la Revue
pedagogique, 1890-1891.
Swiss works :
F. GUEX, Le P. Girard eleve de Herbart, a booklet, Lausanne.
1892. Herbart et son ecole t by same author, in Vfiducateur,
Lausanne, 1903.
Italian Works :
FORNELLI, La Pedagogia secondo Herbart e la sua scuola, a
booklet, Rome, 1886. By same author, II Fondamento morale
de la pedagogia, secondo Herbart e la sua scuola, Rome, 1887.
LUIGI CREDARO, La Pedagogia di G. F. Herbart, Rome, 1900.
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