Twelve lectures on the history of pedagogy, delivered before the Cincinnati teachers' association

TWELVE LECTURES

ON THE

HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY,

DELIVERED BEFORE THE CINCINNATI
TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION.

i T Y

&/POE^

BY

W. N. HAILMAN, A. M.,

Author of " Kinderijarlen CuUiire " and " Object Teaching.^^

WILSON, HINKLE & CO.,

No. 137 Walnut Strebt, No. 28 Bond Strkkt,

CINCINNATI. NEW YORK.

I- AI3

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by

WILSON, HINKLE & CO.,

In tlie Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

BLECTKOTYPED AT THE FUAXKLIN TYPE FOUNDRY, CINCINNATI.

3(0/9^

PREFACE.

The twelve lectilres on- the History of Pedagogy,
offered to the profession \pr-. this; little volume, were
delivered before the Cincinnati Teachers' Institute, in
the summer of 1873. At the instance of Superin-
tendent Hancock and many of the teachers who
listened to the lectures, I have concluded to publish
them in the present form.

It is needless to say that I do not claim to present

even an abbreviated history of pedagogy. My aim

was to sketch, in a concise form, the gradual growth

of the leading principles of modern education, singling

out for this purpose a few of the most prominent

thinkers and workers in the field of pedagogy.

The great majority of teachers, on entering the pro-

(iii)

IV PREFACE.

fession, have had little opportunity of becoming ac-
quainted with principles and methods of teaching,
and confine themselves mainly to the imitation of
their teachers. This is apt to make their teaching
mechanical, soulless, devoid of high aims, so that they
exercise very little if any influence upon the develop-
ment of intelligence and character in the pupils; it
prevents them from asserting their own individuality
in their work, and thus keeps them from developing
individuality in their pupils. At the same time, they
are unable, for w^ant of a firm basis, to contribute to
the growth of correct principles in the profession, and
are thus rather an impediment to progress.

It is true that, in the course of years, a number of
them, by dint of experience and some study, become
valuable, "live" members of the profession; but this
entails a serious loss of time. Besides, the number of
those who leave the profession without having done it
any good, or who become petrified in certain fixed prac-
tices, is much greater.

To contribute to the abrogation of these evils is the
object of this little volume. It is believed, too, that

PREFACE. . V

a sketch like this, laying almost exclusive stress upon
the most important principles that should underlie all
education, and not encumbered with less important or
even useless details and facts, will do more good in this
direction than a complete, exhaustive history of peda-
gogy; nay, that the perusal of such a sketch, while it
invites to the careful study of the history of pedagogy,
is in most cases almost indispensable for a correct ap-
preciation and application of historical facts subse-
quently acquired.

On this account, too, this little volume will be found
more suitable, more fruitful of good results, as a text-
book in normal and training schools, than more elab-
orate treatises on the same subject, which, while they
pay great attention to dates and minor details, neglect
the drift, the essential spirit of the subjects under
consideration.

In the preparation of the lectures — not originally
designed for publication — I made use, in some cases
rather freely, of previous publications from my pen,
without, however, impairing the value of the sketch,
whatever that may be. The principal sources from

VI PREFACE.

which I took facts, and in many cases views, are
Barnard's School Journal, Schmidt's, Kaumer's, Kruse's,
Dittes's writings, and other works on the history of
pedagogy, and the original writings of the pedagogic
heroes introduced in the book.

May the little volume do its allotted share of good.

W. N. H.

Louisville, ")
April, 1874.)

CONTENTS.

LECTURE I.

PAGE

Importance of History of Pedagogy — China and Japan . 9

LECTURE 11.

Greece : General Features— Sparta— Lycurgus— Pythagoras —
Athens— Solon 18

LECTURE III.
Greece: Socrates— Plato — Aristotle 31

LECTURE IV.

Rome: Nmna Pompilius— General Characteristics — Advent
of Greek Culture— Cicero— Seneca — Quintilian . . 42

LECTURE V.
Christianity — The Sixteenth Century— Bacon— Comenius . 52

LECTURE VI.

Locke — Francke .63

(vii)

VI 11 CONTENTS.

LECTURE YII.

PACK

Rousseau 74

LECTURE VIII.

Influence of Modern Philosophers : Kant— Fichte— Richter —
Sc'ho])enhaner — Hegel — Rosenkranz — Herbart — Benecke
— Spencer . 85

LECTURE IX.
Pestalozzi: Biographical 93

LECTURE X.
Pestalozzi: His Principles and Views 105

LECTURE XL
Frederic Froebel — Kindergarten Culture . . . .114

LECTURE XII.
Summing up — Conclusion 123

^Lm^&^

LECTURE I.

IMPORTANCE OF HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY — CHINA AND JAPAN.

The history of any art or science is the great recepta-
cle of the thoughts and achievements in that art or
science; hence it furnishes the basis of progress. The
man who re -invents the steam-engine to-day, proves
himself a master mind; but his mastership does not
benefit the race, which is already in possession of the
steam-engine. On the other hand, the race would have
been benefitted,by the labors of this master mind if he
had devoted his energies to the same field on the basis
of James Watt's achievements. Thus, in education,
too, the teacher who, ignorant of Pestalozzi's and Froe-
bel's principles, re-discovers one or more of these, proves
thereby that he is the peer of these pedagogic heroes,
but his labors yield no gain to the race, and he would
have been a much more useful member of the craft had
he, even with inferior powers, devoted himself to the
propagation of the principles discovered — to the apostle-
ship, as it were, of Pestalozzi and Froebel.

Again, if we consider that the empiric in physical
'science must waste a great amount, not only of time

'(9)

10 * HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

and "u^orking force, but also of material, in order to
arrive at his results, we are justified in looking upon
him as an absolutely injurious member of society, who
destro3's where he would create. Yet, in view of the
abundance of inorganic material and its apparent in-
difference, we may forgive him his blundering, and
while w^e pity him, we may still honor him. Not so
with the blunderer in educational matters, whose mate-
rial lives and grows, and, in consequence of his mis-
takes, may live and grow into misery and crime. Such
a blunderer becomes a curse to society, and should not
be countenanced. Indeed, it is no hyperbole if educa-
tional empiricism, in the family as well as in the school,
is designated as "murder of the innocents."

How little this fact is generally appreciated, appears
from the indifference of parents and average school
authorities to the preparation of those whom they em-
ploy, in the very things which are of the greatest im-
portance. The future teacher is examined in a number
of arts and sciences, but little or no h-eed is given to
his or her proficiency in educational principles and in
pedagogic skill. The training of the youngest pupils,
most easily impressed for good or evil, is still, in the
majority of cases, intrusted to the least experienced, for
the sake of economizing expense. In consequence of
the numerous failures of so many who claim to do the
teacher's work, the teacher's profession still struggles in
a sort of disrepute, which exposes its votaries to want of
confidence, to an income wholly incommensurate with the
responsibilities, to the indignity of being re-examined
again and again on the most absurd basis, and of feeling
an annual nervousness concerning re-appointment.

ITS IMPORTANCE. 11

There can be little doubt that these unfortunate facts
are due mainly to professional ignorance and to a con-
sequent utter demoralization of professional ethics. An
irrefutable proof for this assertion is found in the
marked improvement that characterizes the professional
status of a few favored localities where talent, knowl-
edge, and skill have attained at least a partial triumph.

It is evident that a knowledge of the history of edu-
cation, an acquaintance with the thoughts of earnest
men that have gone before us, a familiarity with the
results of faithful laborers in similar fields,\an intimacy
with their struggles, their martyrdom, or their triumph,
will do much to enhance our efficiency, as well as our
professional self-respect, while, at the same time,vit will
rid us of every vestige of self-complacent pedantry and
indolent, servile submission to arbitrary authority.
While it will enable us to profit by the failures, as well
as by the successes of our predecessors, it will teach us
still to look ahead, and to strain every nerve in earnest,
thoughtful efforts to approach the yet distant ideal.

In its widest sense, the history of education would be
the history of the development of the human race.
For the teacher specifically, however, it deals mainly
with the intentional, systematic influence exercised by
older individuals of the race upon younger ones, with a
view of fitting them for life. It deals with the efforts
made by the family, the school, the church, and similar
organizations, to make the young suitable and more or
less self-dependent members of the community. It can
not ignore the influence of individual propensities and
of external circumstances, but it attends to them only so
far as they have a marked effect upon the direct educa-

12 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

tional efforts of family, school, and similar organizations.
Among these organizations, again, the school will claim
the greatest share of the teacher's attention. There are
other limits, such as the degree of civilizatian of a state,
the authenticity of its history, etc. ; but these the his-
tory of education shares with all history, so that I need
not dwell upon them here.

In the short course of lectures that you had the kind-
ness to assign to me, it becomes, moreover, necessar}- to
single out for study a few of the numerous threads that
form the historical complex. In the selection of these,
I have thought it best to choose those that have led to
the new developing education, thus supplementing, to
a limited extent, the lectures which I had the honor
to deliver before you last year.

It is, then, my pleasant task to review with you the
thoughts and deeds of a few earnest teachers of various
times and nations, whose wisdom has graduall}^ pro-
cured us the conviction that man is an organic being,
subject, in all his manifestations of life, to laws of
organic growth or development from within outward;
that society is a similar though more complex organ-
ism; and that the aim of education mu&t be the devel-
opment of independent individualities, fitted for life in
society, capable of happiness and efficient for usefulness,
on the basis of morality and reason.

With such an aim, we find little to interest us in our
search for data prior to the Greeks, and little outside
of the Caucasian race. Only the Chinese and Japanese
deserve a passing notice, more, however, because among
them we find, in almost every respect, the opposite of
our aims clearly crystallized.

CHINA AND JAPAN. 13

Although Kong — who lived among the Chinese 500
years before Christ, whom they reverentially call "the
Teacher," and w^ho is esteemed among us under the
Latinized name of Confucius — declared that the destiny
of man is to perfect himself, their entire educational
system aims at limits so rigidly fixed that further de-
velopment is impossible. Their scope of thought, their
manners and customs, the entire social fabric, every
thing that relates to the life of man, has assumed posi-
tive, unalterable forms; and the "rtim of Chinese educa-
tion is the faithful transmission of old, established views
and facts — the strict training in old, established usage.
A free, independent development of human powers is
not known ; individuality is imprisoned within the
walls of settled rules; the principle of stability is the
criterion of this education which is eminently practical,
egotistical, conventional, technical.

This view of the aim of education guides pedagogic
practice in every direction. Physical life is protected,
nursed, and subjected to strict discipline, because it
determines the utility and the welfare of the individual;
the muscles are trained to nimbleness and skill, because
these are needed in the observance of a complicated cer-
emonial and in a number of trades ; play and recreation
are allowed to the young, to give them new vigor for
new efforts. But calisthenic and gymnastic exercises,
in the interest of general culture, find no place in the
Chinese system of education, because their influence
upon the entire organism of man, upon the physical
economy as well as upon the intellect, the will, and the
aesthetic sense, is not understood.

Morally, the aim is decorous conduct, but not moral

14 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

strength and moral feelina:. Here usage and law enter
with pedantic minuteness into every detail of life.
Every motion, every position of the body, the number
and depth of bows, the entire social ceremonial is pre-
scribed for every imaginable case of intercourse with
others. A complicated system of formalities, of police
regulations and fines, usurps the place of plain truth,
justice, and love. The voice of feeling and of conscience
is drowned in usage and written law. The child learns
how it must speak, stand, walk, and sit, but not how it
shall feel and think. Hence result servility toward
superiors and cruelty toward inferiors; dissimulation,
falsehood, deceit, and a lieartless egotism stalk abroad
in the garb of conventional decorum and legality.

Hence, too, on the other hand, self-control, love, of
order, punctuality, industry, perseverance, prudence,
caution, sobriety are the national virtues of the Chinese.
But the higher interests of human nature, the cheerful
exercise of pure morality, disinterested devotion to great
ideas, appreciation of human dignit}^, desire for self-
improvement, are almost wholly crushed in the iron
fetters of practical life; so that the miserable human
being, reduced almost to a machine, can find a sort of
happiness only in the satisfaction of sensual appetites.
Similarly, too, the religious life of the Chinese has, in
the course of time, become petrified in unmeaning form-
alism, with no influence upon the sentiments of the
worshipers.

A great deal of attention is paid to intellectual cul-
ture. Schools of all descriptions exist throughout the
empire, and the}'- are accessible to all. Who learns
most attains the highest public ofiQce, even if he is the

^ CHINA AND JAPAN. 15

son of the poorest laborer. The claims of applicants are
sifted by the most searching competitive examinations,
in which every precaution is taken to prevent decep-
tion. As soon as the Chinese boy is five years old he
starts to school ; and, although there is no law of com-
pulsory education, personal interest and usage bring
about a well-nigh universal and exceedingly regular
attendance of the elementary schools, in which reading,
writing, arithmetic, and lessons on common things
constitute the curriculum.

The method of instruction is exclusively dogmatical,
without a trace of developing elements; for positive
knoAvledge and routine are the only aims of the teacher's
labor, so that there is no time left for experiment and
reflection. Telling and showing, strict discipline, and
constant watchfulness constitute the task of the Chinese
teacher; attentive listening, careful memorizing, faithful
imitating, punctual and prompt reciting make up the
business of the learner.

Thus, reading is taught in the following manner:
the book, entitled ^^ Key to the Regions of Classical and
Historical Literature,^^ is opened, and the teacher com-
mences to read. The pupils, each one of whom has a
book, repeat every word uttered by the teacher, pointing
to the word with the forefinger, and looking intently at
the printed symbol. Only one line is read, and this is
repeated until the pupils have caught the pronuncia-
tion of every symbol, and are enabled to read the line
without the teacher's assistance. After this, they must
learn it by heart. This they do in a loud voice, each
boy calling out the^ sounds to himself, until they are
impressed upon his memory. As soon as he knows the

16 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

line by heart, he brings his book to the teacher, turns
his back upon him, and recites the line. Then the
teacher proceeds to the next line, until the whole book
is learned by heart. No attention is paid to the mean-
ing of the words and sentences, so that the pupil may
read the whole book fluentl}^ without the least under-
standing of its contents. Explanations are reserved for
the higher schools; but here, too, they have an exclu-
sively dogmatic character.

Similarly writing is taught. The copies, set by the
teacher, are placed under translucent paper, and the
pupil follows the lines of the copy with his brush, until
it is found that he can write independently.

This, with the very rudiments of arithmetic, or rather
counting, and a few snatches of lessons on common
things, constitutes the school learning of the majority,
and furnishes the basis for more extended instruction,
on a similar plan, in the higher schools. School educa-
tion is confined almost exclusively to the male sex, and
girls rarely receive any instruction.

On the other hand, the Japanese, who assign to
woman, in every respect, a much higher position, edu-
cate also the girls in school. The general plan of
schools and schooling is, however, in all essential feat-
ures, similar to that of the Chinese. Nevertheless, the
Japanese, distinguished by greater energy and inde-
pendence of character, have saved a spark of progress-
iveness which, under recent astonishing developments,
promises^ to burst into a magnificent flame, destined to
consume all that is cruel, inhuman, and exclusive in
Mongolian civilization, and to change the latter into a
worthy competitor of the more favored Caucasian sister.

CHINA AND jkEAN. . ' l^jj

Thus, thanks to the respect whTmn5lie|(?!t^t3t>ns have
ever accorded to knowledge, to intellectual eminence,
and, formerly at least, to moral worth ; thanks to the
philanthropic spirit that characterizes their institu-
tions; thanks to the democratic impartiality with
which they admit at least every male to the temple of
science, and open for him the path to glory and dis-
tinction; they may yet, fertilized by occidental ^ro-
gressiveness, become thoroughly humanized — a truly
free and happy people.

On the other hand, the Hindoos, EgyjDtians, and
Persians, with their notorious caste institutions, that
render individual development and emancipation ab-
solutely impossible, that confine every man within
arbitrary limits, according to his parentage, and make
him an abject sl^-ve of a despotic church or state, have
been doomed, by the logical justice of events, to a
well-deserved oblivion or absorption by more vigorous
peoples. We should find little to repay our efforts in
the educational history of these, and we may therefore,
without fear of loss, turn our attention at once to Greece,
the great fountain-head o£ Western civilization.

H. p.— 2.

LECTURE 11.

GREECE : GENERAL FEATURES — SPARTA — LYCURGUS -*
PYTHAGORAS — ATHENS — SOLON.

The Greek ideal of education is expressed by them
in a magnificent word, combining in its elements "the
beautiful and the good." Greek education aims at
external and internal beauty and goodness; physical
and psychical vigor, health, and energy; the harmoni-
ous culture of all the powers of body and soul. This is
the general outcome of their educational efforts, although
they were, at no time, and among none of the numerous
tribes, fully faithful to it, even in theory. While, during
the heroic age, physical and moral culture claimed their
greatest attention, intellectual culture preponderated in
later ages. Again, education bore in each tribe or state
an individual character, more or less removed from the
general formula.

From Homer's occasional pictures of family life, we
gather that, during the heroic age, education was to a
great extent patriarchal. The children were attached
with filial piety to their parents. The father taught
his son by example and precept, imparting to him
(18)

GREECE. 19

physical vigor and skill, and an intensely religious dis-
position. Similarly, the mother educated the daughter
into a skillful and virtuous housewife. Later, at the
dawn of the historical age of Greece, family life and
family education were lost in state life and state educa-
tion. At the same time, the Greeks were, from the
beginning of this periDdj divided into several distinct
and frequently hostile tribes, each one of which followed
a different political and pedagogic direction.

It is true that in Greece, and more especially in
Athens, the human powers enjoyed a freer development
than in the great despotic empires of the East ; but the
Greek, too, did not attain his highest value as an indi-
vidual or as a member of his family, but only as a
member of his state. The independent worth of man
and the significance of domestic life were never appre-
ciated in Greece. She never enjoyed a universal edu-
cation of the people ; nay, the number of persons fully
free and entitled to unlimited participation in national
education and in public life was very small, compared
with the number of the partially free/the serfs and
slaves. At the same time, we have positive accounts
only from the Dorians and lonians — from Sparta and
Athens — that the state looked upon education as a
public concern.

Even the approximate data of the invasion and con-
quest of the southern Peleponesus by the Dorians has
been lost. Yet this is established, that the native pop-
ulation, probably Acheans, were ever after held in
subjection. Those who had submitted voluntarily re-
tained a limited part of their lands and their personal
liberty, but had no share in the government. Those

20 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

who had to be subdued by the force of arms were
reduced to the most abject slavery. The former were
distinguished by the name of Pei^ioeci ; the latter were
the Helots. Neither of these had any share in the
political economy of Sparta; and all that is known of
Spartan education has exclusive reference to the 9,000
families of the conquerors, who constituted a supreme
caste, exercising despotic sway over their unfortunate
subjects. But within this ruling caste a remarkable
community of interests prevailed — a community of
interests so intense that all individuality was crushed
in the iron grasp of the social fabric.

The principal object of Spartan education was the
maintenance of the existing political system, the per-
petuation of the supremacy of the ruling class, or caste.
Hence physical strength and warlike skill were the
leading objective points. With reference to the subor-
dinate castes, Sparta's education was aristocratic; with
reference to the surrounding states, military. The code
of laws, which fixed with inflexible vigor all the details
by Avhich this aim was to be attained, is ascribed,
mythically perhaps, to Lycurgus, whose doubtful exist-
ence is referred to the ninth century before Christ.
This code regulates even marital relations in every
detail, with a view to physically vigorous descendants.
But the children did not belong to the parents; they
belonged to the state. The new-born infant was
brought before certain oflicers of state, and if it was
found to be sickly or deformed, it was not permitted
to live.

The healthy and well-formed boys were left with
their parents until their seventh year, where they

GREECE. 21

were brought up with the greatest simplicity. In
their seventh year they were removed to special com-
mon schools or, rather, common homes; for henceforth
they passed their youth in these. In their eighteenth
year they left these common homes and entered mili-
tary service. The girls were left in the parental home,
where they acquired, under the mother's direction, the
arts of spinning, of weaving, and of controlling slaves;
they, too, however, had to appear at stated times in
public places for gymnastic exercises, similar to those
of the boys. Indeed, woman occupied among the Spar-
tans a much higher position than in the rest of Greece,
as is indicated by the fact that the Doric tribe can boast
of quite a number of poetesses. Her physical pre-emi-
nence is most forcibly indicated in one of the plays
of Aristophanes, where an Athenian lady exclaims to
a Spartan sister: "How beautiful you are! how fresh
your skin! how swelling your form! you could strangle
an ox."

The gymnastic exercises, which formed the principal
burden of Spartan education, consisted mainly of the
celebrated pentathlium, or live-fold contest. It embraced
leaping, running, wrestling, throwing of the javelin or
spear, and of the discus or quoit. These five exercises
formed the classical cycle of gymnastics. Brutal boxing
and professional athletics are not found before the de-
cline of Greece.

Intellectual culture was confined in Sparta almost
exclusively to music ; and, even here, the burden of the
songs and hj^mns was mainly of a moral and religious
character, tending to arouse and to strengthen valor and
patriotism, or to glorify the gods. The boys and youths

22 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

were instructed in the use of the seven-strinored Ivre, or
cith_era, and were taught to sing singly and in chorus,
and to accompany their songs with rhythmical marches
and dances. Reading and writing formed no part of
Spartan education, and was left to private efforts in
leisure hours. There was a little rudimentary arith-
metic, and a little astronomy ; but the higher arts and
sciences found no home here ; and oratory, as well as
the drama, was prohibited. On the other hand, the
understanding was trained with great care; the young
were taught to form accurate and clear ideas about
their surroundings, and accustomed to brevity and con-
densation of expression (laconism), and to promptness
in answering. At the same time, truthfulness, simplic-
ity, self-control, and well-nigh absolute self-denial, were
constantly inculcated by example, precept, and practice.
In short, a warlike spirit, military fitness, strength of
character, reverence for the gods, and patriotism, were
the ultimate ends of Spartan education. Science and
art, as well as heart-culture, were neglected. The Spar-
tan was the limit of all individual progress; to go, or
even to aim beyond this, was in many cases a crime;
in all cases, distasteful.

Such an organism — if, indeed, such a society can be
honored by this name — can not have permanence, and
does not deserve it, however perfect it may appear when
viewed absolutely. Hence, as soon as she had shown
her power in the Peloponnesian war, and had satisfied
her thirst for conquest, Sparta degenerated and lingered
ingloriously out of existence.

Before leaving the Dorian system of education, we
must, however, throw a glance upon its noblest repre-

GREECE. 23

sentative, Pythagoras. He was born on the island of ^
Samos, about the year 570 B. C. Introduced to the love
of wisdom by Thales, Anaximander, and other great
men of his time, he undertook extensive travels in Asia
and Egypt, in order to perfect himself. After his return,
he found so little encouragement among his Samian
countrymen, that he concluded to emigrate. After a
short stay at Creta, where he was initiated into the
holy mysteries, and at Sparta, where he became familiar
with the code of Lycurgus, he turned to the Greek colo-
nies of lower Italy, known at that time by the name of
Magna Grsecia, and settled in the city of Croton. Here
his personal appearance and eloquence, as well as his
wisdom and virtue, not only won him the respect and
admiration of the inhabitants, but enabled him to ban-
ish, as by charm, all kinds of vices from the people, and
to plant in their stead the seeds of virtue.

In addition to his lectures to the adult population,
he founded here a great school for the education of
youth. In the selection of his pupils he Avas exceed-
ingly careful, inquiring minutely into all the details
of their character and disposition, especially their sus-
ceptibility and obedience. The school itself consisted
of two courses, the exoteric and the esoteric course.
The time of education comprised usually five years,
from the twelfth to the seventeenth year of^age.

During the first three years the pupils \tere in the
exoteric course. During this time they received little
direct attention; they listened and obeyed, learned
what they were taught, and wore not permitted to ask
any questions, even when they desired explanation.
The master delivered his discourses to the esoterics in

24 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

a room separated from the exoterics by a curtain, so
that the latter were not allowed to see him or to have
personal intercourse with him during the hours of in-
struction. At the end of the three years, they were
subjected to a rigid examination, and, if .they proved
to be sufficiently docile, if their powers of attention and
memory enabled them to follow a discourse, if they had
the passions under full control, they were admitted to
the esoteric circle, and to full communion with the
master. The pupils spent their whole time at the
school, and formed a kind of family, that defrayed its
expenses from a common fund, into which the pupils
deposited their fortunes on entering the school, and
which was administered by the pupils themselves,
through the medium of officers whom they selected.

Although Pythagoras was not a Dorian, either by
birth or by abode, his system of pedagogy was Doric in
the purity and strictness of its morals; in the implicit
obedience it required; in its positive, authoritative
method: in the scanty diet to which it subjected the
pupils: in the importance given to gymnastics; in its
seclusion from the common people; in its aristocratic
tendencies throughout.

In the school itself, religious ceremonies and contem-
plation occupied an important place. In addition to
music, mathematics, physics, geography, and meta-
physics, were the favorite pursuits of the Pythago-
reans. The method of instruction was strictly dog-
matic. Knowledge Avas transmitted in short, condensed
sentencas, which invited to reflection by their form, as
well as by their contents. For instance: ''What are
the islands of the blest?" "Sun and moon." Or:

GKEECE. 25

"What is the wisest thing?" "Measure and number."
" What the most beautiful ? " " Harmony." " The most
powerful?" "Intelligence." "The best?" "Happi-
ness." Or: "The beginning is one-half of the whole."
"The ocean is a tear." "The sound of a metal is the
voice of an imprisoned spirit." Or : " It is man's duty
to marry and raise children, so that the deity may
have worshipers and servants."

In other respects, his method had many excellent
features; he gave little at one time, proceeded in strict
continuity, required full assimilation of the given ma-
terial. On the other hand, he did not seem to appre-
ciate the insufficiency of the scientific attainments
of his time, and taught many mere hypotheses and
fancies, in the voice of a prophet, as established truths.
The f^iults of his system bore their legitimate fruits
after the death of the great master. His school became,
in one direction, a kind of political club with aristo-
cratic principles, directing its efforts against the liberty
of the people. In another direction, it became an arro-
gant school-sect, which, with its secret wisdom, deemed
itself infinitely superior to the rest of mankind. Thus
it aroused the distrust and hatred of the citizens, and
died, not without persecution, about 300 years B. C. It
is doubtful whether modern pedagogy has pro titled by
the example of the Pythagorean school. We still see,
now and then, vast structures raised on the basis of a
few correct ideas; structures in which all knowledge
and all wisdom find a resting-place.

As the Dorian system of education was based, in its
main features, upon the legislation of Lycurgus, so
Ionian culture rested upon a code of laws devised by

H. P.-3.

26 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

Solon, f^olon was born at Athens about the 3^ear 689
B. C. His integrity, his wisdom, his justice and piety,
his humanity and patriotism, gained him the affection
of the Athenians, and, about the year 594 B. C, he was
elected chief ruler of the commonAvealth, and invested
with unlimited dictatorial power. He availed himself
of his position to give to Athens a social and political
constitution, ib}'^ far less aristocratic than that of the
Spartans. True, it left nearly three-fourths of the in-
habitants in a state of slavery, less intolerable, however,
than that of the Spartan helots; but he abolished serf-
dom for debt, by which, heretofore, many free-born citi-
zens had lost their liberty. It is true, too, that he
recognized a kind of aristocracy, by dividing the free
citizens into four classes; but it depended on wealth
and not on birth, so that the free citizens of the lowest
class could, by means of energy or luck, reach the
highest. And although the magistrates could be se-
lected only from the three higher classes, all free citi-
zens took part in the sovereign popular assemblies and
in the juries; so that, in opposition to the eminently
and thoroughly aristocratic Spartan institutions, the
Athenians could boast of being members of a kind of
democratic commonwealth. On the whole, his laws
set no limits to the free development of the powers of
the people, and favored more especially intellectual
progress.

But we are more particularly concerned with the
educational features of the Athenian republic. Since
the character of a state depends upon the character of
its citizens, Solon's code paid much attention to educa-
tion. He considered the parents as the masters of the

GREECE. 27

children, but prohibited the sale of girls, which was
still customary among the Athenians. He did not
forbid the exposing of children, but the humane tend-
encies of the Athenian mind — due, undoubtedly, to
his wise legislation — gradually abrogated this inhuman
practice.

The boys were to learn at least the arts of swimming
and reading, as well as some industrial, agricultural, or
commercial pursuit, by which they might gain their
living. He recommended the wealthy, at the same
time, to have their sons instructed in gymnastics,
music, mathematics, poetry, and philosophy. If the
father failed to do his duty in the education of his son,
he had no claims to the support of his son in old age ;
while all well-educated young men were obliged to take
care of their parents, and forfeited public honor and
civil rights by neglecting this duty. -

Athenian education was a common affair of the famil}^
and of the state. The wealth, insight, and good-will of
the father determined to what extent his sons might
avail themselves of public or private "educational insti-
tutions. Compulsory education, like that of our time,
did not exist; the state was satisfied with offering to
the rising male population gratuitous instruction, and
with exciting in all parents a lively interest to let their
sons avail themselves of this instruction. The consti-
tution of the state, the condition of industry and com-
merce, the numerous public monuments of art, the
character of religion, the theater, the publicity of polit-
ical life and of the administration of justice, the absence
of all castes, and the fact that every free-born male could
work his way to the highest culture and to the highest

28 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

offices, conspired to the universal arousal and develop-
ment of intellectual vigor; and no citv in the world has
done as much as Athens for the culture of the human
race.

Still we find that even Athens was very far removed
from the ideal education of our days. In the first place,
the children of the slaves were, as a rule, excluded from
the education of the free-born; for they were in every
respect private property, and had no share in public
life. With reference to female education, Athens was
even inferior to Sparta. Unlike the Spartan women,
the women of Athens had no share in public education,
not the shadow of a direct influence upon public con-
cerns, and very little authority even at home; they
were looked upon as inferior beings, and were treated
with almost Oriental contempt.

For the boys, the gymnasia were the most important
educational institutions. They were public places and
^ buildings similar to the gymnasia of Sparta. Their
expenses were defrayed from the public treasury, and
gymnastics formed, in the beginning at least, their
main field of pedagogic influence. In the course of
time, however, they became the centers of all higher
intellectual life, taking in every respect the place of
our high-schools and universities. Still, even in the
beginning, the Athenians laid more stress, in their
gj^mnastic courses, upon plastic beauty, while the Spar-
tans were satisfied with agility and strength.

In addition we find, at an early period, elementary
schools, in which boys from seven to twelve years old
were taught the arts of reading and writing, and re-
ceived instruction in literature and arithmetic; these

GREECE. 29

were, probably, also maintained at public cost. There
can be little doubt that these elementary schools were
especially instrumental in adding intellectual culture
to the curriculum of the gymnasia, which became the
public schools for the boys from the twelfth year of age
upward.

For reading, the elementary schools used the spelling
method, acquainting the pupil first with the letters,
which were compounded successively into syllables,
words, sentences. Writing consisted in mere imitation
of set copies. Arithmetic was a rare accomplishment,
few progressing beyond the art of counting on their
fingers. Higher intellectual culture that could not be
found in the elementary schools (pedagogiums) or gym-
nasia, was a private affair; but the number of private
schools and private teachers, show^s that it was the de-
sire and purpose of a vast number to avail themselves
of such culture for their sons. During leisure hours the
boys passed their time in the company of their parents,
or engaged in social games similar to those in which
our boys delight to-day, where the military drill system
of the school and police regulations are not in the way.

Athenian education aimed at a harmonious develop-
ment of all the powers; it would produce independence
of character, self-confidence ; it required careful observa-
tion of circumstances and of persons, vigor and prudence,
energy and wisdom ; it would make the Athenian patri-
otic and brave, a lover of liberty and of virtue, of science
and art, of the good and the beautiful.

Yet their education had one great fault, suffered from
one great falsehood, as it were^ w^hich ultimately caused
its decay: it was thoroughly particularistic. Not the

30 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

harmoniously developed, aesthetically cultivated, beauti-
ful and good human being was its aim; but the Athe-
nian, or, at best, the Greek. Their education lacked a
high moral ideal of pure humanity.

Nations whose education has this fault, no matter
how perfect they may be in other respects, always die,
and ought to die. Nations, as well as individuals, that
aim at ideals which they can attain, ultimately cease to
progress ; or, in other words, begin to perish as soon as
the ideals are reached.

LECTURE HI.

GREECE : SOCRATES — PLATO — ARISTOTLE.

The elements of decay, mentioned at the close of the
last lecture, did not exist in the principles and practice
of a few gifted teachers, among whom I shall single out
for rapid review Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. There
was so much of the purely humane in these great men,
that, even to-day, they stand out as brilliant examples
of wisdom and virtue, as earnest searchers after truth,
unbiased b}- national or other prejudices.

So far, indeed, was Socrates in advance of his country-
men in this respect, that the very ideas which have
secured him immortality among men, and the grateful
reverence of every lover of truth, were looked upon by
the Athenians as a crime punishable with death. Soc-
rates was born at Athens about 469 B. C. He learned in
his youth the art of his father, a sculptor, but devoted
himself afterward to philosophy. He fought creditably
in several campaigns of the Peloponesian war, and on
his return, secured against want by a small fortune, he
devoted his riper years to the public service — to the
study and instruction of youth and men in search of

(31)

32 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

knowledge. His stern morality and fearless love of
truth gave offense to the corrupt party that controlled
the state; he was accused of contempt of the gods, and
of misleading the youth of the city, condemned to death,
and drank the cup of hemlock in the year 400 B. C.

Interesting as his philosoj^hical system is, we must
pass it by, in order to devote our time to that which
concerns us more particularly — his method. Suffice it
to state that, starting with a firm conviction that one
all-wise, all-loving God reveals himself in the reason
and conscience of man, and that the soul of man is im-
mortal, the great aim of his philosophy is self-knoAvl-
edge; that he refers all knowledge to this — to human
lifej. that he eschews all belief in authority, and accepts
as knowledge only what is proved; that he looks upon
self-knowledge as the only source of true insight, and
upon this as the only source of true virtue and happi-
ness. To lead men to a love of knowledsre, of truth, to
assist them in their search after self-knowledge, was for
him the noblest occupation, the one by which he could
confer the greatest benefit upon his community : to him
teaching was a divine calling.

His method was conversational and, at least so far as
the subject in dispute was concerned, developing. He
did not start with definitions and theorems, in order to
deduce from them, and to classify with their aid the
concrete phenomena of the world and of human life;
but he led inductively from concrete facts and examples
to ideas and convictions of higher orders. He did not
present to the learner finished systems, but he placed
himself upon the stand-point of the learner, ^induced
him to express his ideas accurately ; if the latter Avere

GREECE. 33

correct, he confirmed them by new illustrations and
developments; if they were incorrect, he showed tiieir
absurdity by first admitting them, and then leading tlie
learner to the legitimate consequences of the erroneous
idea. This he accomplished by skillful questioning,
throwing the burden of thought upon the learner, who
was delighted to find himself apparently assisting the
beloved and respected teacher in the search for truth,
and who gathered new strength from every new error
which he discovered in his reasonings, aided by the
incomparable socraiic irony.

Ideas should not, according to him, be implanted
from without, but logically developed from within;
they should grow, as it were, in the self-active mind
of the learner, until they are sufficiently clear to be
expressed, sufficiently advanced to be horn. Hence he
loved to compare his art with that of the obstetrician,
in which his mother had been an adept; and he con-
sidered aptness to teach immeasurably more important
in the teacher than mere positive or material knowl-
edge, which may be accumulated in the weakest brain.

Of himself he said: "Properly speaking, I have never
been anj' body's teacher; but if any one desired to hear
what I said, I have never begrudged him, nor asked how
old he was. Also, I do not instruct only for money, but
I am equally ready to converse with rich and poor, and
whoever wishes it, may answer and hear what I have to
say .... But if any one maintains that he has learned
cr heard something from me, especially what all of you
have not heard, you may know that he does not speak
the truth." By this, undoubtedly, he would imply that
what his pupils knew they had learned by their own

34 HISTORY OF pp:i)agogy.

self-active efforts, and that he had only aided them in
becoming conscious of their ideas.

Unlike Pythagoras, he liad not a closed school, but
conversed freely with all who wanted to listen to him
or to answer him, at all times and in all places. A few
young men, who seemed suitable to him by personal
appearance, age, and ability, he attached to himself as
special pupils, tjiat attended him more regularly, and
whom he instructed and improved by wise words and
blameless example.

Although he was not a teacher of children, his method
is, nevertheless, the true one even for elementary train-
ing; for inasmuch as it insists upon the arousing of self-
activity on the part of the learner, and proceeds induc-
tively, it contains the germs of the developing method,
which is gradually and surely, with the slowness and
irrepressibility of truth, working its way into our
schools.

The teaching and life of Socrates had made a deep
impression upon his pupils ; but, as might be expected,
few of them succeeded in comprehending the master in
his vast universality. The majority of them took a
one-sided view of him ; had become dazzled, as it were,
by one flash of his brilliant genius, and had been com-
paratively blinded to the rest. At the same time, the
method of Socrates tended to strengthen their individu-
ality, and to transform their zeal into enthusiasm, so
that a number of them became the founders of one-sided
schools of philosophy. Thus Antisthenes founded the
cynical school, which sought virtue and happiness in
the absence of wants, and which Diogenes reduced to
absurdity by a sort of practical socratic irony. On the

GREECE. 35

other hand, Aristippus and his followers, the Cyrenians,
held that pleasure was the only good and pain the only
evil, and that, therefore, pleasure was the highest object
of pursuit. Again, Euclid and Stilpo established the
Megarian school, which attached undue importance to
dialectics, the art of debating, and which was lost ulti-
mately in formalism.

Fortunately, however, there was among the pupils of
Socrates one genius who comprehended him in all his
fullness and universality ; who had the power, as one
of his critics remarks, of collecting in a focus the
scattered rays of truth proceeding from the master,
and of forming them into a system of philosophy.
This genius is Plato.

Plato was born 429 years B. C, at Athens, from a good
family; indeed, Codrus and Solon are named among his
ancestors. He was educated with great care. He took
great delight in painting and poetry, until he became
acquainted with Socrates in his twentieth year, when
he began to devote himself exclusively to the study of
philosoph3^ After the death of Socrates, he visited the
school of Euclid, at Megara; went subsequently to
Cyrene and to Egypt, and ultimately to lower Italy and
Sicily, in order to become familiar with the Pythagorean
school. In his fortieth year he returned to Athens,
where he passed the rest of his days, with a few short
interruptions, in the academy, in the circle of devoted
pupils. He died 348 B. C, in the eighty-first year of
his life.

Plato has never exercised any influence upon educa-
tional practice, but he was the first to make the theory
of education the subject of strictly scientific inquiry;

36 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

and this is, for us, his great merit. Inasmuch as he
was still a Greek, and, by birth and the Doric influence
of Magna Gra^cia, an aristocrat, his educational system
has many faults, which our time, nearer to pure hu-
manity than his, can only deprecate.

Thus he, too, merged the individual and even the
family in the state, and looked upon education as the
exclusive concern, the privilege and duty of the state.
He considered the objects and the power of the state
binding for every individual, and denied to parents all
control over their children. He favored, in his Republic,
a sort of caste in which the pliilosophers, as rulers of the
state, occupied the first rank, and were supported by the
guardians of the state, or warriors. The comforts of life
were to be supplied by the artisans and farmers, and by
the slaves, who were denied the benefits of an education.
Women were important to him only as the mothers of
future generations, and were in every other respect
considered as inferior beings.

On the other liand, he shows that education is the
noblest and most important of all callings. He insists
upon harmonious culture, keeping the physical and
intellectual development in proper balance : because an
organism in which the intellect prevails over the body
is exposed to dangerous, na}^ fatal morbid irregulari-
ties ; and an organism in which great physical strength
is combined with a weak mind, is sure to perish from
the worst of all diseases, ignorance. He bestows the
greatest care upon moral training, and would banish
from the productions of plastic art and of poetry every
thing that might mislead reason or corrupt morality.

His practical directions are built consistently upon this

GREECE. 37

basis. They have the great merit of forming the first
complete, harmonious system — a machinery whose gear-
ing is perfect. But since they never exerted any direct
influence upon practical education, and since all their
features that bear upon the history of the developing
method have been mentioned in the second lecture and
in the review of Socrates, I make haste to pass to the
next and greater hero of Greek education, the great
Stagirite, Aristotle, whose universality and comprehen-
siveness, whose advanced liberality and humanity,
whose mental vigor and energy have earned him the
surname " Alexander of the intellectual world."

Aristotle was born 384 B. C, at Stagira, in Macedon.
In his seventeenth year he became a pupil of Plato at
Atliens, and remained with him for twenty years. His
industry, zeal, and success were so great that Plato is
said to have called him the "philosopher of truth," and
"the soul of his school." At a later period the two great
men became, however, estranged, probably on account
of the differences in their modes and fields of thought.
Plato was the philosopher of the ideal; Aristotle, of the
real: Plato started Avith general ideas, and ignored
nature; Aristotle held fast to nature, investigated its
laws, keeping aloof from all arbitrary hypotheses and
speculations : Plato had been well-nigh absorbed by the
Pythagorean method of deducing particulars from gen-
erals; Aristotle had returned to the method of Socrates,
and aimed to proceed from particulars to generals. What
wonder if the two natures became estranged?

In his mature age Aristotle became the teacher of
Alexander the Great, but returned afterward to Athens,
where he devoted himself to study, to writing, and to

38

HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

higher instruction in the Lyceum. After a stay of
thirteen years, he was accused of impiety by a promi-
nent Athenian, who alleged that, in a poem to his
murdered friend Hermias, he worshiped the latter as a
god. He fled on this account to Chalcis, on the island
of Euboea, where he died 322 B. C, in the sixty-second
year of his age.

His numerous writings show that he was master of
all the realms of knowledge of his time to an extraor-
dinary extent, and that he increased the scope of all.
Indeed, his writings became the principal and, in many
respects, the exclusive source of the higher culture of
antiquity and of the middle ages. Proceeding analytic-
ally on the secure foundation of experience, of reality,
he almost created natural science and logic, and estab-
lished ethics, political economy, and anthropology on a
scientific basis. His pedagogy is based on knowledge
of human nature ; it forms, even to-day, a fair criterion
of education; for he is much more liberal, much more
humane, much less Greek, much nearer to the broad,
cosmopolitan views of our days, than his predecessors
and cotemporaries.

He still looks upon tlie state as the highest exponent
of human life; but he recognizes, too, the dignity of the
family, and even of the individual, whose happiness is
the only legitimate object of the state. He still con-
siders it the duty of the state to secure the education
of the young in the aggregate; but in all details he asks
for free development, untrammeled by petrified legisla-
tion ; and he pronounces positively against the omnipo-
tence of the state in educational affairs. He still ac-
knowledges slavery and the inferiority of women ; but

GREECE. 39

he educates the former and grants the latter equality,
at least in the family.

He claims that the character of man depends on
nature, habit, and instruction. Habit and instruction
constitute education. They should always be together,
but so that habit precedes. Habit is to prepare the
mind for the ethical instruction. Only where there
are good habitSy--principtesfC'an have an ennobling in-
fluence. But, in all cases, education must aim with
nature at rational and harmonious perfection of all the
powers of the child. The physical life of the child
must be developed with care, and subjected to a
rational discipline; the intellectual powders must be
trained in all directions; but the highest aim of edu-
cation is found in the ethical refinement of the young
human being, in guiding him to justice, truthfulness,
charity, self-control, firmness of character, etc. Again,
in all educational efforts, the individuality of the pupil
is to be taken into account, as the most important
factor in the final result.

The opposition of Aristotle's views to those of Plato
extends also to the curriculum of study. Plato attaches
great importance to mathematics, because it leads from
the concrete to the abstract, from the real to the ideal;
Aristotle assigns a subordinate place "to it, because it
has no bearing upon the ethical nature of man. Plato
opposes poets and artists, ^vhom Aristotle commends.
In opposition to Plato, Aristotle insists upon the study
of history as an important branch of instruction, and
deprecates mythical lore, for which Plato has great
respect. Plato sought religion in the ceremonies;
Aristotle found it in the heart of man.

40 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

The sketch of this great man — it would be unjust
to call him merely a great Greek — would lack a very
important element of completeness, were I to ignore a
few directions which he gives for pedagogic practice —
for method of teaching. At the head of these stands
the principle that, in all instruction, in ever}- inves-
tigation, we must start from known truths, known
concepts or facts within our personal experience. Does
this not remind us of Pestalozzi? Again, he teaches
that learning is naturally agreeable, and he enables
his pupils to find pleasure in it by arousing their
own activity — their self-activity, as Froebel would say.
He condemns violent phj'sical exercises, athletic sport
for the young; in music (singing), he would keep
within the scope of the voice ; grammatical instruction
he bases upon reading. Perhaps many a school man
of our days could learn pedagogic wisdom fi'om Aris-
totle; perhaps man}^ a school of our days would make
great strides toward the developing method of educa-
tion, would make stronger individualities, better and
happier men and women, if it were to adopt the
Aristotelian principles of teaching.

Socrates be;j,an the study of the Greeks as human
beings — indeed, to him, who had traveled so little,
they were the human race — and found a confused
mass of scattered truths. These, Plato arranged juvI
united in a beautiful, harmonious system. But it was
a specifically Greek system; it would monopolize truth
for Greece; it would make the Greeks a superior race,
better and happier, it is true, than the barbarians, but
better and happier at their expense ; it would cut the
isthmus of Corinth, and make the Peloponesus the abode

GREECE. 41

of a sort of human gods or of god-like human beings;
a kind of temple which the barbarians could approach
only as worshipers, and enter as slaves. Then there
came, in time, from beyond the isthmus, the great
Stagirite who defeated the selfish project, and con-
quered the great wisdom of the little community for
the world.

Aristotle is the connecting link between Greek civ-
ilization and the European civilization of later periods;
through him and because of him, Greek civilization
expanded into European civilization, and into the cos-
mopolitan civilization of our days — the civilization
that asks not after nationality, or birth, or station, or
sex, but that would unite all human beings in one
great brother- and sisterhood of strong individuals,
whose equal duty is virtue, whose equal privilege is
happiness.

H. p.— 4.

LECTURE IV.

ROME : NUMA POMPILIUS — GENF^RAL CHARACTERISTICS

ADVE^'T OF GREEK CULTURE — CICERO —
SENECA — QUINTILIAN.

The educational history of the Romans is not so
brilliant as that of the Greeks. Still they occupy an
important place in the history of pedagogy, inasmuch
as they preserved, to some extent, the Grecian achieve-
ments; inasmuch as they developed the utilitarian
side of education; but more especially because they did
much by their institutions, although unintentionalh',
for the emancipation of the female portion of mankind,
because they began, in this respect, the work which
our own country is destined to complete.

In the mj^thical history of Rome, Numa Pompilius
occupies a position similar to the one of Lycurgus in
the history of Sparta. Like Lycurgus, Numa Pompilius
is looked upon, in the traditions of his people, as the
fouiider of the state- and of national ethics. He made
p^ religion the soul and guardian of civilization. The
property and life of the citizens were in the protection
of the gods; heavenly powers guarded all relations of
(42)

romp:. 43

life — matrimony, the family, society, commerce, agri-
culture, politics. Such a system was not without its
dangers ; for in regulating the worship of the various
deities, and in establishing and incorporating a number
of separate priesthoods, he introduced the system of
state religion, which still exercises its baneful influ-
ence on European civilization, even in England. But
the sound common sense of the Romans never allowed
priesthood the exercise of a decisive influence upon
education, nor its exclusive management.

Numa's predecessor, Romulus, had founded and es-
tablished the state, and secured it against the hostili-
ties of neighbors. Numa would make peaceable citizens
of the warlike inhabitants of the city; he would, for
this purpose, strengthen and ennoble the ties of domes-
tic, social, and political life, and, at the same time,
procure a firm foundation for prosperity and morality
by enhancing the interests of agriculture and of the
trades. His position and his personal virtues, as well
as the comparative smallness of the young state, favored
his efforts.

All the various ranks and trades, instituted by him,
rest on one common ethical basis, of which patriotism
is the main center. However, all invidious distinctions
of rank yielded, in the course of time, before the con-
sistent opposition of the plebeians against the privileges
of the patricians, and made room for civil equality of
all citizens. Still, slavery was maintained by Rome
always, and even extended, in such a way as to render
it the darkest stain in her much-praised humanity,
which, indeed, never reached in Rome the high standard
that Numa's institutions might lead us to expect. The

44 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

long struggle for existence in the beginning, and, after-
ward, the ambitious strife for the supremacy of the
world, led the people more and more astray from the
peaceable j^aths and humane aims of Numa.

The life of the Romans, and hence, too, their educa-
tion, was decidedly practical, utilitarian in its nature;
it was guided by considerations of necessity, utility,
and expediency. The ideality of the Athenians, the
unbroken serenity of life, the harmonious culture of
man for its own sake, the universal development of
beauty found no home in the Roman mind. The
Romans had no liberal gjmmastics, nor a purely in-
tellectual culture; physical and mental development
were not in themselves aims, but only means to make
a living, to become fit for civil and military service.
Sober reason decided whether a thing was useful or
not; and only what appeared useful was carried on
within the narrow limits of usefulness. Agriculture,
the mechanic arts, military service, and swimming
offered sufficient opportunities for physical exercise.
Art was esteemed only on account of its beauty; it
labored for the wants of daily life, of the state, of
public worship; but its sesthetic independence, its
freedom in the realms of fancy, was not recognized.
Sciences, too, were carried on as far as they were
l^ractical: jurisprudence and Roman history, because
they served to regulate civil and political life; agri-
culture, because it taught how to increase the yield
of the soil. The candidates for public service studied
rhetoric, because it was essential to success.

The ethics of the old Romans was distinguished by
purity and high virtue. Roman youths were trained

KO.ME. 45

very early in obedience and loyalty, in frugality and
self-control, in energy and perseverance, in fidelity and
justice. But the Romans, like all other nations of
antiquity, had never risen to a recognition of human
rights and human duties; their virtues were confined
to their intercourse with fellow-citizens; and Roman
patriotism superseded the laws of humanity; they were
always Romans, right or wrong; they were Romans
first, Romans last, Romans forever. Hence their whole
history is characterized by harshness, and even cruelty
and violence; by an insatiable passion for conquest;
by a constant pursuit of material advantages; by an
endless chase after the external blessings of life. But,
while Numa had based the acquisition of these upon
honest labor, the Romans of later periods — not unlike
the gentlemen of our time — sought a maximum of
gain Avith a minimum of labor. At the same time,
an inordinate desire for enjoyments of the grossest
kind, the most shameless profligacy, took the place of
the Roman frugality of earlier periods. Religion de-
generated into mere routine service with the jjeople,
into a trade with the priests, into a political engine
with the statesmen. In short, Numa's spirit gradually
fled from all spheres of Roman life.

About the middle of the third century B. C, Greek
culture was introduced in Rome, and the wealthy
Romans made rapid strides in science and art. But
it was Greek science and art, and the Greeks were
already a degenerate people. With foreign culture
they imported, too, foreign vices; and they were
equally ready and apt in acquiring the latter, thus
accelerating the political and moral decline of the

46 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

proud commonwealth, and verifying the prophecy of
the stern Cato, ^Yho wrote to his son about the close
of the second century B. C. : " Believe me, as if a
prophet had said it, that the Greeks are a worthless
and incorrigible race. If this people diffuse its litera-
ture among us, it will corrupt every thing."

In the educational practice of ancient Rome, the
family occupied the highest place. The father was
unlimited master of the family; in his hands rested
even the life and death of the children ; a power which
was, however, mitigated by the great consideration
accorded to the mother of the family — the matron.
For a number of years the care of the children was
the almost exclusive province of the Roman mother.
She attended not only to their physical wants, but
formed their language, their ideas, their moral senti-
ments and principles, their religious feelings. She
was, to a great extent, what Pestalozzi would have
the modern mother become. In the course of time,
slavery extended its pernicious influence even upon
the Roman mothers; they, too, were affected by the
general corruption of Roman ethics, and the system
of nurses became so universal that only the poorest
mothers nursed their children themselves.

Next to the mother, the father occupied the most
important place in Roman family education. By his
greater authority he sustained the pedagogic labors of
the mother. While she was principally concerned with
the physical and ethical training of the children, and
with the practical instruction of the daughters, the
father busied himself with the intellectual culture,
more particularly, of the boys, whom he made familiar

ROME. • 47

with the gods of the family and of the state, with the
history and constitution of the commonwealth, with
civil and social institutions; and whom he prepared
for some profession or trade. Of course, this instruction
was neither systematic nor based upon books, but ap-
pealed exclusively to the experience, the powers of ob-
servation, the common sense and memory of the boy.

When the arts of reading and writing — which, in
the beginning, only very few children had learned
from their fathers — became more necessary, a sort of
jiublic school was established and attended even by
girls; and when Greek culture came to conquer the
state that had conquered Greece, a host of teachers
taught Greek and Latin grammar, rhetoric, literature,
philosophy, music, and other sciences and arts. Still,
education never became a concern of the state, but was
left entirely to private and corporate enterprise ; so that
the children of the poor learned little or nothing, for
want of time and money. On the other hand, the
wealthier houses attached to the persons of their chil-
dren quite a retinue of pedagogues, who were selected
from the slaves of the household, or hired from the
ranks of educated persons that had failed in other
callings, or lacked energy to engage in other pursuits.

Among the Roman writers on education before the
Christian era, Terentius Varro occupied, undoubtedly, a
high rank; but his productions, although quite numer-
ous, have been lost, or are preserved in so fragmentary
a condition that it is impossible to obtain a clear in-
sight into his views. It is a significant fact that he
attached much importance to early education, as exer-
cising the greatest influence upon life; and that he

48 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

advocates a mild discipline, since harshness neutralizes
instruction, and since the latter can thrive only if the
learner finds his task a pleasant one.

The rhetorical and philosophical works of the great
Cicero, the father of modern classical prose, contain a
number of ideas on education, with special reference to
the training of the orator. He looks upon education as
the process by which the natural talents of man are
perfected, and upon virtue as its ultimate aim. He
would have the teacher mild, strict, and just. Punish-
ment, in word or deed, must never degrade, and must
never be administered in anger. He attaches great
importance to religion, as a means of moral training.
He would have education begin with earliest childhood,
particularly by attending to the surroundings, and
guarding the susceptible infant against improper influ-
ences; but, in subsequent training, he places undue
weight upon the cultivation of memory, and leans
strongly to the cramming method of teaching.

Among the Roman writers on educational subjects,
in the Christian era, Seneca and Quintilian occupy the
highest rank, although their pedagogic wisdom, too,
lies scattered in a mass of ideas on other subjects, and
never rises to the dignity of an educational system.
Seneca was born two years B. C, at Cordova, in Spain,
and educated in Rome. In the course of time he be-
came the teacher of young Nero, and withdrew after-
ward into private life, devoting himself to literary
occupations. A. D. 65, he was accused of participation
in a conspiracy and condemned to death.

Surrounded by the excesses of a corrupt society, he
held that man was naturally inclined to evil, but that

ROME.

49

wise laws and, particularly, a rational education, coup-
ling strictness with mildness, could counteract the
sinful tendencies and lead to virtue. He admonishes
impressively against anger in punishment, and sums
up his directions in this respect in the sentence:
" Who condemns quickly, condemns passionately ; who
punishes too much, punishes unjustly." He recognizes
the manifold differences in the individual character, in
the dispositions and peculiarities of children, and in-
sists upon the necessity of modifying the treatment of
children in accordance with these differences. Dis-
gusted with the sterile cramming of the memory that
characterized his time, he contended for reduction and
limitation of studies to that which was needed in life,
and gave rise to the rule that *' we must teach not for
the school, but for life."

In moral education, he places great weight upon ex-
ample and illustration as the mightiest factors; these
may precede or follow precept, according to circum-
stances, but they are essential. " Long and tedious," he
says, "is the road of precept, but short and efficacious
that of example." He differs widely from Cicero in
the place which he assigns to the study of nature. He
holds that only insight into the laws of nature enables
us to approach the Deity, as it were, and to regulate
our lives in accordance with his will; for wisdom, he
says, consists in strict adherence to the known laws of
nature, in following her example freely and from con-
viction. Physical exercise he deems useful, if carried
on with moderation; but injurious, exhausting body
and mind, if indulged in to excess. He, too, acknowl-
edges the importance of early training, and extols the

H. P.-5.

50 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

calling of the teacher who leads youth in the path of
truth.

Quintilian was born A. D. 42, in Spain. He, too, re-
ceived his education in Rome, where he became one of
the most iminent orators. He became a public teacher
of eloquence, and was so successful that he obtained from
the emperor Vespasian the consular dignity and a con-
siderable salary. He was the first teacher salaried by
the state, and was distinguished b}^ the title. Professor
of Eloquence. After the death of his wife and of one of
his two sons, he retired into private life, in order to
devote himself to the education of his remaining son,
and wrote in his retirement his leading work, the
Institutions of Oratory^ which also contains his principles
of general education.

Quintilian has a very favorable opinion of the powers
of children. He thinks that weak-minded children and
children that can not learn are very rare ; that, on the
contrary, man has natural talents, a natural disposition
to learn as the bird has to fl}/; and that a good educa-
tion always yields good fruit. He holds that intellectual
culture should begin long before the seventh year; not
that the children should be forced to systematic, per-
sistent work, but that their plays should be managed
so as to develop their intellects. Hence, in the choice
of the nurses, great care should be taken to choose
well-educated women, Avith correct pronunciation and
of excellent moral character. Similar care should be
bestowed on the choice of associates and, again, of the
first teachers or pedagogues. Of these he does not ask
that they should be learned; but he insists that they
should be able to direct the first instruction in Ian-

ROME. 51

guage; and, above all things, if they are not learned,
that they should be aware of it. He is quite positive
that it is a grave error to think that an inferior teacher
is good enough for the beginning, because the children
will subsequently have the double task of unlearning
what the inferior teacher taught them, and of acquiring
new things. But even the most skillful teacher, he
thinks, is a curse, if he is not a noble, pure man.

He considers it the first and foremost duty of the
teacher to render himself familiar with the individual
peculiarities of the pupil. He condemns the practice
of asking more from a pupil than he can do under-
standingly. In discipline he favors mildness, and is
altogether opposed to corporal punishment, upon which
he looks as a sign of negligence and indolence in the
teacher. In addition, the teacher should be on a friendly
footing with the parents of the pupil; should consider
himself, for the time, the substitute of the father;
should be free from faults, control his anger, be mod-
erate in praise and blame, always just, and an example
of all that is good. He warmly prefers school instruc-
tion to instruction in the family, because the latter does
not fit for the vicissitudes of life in society; because it
produces self-conceit and fails to produce self-control.

Thus, while we fail to discover in the Roman writers
a harmonious system of education, similar to those of
tlieir Greek teachers; while we fail to find in them the
lofty ideals of a Socrates and of an Aristotle, they fur-
nish us a rich mine of practical suggestions, so strictly
in accordance Avith common sense and with correct prin-
ciples of humanity, that to follow them is to be in the
path of truth.

LECTURE V.

CHRISTIANITY — THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY — BACON —

COMENIUS.

During the reign of Emperor Augustus, about four
years before the beginning of the Christian era, there
was born in Galilee a man who by many of his follow-
ers is not inappropriately named TJie Man. While
Roman civilization, which at that time overshadowed
the world, was hastening to its death, he founded a new
religion, and with it a new civilization, based on pure
humanity; a religion and a civilization which will ever
rise superior to the persecutions of its enemies, and to
the abuses and perversions of its pretended friends ; a
religion and a civilization which, deeply and firmly
rooted in truth, must henceforth live and grow, even
if it should lose its name.

Christianity, opposed to all external distinctions
among men — not excluding the distinction of sex —
recognized in man only the human being, a being en-
dowed with unlimited perfectibility ; and would lead
its followers to the love of God and of fellow-beings, to
individual and social virtue. "Be perfect, even as your
(52)

CHRISTIANITY. 53

\
Father in heaven is perfect," is the watchword of this

new civilization : i. e.j be all that your powers enable
you to be; live, grow, do; avoid stagnation as you Avould
death ; seek progress as you would life. In the propor-
tion in which the human being perfects himself, makes
all the use he can of his talents — no matter how limited
they are — Christianity approves or disapproves, rewards
or punishes; the greatest is not he who has most, but
he who does most.

Thus, Christianity addressed itself to all who suffered
from oppression, whatever its nature; it offered to all
that were " heavy-laden " a haven of " rest," where there
is no superiority of nation, of caste, of rank, of birth, of
wealth, of knowledge, or of sex; where even the helpless
infant is safe from cruelty and violence. On this ac-
count it spread with amazing rapidity as soon as the
oppressed masses had realized the nature of the call,
braving persecution and death, compelling, at last, even
its enemies to acknowledge the truth and force of its
teachings, and creating mighty revolutions in all rela-
tions of life.

But this rapid diffusion was not without its evil
results : few apprehended the new religion in its full-
ness and beauty; many adopted it from policy, and
perverted its teachings to personal advantages ; many
were drowned in its vast ideality, and sought virtue in
entire abnegation, in absolute contempt of real life ;
ignorance, selfishness, and fanaticism robbed it more
and more of its purely humane character; and Christian
education, whose aim had been the humanizing of man-
kind, retrograded into a specific education, whose highest
aim was the production of believers in Christianity, or^

54 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

rather, of believers in a variety of dogmas that grew
upon the new religion as the mistletoe grows upon the
oak.

To review the multitude of phases through which the
specific Christian education passed, variously influenced
by monasticism, scholasticism, and a number of other
factors, would lead me too far astray from the ultimate
object of my lectures. The study of the period during
which the seeds of truth in the religion of humanity
lived and even grew, in spite of all kinds of hostile
agencies, is indeed very gratifying to the philanthropist
and to the Christian ; but it is our business to hasten
to the time when philosophy and science succeeded in
coming to the rescue, and to sketch the lives and works
of a few eminent men whose labors culminated in the
new developing education; and this brings us to the
close of the sixteenth century and, first, to Lord Bacon.

Lord Bacon was born in the year 1561, in London,
and died in 1626. His eloquence and learning had
enabled him to climb to the highest positions of public
trust; yet his official career has little to please, much
to mortify, since it appears that his moral character
was quite reprehensible. On the other hand, he has
conferred incalculable blessings on mankind by freeing
it, from the fetters of scholastic word-wisdom, from the
slavery of tradition and authority ; by recalling it from
the sterile plains of an excessive idealism on which it
had starved, and leading it back to the rich fields of
nature; by showing mankind the road to the philosophy
and science of humanity, the great safeguards of the
religion of humanity.

Lord Bacon was no teacher, nor did he directly exert

BACON. 55

any influence upon education ; but he gave to mankind
new ways and new aims of thought, which, in the
course of time, modified the whole intellectual and
ethical life of the race. He rejected the scholastic,
abstract method of antiquity, and insisted upon inde-
pendent investigation of concrete reality; he wanted
science to become intuitional, living, and practical; it
must investigate the world, in order to control it and
make it subservient to our wants and happiness.

He holds that scientific life does not consist in the
learning of traditional lore, but in independent investi-
gation, in discovery and invention. Hence he finds
the only correct method of study in experience, in ob-
servation and experiment, with the accompanying com-
parisons, applications, and generalizations. The student
must rise from carefully observed and digested facts to
accurate conceptions, from the phenomenon to the law
of being and to the rule of action. Hence Lord Bacon's
method has been called the method of induction — not
the induction of mere analysis, taught by Aristotle, but
the induction of synthesis, of discovery and invention.
In order to do full justice to this method of thought, it
is necessary to give up all prejudices, or " idols," as
Lord Bacon calls them, whether they arise from insufii-
cient powers of insight, from haste, from personal tem-
perament, from education and caste, from manners,
customs, and laws of the community, or from a belief
in the authority of tradition ; perception and reason
must be perfectly free and untrammeled.

I hope to show in the sequel the vast influence of
this new philosophy upon education, more particularly
upon intellectual culture ; an influence which, in the

5Q

IlISTOKY OF PEDAGOGY.

words of Von Raumer, at the distance of more than two
centuries, is still in the ascendant. But there are in
his works man\' passages that have a direct bearing on
education, of which I offer a few by way of illustrating
his views on the subject. He gives preference to the
genetic method of teaching, where the teacher "trans-
plants knowledge into the scholar's mind as it grew in
his own;" for "whatever is imparted in this way will
take root, flourish, and bear fruit." However, he be-
lieves that "methods should vary according to the
subject taught, for in knowledge itself there is great
diversity."

In another place he pleads for the importance of edu-
cation. " A gardener," he says, " takes more pains with
the young than with the full-grown plant; and men
commonly find it needful, in any undertaking, to begin
well. We give scarce a thought to our teachers, and
care little for what they may be, and yet we are forever
complaining because rulers are rigid in the matter of
laws and penalties, but indifferent to the right training
of the young."

The beneficial influence of Lord Bacon's philosophy
upon pedagogy is illustrated most conspicuously , and
most beautifully in the last bishop of the Bohemian
Brothers, John Amos Comenius. He was born in the
year 1592, at Comnia, in Moravia. His early history is
obscure ; it is known, however, that he attended the
university of Herborn, at Nassau, where he studied
theology. In 1614, he returned to his native land and
became rector of a school, and, in 1618, pastor of a parish
of Bohemian Brothers. In 1624, Ferdinand II. banished
all evangelical preachers from his realms, and Comenius

COMENIU

took refuge at Lissa, in Poland,
1628, member of the faculty of the academy. Here he
completed his first didactic works of importance, among
which the ^^ Key to the Study of Languages" founded
his reputation. It appeared in 1631, and was received
with such immense applause that in a short time it was
translated into twelve European and several Asiatic
languages. In 1641, he accepted a call of the English
Parliament to visit England, and to reform the English
schools according to his principles; but civil war neu-
tralized his efforts, and he yielded to a similar call from
Sweden, in 1642, where he was more successful. Soon
afterward he returned to Lissa, where he was made a
bishop of his church in 1648. In 165Q, he accepted the
call of a Hungarian prince, to assist in the reorganiza-
tion of schools, but returned to Lissa four years later.
In 1652, the Poles burned Lissa and scattered the Bohe-
mian Brothers forever. His subsequent wanderings
brought him to Amsterdam, where he was cordially
received. He died at Naarden, a neighboring town, in
1671. During his stay in Hungary he had composed a
remarkable school-book, entitled the " Orbis Pictus," which
I shall have occasion to mention again liereafter.

Comenius was by no means one of those pedagogues
who take up one or another single subject of instruction,
or who place all good in a certain method of teaching.
He was, in the very best sense of the word, universal;
and notwithstanding this universality, he alwaj^s strove
after the most thorough foundation. The aim of educa-
tion he finds in wisdom, in knowledge, virtue, and piety.
He contended that all men need instruction ; that all
children, rich and poor, high and low, boys and girls,

58 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

should be taught in school. " Not," he adds, " that each
should learn every science; but all should be so in-
structed that they may understand the basis, relation,
and purpose of all the most important things, having
reference to what they are and are to become." He
complained that the educational systems of his time
did not accomplish this. In many places there were
no schools at all, and in others only the children of the
w^ealthy were cared for. At the same time, he condemns
the methods of instruction as repulsive, tedious, and
misty; and deplores the neglect of moral training, the
absence of sciences in the curriculum, and the undue
preponderance of Latin.

He proposed a system of educational institutions,
consisting of four divisions: the maternal school, the
vernacular school, the Latin school, and the academy.

The maternal school comprises domestic education
under the mother's direction, and lasts during the first
six years of the child's life. Its main care is the sound
mind in the sound body. The mother must attend with
intelligent solicitude to the physical welfare of her child;
she must nurse it herself; guard it from all stimulants
and quackery; ofler it opportunities for cheerful play,
for manifold observations, accompanied with simple in-
structions ; and implant the seeds of virtue and piety.

He shows ingeniously how, already during the first
six years of life, the child can and should obtain in the
parental home the elements of all later knowledge.
He shows how from the cradle it gradually extends the
scope of its perceptions to the sitting-room, the other
rooms of the house, the j^ard, the streets, the gardens
and fields, to sun, moon, and stars; how it becomes

C0MENIU8. 59

familiar with its limbs and their uses, with animals,
plants, stones, and their names; how it learns to dis-
tinguish light from darkness, day from night, colors,
shapes, numbers, and sounds; how it gains ideas of
longer and shorter periods of time, of the development
of organic life, of human institutions ; how it becomes
skilled in song, language, and gestures. In short, Co-
menius sketches an elementary course of object lessons,
of exercises in intuition, in thinking and speaking, and
shows that it contains the principles of all subsequent
instruction in geography, natural science, geometry,
arithmetic, music, language, etc. At the same time,
parents should, particularly by example, develop correct
moral feelings, and lead their children to moderation,
cleanliness, obedience, and modesty.

When the child is ready for the vernacular school,
the latter should present itself in a friendly, not in a
repulsive light. The vernacular school, similar to our
district school, furnishes instruction to the child from
the sixth to the twelfth year. Comenius asks that it
should teach only the vernacular language (hence its
name), and that it should lay great stress upon prac-
tical education. Reading, writing, orthograph}^, arith-
metic, measuring, song, religion, the elements of history,
natural science, geography and astronomy, popular in-
struction about trades and arts, should constitute the
curriculum of exercise and study. Thus, he would make
the vernacular school an institution that prepares for
life as well as for the higher institutions of learning.

With reference to the latter, I would merely state that
Comenius lays down for them, among others, these prin-
ciples: without knowledge, rational thought, speech,

60 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

and action are impossible, hence the sciences must be
nurtured; avoid words without ideas; let the concrete
always precede the abstract. To deal more largely with
these higher institutions does not lie within our limits,
and I return to his views on elementary instruction.

School, he says, is a workshop of humanity; it is to
bring man to the ready and proper use of his reason,
his language, and his artistic skill — to wisdom, elo-
quence, and prudence. Hence, its material of instruc-
tion must be valuable and comprehensible for all the
children of the people, and must tend to their universal
cultivation. Whatever bears no fruit in life nor en-
hances humanity, whatever tends to empty words and
shallow mechanical drilling, is not for the school. The
material of instruction must be selected with care, and
treated in accordance w^th natural methods that agree
with the normal development of children and take into
consideration their manifold individual peculiarities.
First, the senses are to be set to work ; then, memory ;
and, at last, understanding and judgment. The pupil
must not learn b}- heart what has not become his from
perception or reflection ; he must not speak about what
he does not understand. The thing must precede the
word; the example must come before the rule, In all
branches, the easy and the simple thing must come
before the difficult and the complex. Nor should the
child receive much or many things at once, but progress
gradually and continuously.

Thus, the clear mind of Comenius was already fully
aware of the methodical laws which require that all
instruction should be based on intuition, should be
gradual, thorough, and continuous; but it was no less

COMENIUS. 61

evident to him that all instruction must arouse and
enhance the self-activity of the learner. The child, he
claims, must use its senses as perceptive powers; must
observe surrounding objects; compare its perceptions;
form concepts, judgments, conclusions from its ideas;
learn to express its thoughts clearly and fluently ; and
fix its knowledge, as well as improve its skill, by varied
practice. In short, all the powers of the pupil must be
kept in activity. Knowledge must not be given to the
pupil as something finished, as something ready-made
or cut-and-dried, but it must be found from its elements;
or, as Comenius expresses himself, "the teacher must
not sow plants instead of seeds."

Wheresoever circumstances permit it, Comenius would
lead the pupils to obtain their fundamental ideas, at
least, from the direct observation of objects, or, in the
absence of these, from the pictures of objects. In order
to supply such pictures, and in order to fix and arrange
the ideas gained by the child, he composed a book,
"The Orbls Pictus, the Visible World; that is, the
Pictures and Names of all the Principal Things in the
World, and of all the Principal Occupations of Man."
In spite of its many faults in technical execution and
arrangement, this remarkable book exerted a wonderful
influence upon the schools, and did much to difllise
more rational views upon education.

While Comenius thus gave clear directions concerning
methods of instruction, he never lost sight of the dis-
ciplinary and pedagogic side of the school. He insists
repeatedly that the school is not only to impart knowl-
edge and skill, but that it must, at the same time,
difiuse virtue and piety, and develop as well as

62 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

strengthen perseverance, punctuality, orderliness, just-
ice, etc. He asks for airy and light school-rooms, and
considers play-grounds essential to a well-regulated
school. At the same time, he deems frequent walks
with the classes absolutely necessar}^, to render the
children familiar with nature and human occupations.
In short, Comenius aims not at intellectual culture
alone, but at a harmonious development of the entire
human being. He is a pedagogue in the fullest sense
of the word.

LECTURE VL

LOCKE — FRANCKE.

I TURN again to England for the representative of
the next great forward step in science and philosophy,
and, consequently, in the theory and practice of educa-
tion. This benefactor of the race is John Locke. He
was born in the year 1632, received his education at
Westminster and Oxford, and died in the year 1704,
after a life remarkable for strange vicissitudes, but
yet more for unsullied purity and intense piety.

Bacon had led the way to inductive investigation
with reference to external nature; Locke applied the
same principles to the study of the internal — of the
mental nature of man — and laid down the results of his
labors in his " Essay on Human Understanding ^ Thus
he became the founder of empirical psychology, so im-
})ortant in modern pedagogy. More particularly^, he
established the important doctrine that there are no
innate principles in the mind, and that all ideas come
from sensation or reflection, from external or internal
experience or observation.

His ideas on the subject of education are laid down
in a book, entitled " Thoughts on Education, ^^ of whose

(63)

64 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

contents I give a short abstract. He defines his ideal
of education, at the outset, in the following words: "A
sound mind in a sound body, is a short but full de-
scription of a happy state in this world. He that has
these two, has little more to wish for; and he that
wants either of them, will be little the better for
any thing else." He then gives, in the first place, a
comprehensive treatise on the hygienic treatment of
children. He asks that the food be plain and simple,
and free from excessive or high seasoning; that the
clothing should be light and comfortable. In this con-
nection, I can not refrain from giving you in full his
concluding remark on lacing. He says : '• And yet I
have seen so many instances of children receiving great
harm from strait lacing, that I can not but conclude
there are other creatures as well as monkeys, who,
little wiser than the}^, destroy their young ones by
senseless fondness and too much embracing." Again,
he insists upon frequent and prolonged stay in the
open air, upon diligent bathing and swimming, upon
thorough hardening of the body, upon regular sleep on
a cool and hard bed, and upon a limited use of physic.
" It is safer," he says, " to leave the children wholly to
nature than to put them in the hands of one forward to
tamper, or that thinks children are to be cured, in
ordinary distempers, by any thing but diet, or by a
method very little distant from it."

It is by no means the smallest merit of Locke to have
presented the hygienic treatment of children in a more
thorough, more sj'^stematic, and more scientific manner
than any of his predecessors had done. He inaugurated
thereby a reform which did good work, as we shall see

LOCKE. 65

directly, in the schools of the pietists and, more yet, in
those of the philanthropinists of Germany, and which
is bearing delightful fruit even to-day.

Locke's ideas on discipline are almost equally excel-
lent. "As the strength of the body," he says, "lies
chiefly in being able to endure hardships, so also does
that of the mind. And the great principle and founda-
tion of all virtue and worth is placed in this, that a
man is able to deny himself his own desires, cross his
own inclinations, and purely follow what reason directs
as best, tliough the appetite lean the other way." He
holds that this training in self-denial and self-control
can not begin too early, and that a sturdy fight must
be made from earliest childhood with all kinds of ill
habits and ill humors, however slight they may seem.
He places great stress upon the development of truth-
fulness and of a proper sense of honor; although it
would seem to me that he errs in making ambition
and the love of applause one of the most important
incentives of the mind.

He looks upon the rod — which he calls the instru-
ment of the "usual lazy and short-way chastisement" —
as the most unfit means of any to be used in educa-
tion; because it accustoms the child to act less from
reason than from fear of pain, and because it abases
and breaks the spirit. Only in extreme cases of malice,
stubbornness, and lying, he is willing to admit the rod
as a corrective ; though it seems difficult to see how an
instrument so pernicious can work any good, even in
these cases, unless we are willing to grant that malice,
stubbornness, and lying can be cured by that which

prodnoes those disorders,
n. p. (1.

66 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

Unlike Quintilian of old, he is in favor of private,
domestic education in preference to the public school;
a view for which he deserves credit, when we consider
the miserable condition of the public schools of his
time in methods of instruction and discipline, as well
as in materials of instruction; and if we oppose to
them, as Locke does, an excellent mother and an ex-
cellent governor. In all cases, however, he is opposed
to a multiplicity of rules. "Make but few laws," he
says; "but see that they be well observed when once
made."

Speaking of learning, he begins: "You will wonder,
perhaps, that I put learning last, especially if I tell
you that I think it the least part." He deems learn-
ing indeed necessary, but not the chief business of
education; inferior to health, virtue, and wisdom. He
deems learning a great help to virtue and wisdom in
well-disposed minds ; but in others not so disposed, he
contends that "it helps them only to be the more
foolish and worse men." He would have children learn
without compulsion, of their own free will and accord;
and he considers it the main business of the educator
to render learning easy and pleasant.

He advises to teach children reading as soon as they
can speak, but without compulsion ; in play, as it were,
by means of alphabet blocks, for instance. As reading
books, he commends ^^op's Fables, with as many pic-
tures as possible, also Reynard, the Fox. Writing is
commenced as soon as the children can read, by methods
that deserve little notice. Afterward, drawing is taken
up, and great attention is paid to it on account of its
practical value. Language he would have taught on

LOCKE. 67

the plan of Comenius, i. e., based on practice, and in
connection with scientific instruction. Arithmetic,
book-keeping, and practical scientific branches are
considered of special importance; on the other hand,
poetr}', music, and the arts in general, find little favor
in his eyes. Only dancing is admitted, because it gives
graceful manners ; and, for " gentlemen," fencing and
riding are added.

Indeed, Locke's " Thoughts on Education^'' have through-
out special reference to the training of young noblemen,
since his position, as tutor in a noble family, gave rise
to the treatise. While the}^, therefore, contain many
valuable thou,^hts, they do not contain any thing about
the arrangement of public institutions, education of
girls, etc., and have no claim as a system of universal
education. -

To this, without doubt, it is due that the direct and
immediate influence of Locke's views upon education
was not remarkable. Formalism and scholasticism
continued to rule the schools where they existed. It
was reserved for the pietists, the followers of a re-
formatory religious direction in Germany, to give
practical life to his views, inasmuch as he asked for
greater attention to physical education; inasmuch as
he deemed moral and intellectual development supe-
rior to mere learning; and inasmuch as he called for
branches of instruction that have a bearing upon real
life. To this the pietists added an intensely Christian
tendency and, above all things, an earnest efibrt to
confer the blessings of education equally upon all,
the rich and the poor, the high and the low, the boys
and the girls.

^ HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

Similar to the Puritans of England at an earlier,
and to the Methodists at a later date, the pietists
made war upon the dogmatism of an established church
and upon the aristocratic isolation of the schools, and
struggled for active and general diffusion of practical
Christianity and for the popularizing of education.
The founder of pietism was Phil. Jacob Spener, who
occupied high clerical positions at Dresden and Berlin
from 1686 to 1705.

The pedagogic representative of pietism is Augustus
Hermann Francke, a man whose labors in the cause of
education are so intimateh^ interwoven with his life,
that to sketch the one is to sketch the other. Francke
was born at Lubeck, in 1663; in 1666, his father re-
moved to Gotha, but died four years later. Tlie orphan
boy attended the gymnasium of Gotha with such re-
markable success that he was declared ready to graduate
in his fourteenth year. However, he did not go to the
university until two years later. He studied theology
diligently and successively at Erfurt, Kiel, Hamburg,
and Leipzig, where he took his degree.

The important event that finally determined the ten-
dency of his life overtook him at Hamburg, where he
established an infant school in 1687. " Upon the estab-
lishment of this school," he says, " I learned how de-
structive the usual school management is, and how
exceedingly difficult the discipline of children; and this
reflection made me desire that God would make me
worthy to do something for the improvement of schools
and instruction." He published the results of his ex-
perience in a work, entitled " The Education of Children
to Piety and Christian Wisdom^

FRANCKE. 69

In 1691, the university of Halle was founded, and,
through Spener's influence, Francke was appointed
professor of Greek and Oriental languages in the new
university, and, at the same time, pastor of the suhurb
Glaucha.

The opening of the year 1694 is to be considered as
tlie beginning of all the great institutions of Francke.
They commenced as follows : the poor were accustomed
to come to the parsonage every Thursday for alms.
Instead of giving them bread before the door, Francke
called them into the house, catechized the younger in
the hearing of the elder, and closed with a prayer. In
his own poverty, he began to lay by money for the
poor by depriving himself for a long time of his
supper. In 1695, he fixed a poor-box in his room; in
this he found, one day, seven florins, left by a benevo-
lent lady. " This is a handsome capital," he said, on
taking it out; "I must found a good institution with
this; I shall found a school for the poor." On the same
day, he bought some books and employed a poor student
to teach the children two hours daily. Soon the chil-
dren of some citizens began to attend, and paid a small
tuition fee, so that the teacher was better paid and was
enabled to teach five hours daily.

During the first summer the attendance had reached
sixty. At the same time, the reputation of his benevo-
lence and piety procured him contributions from every
quarter, so that he was encouraged to rent a room in a
neighboring house, to employ an additional teacher,
and to separate the poor school from the citizen (or
burgher) school.

In 1695, he formed the plan of establishing an orphan

70 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

asylum. Immediately he took a number of orphans to
his school, and boarded them at the houses of benevolent
citizens ; but a present of five hundred thalers from a
friend emibled him soon afterward to buy a house and
to establish an orphan asylum. In the same year, three
boys, the sons of noble families, were intrusted to him,
to be educated under his care, giving rise to the founda-
tion of the present pedagogium, which was reserved for
the sons of the nobility.

In 1696, he bought a second house for his orphans;
and, in June of that year, the number of orphans had
increased to fifty-two, so that he concluded to build a
more extensive asylum, the corner-stone of which was
laid two years later. In the same year, he established
a free table for poor students. In 1697, he founded, in
addition to the vernacular school, a Latin school, Avhich
differed from the gymnasia of his time in pa^^ng more
attention to scientific branches. In 1707, he established
a sort of teachers' seminary, in which he gave to stu-
dents free instruction and opportunity for practice, as
well as free board, for two years, on condition that, after
the completion of their course, they would teach or be
otherwise useful in his institutions for three years.
And thus he went on, founding institution upon insti-
tution, adding building to building, until his death in
the year 1727.

This is the report, made to the king, of the status of
his creations at the time of his death : 1. The peda-
gogium, 82 pupils, with 70 teachers and attendants;
2. The Latin school, with 3 inspectors, 32 teachers,
400 pupils and attendants; 3. The vernacular schools,
with 4 inspectors, 98 male and 8 female teachers, and

FRANCKE. 71

1,725 boys and girls; 4. Orphan asylum, with 100 boys,
34 girls, and 10 attendants; 5. Free boarders, 225 stu-
dents and 360 poor scholars ; 6. Household, apothecary's
store, and book store, 53 attendants; 7. Institutions for
females — 15 in the college for young ladies, 6 in the
widows' asylum,

In 1863, these institutions, having continued to flour-
ish under state control after the death of Francke,
represented in real-estate the value of 313,266 thalers;
since their foundation, more than 10,000 teachers had
instructed in them, and they had given an education
to nearly 250,000 boys and girls.

From all this it is evident that Francke was truly ^
and seriously in earnest in his eftbrts in behalf of schools /
and education. In practical achievements, in organ-/
izing and administrative talent, he surpasses all peda-i
gogues and educationists that have preceded or followed
him. His whole learning, his whole energy, his whole
life, his whole happiness were in the cause; and his
success, when we take into consideration the period he ,
blessed with his labors, is truly astounding. /

He was one of the first who saw clearly how much
the teacher needed professional training, and he was
singularly successful in securing it for his teachers.
He laid great stress upon systematic order and method
in instruction and discipline — too much, it is true, for
his immediate followers, who lacked his genius, and in
whose hands they degenerated into mechanism of the
worst sort. The study and consideration of individual
l^ropensities and powers was one of his main concerns,
and it frequently happened that his pupils were in as
manv different classes as thev followed studies. He is

72 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

concerned for the physical well-being of his pupils, and
insists upon airy and high school-rooms and sleeping-
rooms, as well as upon wholesome diet and exercise.
He is in favor of intuitional teaching, and provides an
abundance of apparatus and other appliances in accord-
ance with his views. In discipline he is full of love
and kindness, yet inflexibly strict.

He defines his aim of education as "godliness and
prudence." The first expression is equivalent with
piety, as it was in the mind of the founder of his sect —
the sum and substance of Christian virtues — and in his
mind, again, the sum and substance of human virtues.
With Locke, he regarded this of incalculably more im-
portance than mere learning. "One grain of living
faith," he exclaims, in his unbounded enthusiasm,
" is more to be valued than a hundred-weight of mere
historical knowledge ; and one drop of true love is more
valuable than an ocean of learning in all the mys-
teries." Unfortunately, in this, too, his followers caught
only the words and failed to be inspired with the spirit,
so that they came very near converting into a curse to
humanit}^ the very things with which he meant to
bless and did bless mankind.

By the word " prudence " he designated the practical
side of education. This was particularly manifest in
the great attention which he paid to scientific and
technical instruction. There were not only extensive
botanical gardens, cabinets of natural history, dissect-
ing-rooms, and laboratories connected with his insti-
tutions, but turning-lathes, mills for grinding glass,
painters' tools, and other opportunities for practice in
technical skill.

FRA.NCKE. 73

Thus, he became virtually the founder of the scientific
schools of Germany — the Real schulen — which have con-
tributed so much to the development of technical talent
and scientific progress in Germany, as well as to the
subjugation of natural forces and to the consequent
emancipation of the race. Thus, he outlived even the|
perversions to which his immediate followers had sub-
jected his work, and fully realized his motto: ''They
who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings as eagles." /

H. P.-7.

LECTURE VII.

ROUSSEAU.

In the last two lectures I sketched a few types of the
philosophers and schoolmen of the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, engaged in developing aims that cul-
minated in the schools of the humanists and realists.
Both aimed at the development of individuality and
of a sense and appreciation of humanity ; both educated
for life upon this earth, human or real life, in opposition
to the excessively religious tendency of the orthodox
schools of the time, which looked upon life on earth as
a transitional state whose only value lay in preparation
for a future existence. They differed, however, in their
means: the hwiianists laid almost exclusive stress upon
the Latin and the Greek languages, rhetoric, poetry, and
classical antiquities — or upon the so-called " humani-
ties"; while the realists found their arcana in the
''knowledge which is most worth" — in mathematics,
ph3'sics, history, geograph}^ and the niodern languages.

In the eighteenth century, Rousseau, the greatest of
realists, opened the way for entirely new aims in educa-
tion by Avhat has been called "a return to nature."
(74)

ROUSSEAU. 75

This expression must not, however, be understood to
mean that the celebrated French philosopher returned
to a natural system that had previously been followed.
While the human being, previous to the humanists and
realists, had been looked upon as a more or less preter-
natural existence — a being not fully subject to the or-
dinary laws of organic growth and development — and
the human mind, at best, as something to be filled,
Rousseau wanted man to be looked upon as an organism,
and asked that education should be an independent de-
velopment of the nature of this organism. In order to
accomplish this, he required an absolute return to Avhat
he called the natural state of man; that is, the young
must be educated independent of civil relations, current
prejudices, dogmatic authority, etc. ; and the aim of the
educator must be to produce an absolutely independent
human being — fitted, however, to become a member of
society — with powers strengthened by individual effort,
with convictions and a will dependent only on reason,
and free from the passions and prejudices of men.

Individuality, independence, strength of character,
nature, reason, are the watchwords of Rousseau's educa-
tional system ; but it had to be greatly modified, freed
from a host of fallacies, vaguenesses, eccentricities, and
morbid sentimentalities ; a srreat number of insufficien-
cies had to be supplied; the nature of man had to be
more carefully and more fully set forth, before it could
bring good to mankind. Still, in spite of its faults, it
contains the germs of our present developing education,
and Rousseau is justly termed its father.

Rousseau was not a practical educator; he was ex-
clusively a theorist : he did very little; he only thought:

76 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

hence his impractical eccentricities. Hence, too, his life
is of little importance to us; for in it we find nothing
to imitate and, as far as educational practice is con-
cerned, nothing to shun. He was born in the year
1712, at Geneva, in Switzerland. At the same time his
mother died — his first misfortune, as he justly terms it.
His father, a watch-maker, was a man without charac-
ter, and had little influence upon his education. After
a life full of strange vicissitudes and strangely stained
with shameful errors, but full, too, of the noblest aspira-
tions and of the purest and most generous philanthropy,
he died at Ermenonville, near Paris, in 1778, and found
a resting-place in the Pantheon in the year 1794.

His ideas on the subject of education are laid down
in the celebrated work entitled ^^ Emile, or' Education,^^
which appeared in 1762. It consists of five books, of
which the first treats of the management of new-born
children, and more particularly of Emile up to the time
when he learned to talk, or to his second year of life.
The second book brings him to his twelfth year; the
third book, to his fifteenth ; the fourth, to his marriage
with Sophia, whose education forms the burden of the
fifth book. Thus, he divides education, first, into boys'
and girls' education, but devotes much more attention
to the former than to the latter.

In general, Rousseau starts with an utter horror of
the civilization of his time; and would, therefore, keep
the boy entirely aloof from this civilization, guard him
against all its influences, return him to what he calls
the state of nature, and leave him to his normal talents,
wants, and inclinations. " All is good," he exclaims,
"as it comes from the hands of the Creator: all degen-

ROUSSEAU. 77

erates under the hands of man." Hence he calls his
system, in which he claims to follow the plans of the
Creator, nature's course of development. Education, he
says, is threefold: man is educated by nature, by other
men, by things. The inner development of our powers
and organs is the education of nature; the use we are
taught to make of this development, is the education
b}^ men ; and what we learn by direct experience, from
surrounding circumstances, is education by things. The
first of these we have not in our power; hence, the re-
maining two must be shaped in accordance with it, if we
would have harmonious culture. His Emile, who is to
be thus naturally and harmoniously educated, is rich,
healthy, vigorous, an orphan, and inhabits a temperate
climate — circumstances which, indeed, are not necessa-
rily natural or co-existent, but which enable Rousseau
to place Emile in the hands of an excellent tutor, and
to bring to bear upon him educational influences, free
from all kinds of prejudices, preconceived notions, and
conventional ties.

Of this tutor Rousseau asks that he educate Emile for
a man — a human being — for the common human voca-
tion, and not for any special calling, not even for citizen-
ship. His highest guiding principle must be, in what-
ever he does, to educate according to nature, i. e., in
accordance with the nature of the boy, with his talents,
powers, wants, individual peculiarities — in accordance
with the rights and the welfare of the child. In no case
must the tutor allow himself to be guided by arbitrary
laws, fashionable follies, or thoughtless, servile obedience
to temporary customs, notions, and tendencies. " Nature,"
he says, " creates neither princes, nor nobles, nor states-

78 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

men. If you educate the pupil exclusively for a certain
position, you make him unfit for every other. Whether
my pupil is destined for war, for the church, or for the
bench, is of little concern to me. To live, life, is the
calling which he is to learn from me. When I shall be
done with him, he will be neither statesman, nor soldier,
nor priest; he will be a human being — a man. Natural
education must fit man for all human relations." Again,
speaking of the importance of studying the child's na-
ture, he exclaims : " They do not know the nature of the
child; inconsequence of the false notions that lead them,
they go further astray the further they progress. Even
the most reasonable are guided by what is suitable for
men of science, without considering what the children
can comprehend. They always seek the man in the boy,
without reflecting what he is before he is a man. Begin,
therefore, with the study of 3'our pupils." If Rousseau
had done nothing else than to enounce and establish
these anthropological principles of education, he would
have done enough to entitle himself to the gratitude of
succeeding generations.

On the basis of these principles he builds his system
of education. In this, physical education occupies a
prominent place. His rules coincide mostly with those
of Locke, whose " Thoughts on Education " he knew and
esteemed very highly. He holds that physical is inti-
mately connected with moral education; and he looks
upon bodily weakness and infirmity as a source of moral
indisposition and as a great danger to character, while
health and vigor give mental serenity and impart
strength to the will.

He maintains that there is no original depravity in

ROUSSE _

the human heart; that there is n6t ei'n\tiff4vi^^jl^ihe
heart which has not come from without. He^e, early
education should be mostly negative ; it should consist
in keeping the heart free from vice and the understand-
ing free from error. He w^ould satisfy the natural wants
of the child readil}^, yet within strict limits of necessity
and wholesomeness. He is opposed to every sort of un-
natural restraint and tyranny, as well as to all premature
moralizing; on the other hand, he would guard with
equal zeal against every thing that tends to enervation,
against all superfluous assistance, against the pamper-
ing of whimsical appetites, against whatever might mis-
lead the child into hypocrisy, cunning, or falsehood in
word or deed.

The child must learn to adapt itself to circumstances;
must learn to submit to physical necessity ; must be led
gradually to correct ideas, sentiments, inclinations, and
actions by actual relations of life. Its own experience
must teach it how to distinguish the useful from the in-
jurious; must make it prudent, a lover of the good.

About the fifteenth year of his life, Emile is intro-
duced to society, where he may become attached to
others, leajn to respect and love his equals. Heretofore
he has felt, striven, acted for himself in rural seclusion;
now it is time that he should learn to feel, strive, and
act for others — should fit himself for society. Rousseau
contends that he does this under unusually favorable
circumstances ; that envy, hatred, jealousy, and malice
have found no room in his heart, because he had no
opportunity to compare himself with any one else;
because no one had stood in his way, and the vices of
society could exercise no influence over him. He has

80 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

strengthened and exercised his eyes in order to see cor-
rectly; his heart, in order to feel correctly. He is con-
trolled by no authority but that of reason. He is ready
to distinguish, in social life, appearance from reality,
evil from good; he is ready to appreciate the degen-
erating influence of civilization, to esteem human
worth, to pity the degenerate race, to help and serve
liis neighbor, to love his native land, to aid public
welfare; in short, to become a humane and moral, a
useful and happy member of society.

For intellectual culture, Rousseau demands clearly
and decisively all the principles which, through and
since Pestalozzi, have become the guiding-stars of edu-
cation: training of the senses; self-activity; organic
development; continuity; evolution of the powers;
lively interest. He makes war upon mechanical train-
ing, cramming, over- work, superficiality, and precocity;
and condemns words without thoughts, as well as sym-
bols without things. Even with reference to the teach-
ing of various branches of instruction, he is fully up to,
nay, in advance of our time.

He asks that geography should begin with the house
and place of abode, and points with bitter humor to a
manual whose first question was, " What is the world ? "
and to an answer once given, " A ball of pasteboard."
Home geography should be the starting-point ; the pupil
should draw maps of the neighborhood, in order to learn
how maps are made and what they show.

Instruction in physics he would begin with the sim-
plest experiments, illustrating the most common and
obvious phenomena; and he would have teacher and
pupil construct the instruments used. Yet he would

ROUSSEAU. 81

have the experiments form a chain, by the aid of
which they may be better retained in the memory;
for facts and demonstrations entirely isolated do not
remain there.

He would not introduce, before the age of fifteen, any
branches of speculative knowledge, or any that refer to
social relations, or are based upon reflection, such as
knowledge of men, history, politics, morals, religion,
etc.; because, before this age, there are no independent
starting-points in the child's mind; because, before
this time, the pupil is not ready, not ripe for these
jpranches.

Even reading and writing should not be undertaken
with Emile before his twelfth year, since, up to this age,
his time is entirely taken up with the study of the book
of nature, with the collection of experiences and ideas,
through the medium of his own senses, at the hand
of his tutor. And when he can read, his first and, up
to his fifteenth year, his only reading book is Defoe's
Robinson Crusoe. " From books," he says, " men learn
to talk about what they do not understand; but there
is one book which may be considered as a most valuable
treatise upon natural education ; a book which might,
for a long time, constitute the entire library of the
pupil, namely, Robinson Crusoe. Robinson, alone upon
an island, obliged to make every thing necessary to
himself, becomes the boy's ideal; he will ask only for
what would be necessary for him upon a Robinson's
island."

On the other hand, he would have the tutor visit
workshops with his pupil, so that the latter may learn
to esteem and appreciate rightly the dignity and value

82 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

of human labor; and he would have Emile himself
learn some respectable trade — for instance, that of a
carpenter — in order to cure him of the then current
prejudices against trades. "Forj" he exclaims prophet-
ically (the book was written 1757), " we are approaching
a crisis — the century of revolutions. It is impossible
that the great monarchies of Europe can last long ....
Happy will he be, then, who shall understand how to
leave the condition which has left him, and to remain
a man in spite of fate."

Esthetic culture received as little favor in the eyes
of Rousseau as it had received in those of his predecessor
Locke; a position which is fully explained by his real-
istic tendency, by his indignation at the degeneracy of
the arts, and by his excessive fear of precocity and
pseudo-culture. He is poetically eloquent against elo-
quence and poetry, and demands clearness, simplicity,
even coldness. Fables are wholly condemned by him ;
he contends that they are suitable only for men; that
children must receive nothing but the "unadorned,
naked truth."

Religious culture receives a great share of his atten-
tion. Yet, in accordance with his views on intellectual
culture, it must be postponed, as far as religious ideas
are concerned, to a late period. In his fifteenth year,
Emile did not yet know that he had a soul, and Rousseau
fears that he might find it out too soon in his eighteenth.
For the period of education and, in this case, not before
the fifteenth year, only natural religion is considered
suitable. He would develop belief in God and immor-
tality of the soul by means of contemplations of nature,
of man, of virtue, of conscience, of fate, etc. He speaks

ROUSSEAU. 83

with the greatest enthusiasm of Christianity and opposes
materialism.

Also, in the fifth book, discussing the education of
Sophie, he treats religious culture with great considera-
tion. But he asks that religion should never be made a
matter of compulsion or sorrow, never a task or dut}' ;
and that the girls should more love than learn religion.
Prayers should be said in their presence, but they should
not be forced to learn these by heart. They should be
accustomed to feel themselves constantly in the presence
of God, and should devote their lives to a worship con-
sisting in doing good. Their religion should be of the
heart, not of the head.

, 'Among the many faults and inconsistencies of Rous-
seau's system, whose chief features I have attempted to
sketch, the most glaring are the entire absence of family
training, the relatively inferior position assigned to the
female sex, the almost exclusive reliance upon direct
experience and negative education, and the excessive
withholding of positive instruction in mental culture,
the unreasonable and morbid hatred of society, and the
extreme postponement of social education.

Among its many virtues, I would gratefully point out
the enunciation of correct principles of intellectual cul-
ture, based upon the laws of organic development ; and,
above all, the establishment of the anthropological prin-
ciples of education : the recognition of individual human
worth as the highest criterion of excellence, the recogni-
tion of the fact that social excellence presupposes indi-
vidual excellence, and the vindication of the rights and
privileges of children. In the light of these great excel-
lences, the faults of his system lose their pernicious

84 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

character to a great extent, and appear as salutary rem-
edies directed against evils peculiar to the educational
systems of his time. And his great work on education,
" Eiiiile" in spite of its one-sidedness, its Platonic ideal-
ity, its insufficiencies, is still, as Goethe terms it, the
gospel of natural education, the germ that grew into
the developing education of our days.

\

LECTURE VIII.

INFLUENCE OF MODERN PHILOSOPHERS: KANT — FICHTE —

RICHTER — SCHOPENHAUER — HEGEL — ROSENKRANZ —

HERBART — BENECKE — SPENCER.

The work of polishing, preparing, and arranging the
raw material furnished by the impetuous Rousseau, as
far as the aims of education are concerned, was accom-
plished by philosophers like Kant, Fichte, Richter,
Schopenhauer, Hegel, and Rosenkranz.

Kant maintains that the objects of education are
threefold: moral, technical, and pragmatical. The moral
object is the absolute one, and is attained in morality;
the technical object, in skill; the pragmatical object,
in prudence. Education must cultivate, civilize, mor-
alize man. Children are to be educated not for the
present, but for future generations, i. e., in accordance
with the ideal of mankind and of its destiny. Onl}^
on the basis of this principle, progress — a future better
condition of mankind — is possible.

In addition to culture, education comprises sustenance
(nursing, fostering), discipline, and instruction In
sustenance, it is needful to follow nature as much as

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86 PIISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

possible, to keep children from injury and from a per-
nicious use of their powers. Discipline is to keep the
child from losing its humanity by yielding to its ani-
mal appetites. Instruction must give the child knowl-
edge and skill ; it attends to physical development, but
mainly to mental culture.

In education, it is all-important to establish always
the true reasons, and to render them intelligible and
agreeable to the child. The teacher must first make
his pupil intelligent, then rational, then learned. The
pupil must not learn thoughts, but he must learn to
think; he must not be carried, but led, if we would
make him independent. The lower faculties must be
cultivated only with reference to the higher; for in-
stance, memory, only with reference to the service it
renders to intelligence. Virtue is not inborn, but ac-
quired by instruction and practice.

Among the methods of instruction, he prefers, wherever
it is practicable, the Socratic, heuristic, or developing
method ; for he says, " nothing is comprehended so fully
and distinctly, nothing retained so firmly, as that which
we find ourselves."

Fichte insists, if possible, still more strongly upon
morality as the absolute aim of education, and lays
very great stress upon freedom — independence from ex-
ternal motives. Only what is done from free determina-
tion, without the least external motive, is moral; hence
the absurdity of using hope of rewards and fear of pun-
ishments as means to lead to virtue. Again, man is not
alone in this world ; he is a man among men, a member
of a community of rational beings. As such, and only
as such, he must be considered and educated up to

FICHTE — RICHTER. 87

maturity, when he may choose his calling for life. All
education for special callings or stations in life, before
that time, he considers absurd and inhuman.

He contends that early education is, and can be, only
in the hands of the parents, who, as a last resort in their
efforts to lead the child to moralitj^, may — nay, must —
employ force. They should be careful, however, not to
destroy free obedience, childlike regard for the superior
goodness and wisdom of parents; and they should ever
remain mindful of the fact that they are to bring up
free human beings, and not machines devoid of a will.
He designates as the representatives of education in
the community, at a later period, the learned man
who is to develop intelligence, free insight; the moral
educator who is to develop that good-will, that charac-
ter without which intelligence, free insight, has no
value; and the sesthetic artist who, standing between
the other two, must bring about a union between
intelligence and will.

Richter is the apostle of ideal individuality. "Each
one of us," he says, "has in himself his ideal prize
man — that is, the harmonious maximum of all his in-
dividual predispositions ; and it is the business of edu-
cation to develop him into full growth." At the same
time, he asks, with Kant, that education should elevate
above the spirit of the times, and prepare for future
generations. " A child," he exclaims, " should be more
sacred to you than the present, which consists of things
and adults. Through the child you move, although la-
boriously, by means of the shorter lever-arm of mankind,
the longer one." Richter lays great stress on physical
education ; but he advises moderation, and is particular

88 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

to let physical exercise follow, not precede, intellectual
effort.

Intellectual education, as well as the physical, he
would begin at birth. Its element of life, as he calls
it, he finds in cheerfulness. "Cheerfulness," he says,
"is the sky under which every thing thrives, except
poison. Cheerfulness is, at the same time, soil, flower,
and wreath of virtue. What warmth is to the body,
cheerfulness is to the soul." Hence, he attaches much
importance to the plays of children. " Beasts," he says,
"play only with the body; but children, with the soul."
Still, here too, he counsels moderation, and warns against
excess as highly pernicious. For the school, he gives no
special directions.

His moral training is, even where he punishes, based
upon the gentle rule of love. He dislikes precept, and
relies upon example as the best teacher; for he says,
"life is kindled only by life; hence, the highest in the
child is aroused only by example." Thus, in every di-
rection, he aims at the independent development of the
ideal individuality in every child.

• Schopenhauer lays great stress upon education for
real life, upon the production of accurate understand-
ing and of sound, untrammeled reason. He contends
that all knowledge must have an intuitional basis, and
that all abstract ideas must rest on concrete perceptions.
He would offer to the young mind nothing that it can
not master independently, for fear of creating error and
prejudice. Artificial education, he says, consists in cram-
ming the head with ideas, by means of teaching and
reading, long before there are any direct perceptions
in the mind of the learner. These perceptions are

HEGEL — ROSENKRANZ. 89

expected to be supplied afterward by experience; but,
up to this problematical time, the human being is left
at the mercy of false impressions and of prejudice.
This explains to him the fact that the learned are, as
a general thing, less liberally gifted with common
sense than the unlearned.

Hegel, too, considers pedagogy as the art of making
man a moral being. For him, the child is, naturally,
neither good nor bad, since it has no knowledge of
either good or evil. To teach him to do good con-
sciously and freely, he designates as the object of dis-
cipline, of moral education. The most important factor
of moral education he finds in the family, and here the
mother exerts the greatest influence. Of intellectual
education, however, the school is the most powerful
factor. To this he assigns, above all things, the task
of teaching the art of thinking, and of assisting the
child in its efforts to obtain fundamental ideas. At
the same time, he looks upon the school as the transi-
tion from the family to society. His ideas are, how-
ever, followed out more systematically by his pupil
Rosenkranz, to whom I pass.

Rosenkranz has laid down his ideas on education in
a work entitled " Pedagogics as a System,^^ of which an
admirable translation, by Miss Anna C. Brackett, has
been published lately in Mr. Harris's Journal of Specu-
lative Philosojihy. Education, he holds, can create noth-
ing ; it can only assist in developing existing actual
possibilities into realities. Education can attain its
aim only by setting the pupil to work, by arousing
his self-activity. The general form of culture is habit;
but the free subject (individual) must control the sys-
H. p.— 8.

90 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

tern of his habits so that their existence will bring him
^ to ever greater freedom. The subjective limit of educa-
tion he finds in the individuality of the pupil; its ob-
jective limit, in the means for nursing and developing
this individuality. The absolute limit of education lies
in its aim which is the emancipation of the pupil, re-
sulting in self-education, or, if you choose, in inde-
pendence.

Thus, by the labors of these men, and of others whose
mention I must here forego, the crude material, fur-
nished by Rousseau, was crystallized into clear, beau-
tiful, symmetrical purposes, which may be summed up
in the formula with which we started in the first
lecture, and which defines education as the development
of independent individualities, fitted for life in society
on the basis of morality and reason.

This formula has been reached by reasoning so cau-
tious, so honest, so free from prejudice and passion,
that all cotemporaneous and subsequent developments
of science, with reference to the nature of man, have
only served to corroborate it. For the sake of clearness,
allow me to sketch a few of these developments, and
to select for this purpose the studies of a few pioneers
in psychological science.

Among the principal ones of these and, in time at
least, among the first, is Herbart, who taught that the
"^ soul is a simple entity, subject to no change in its
quality — the real, unchangeable recipient of ideas.
These, subject to change, assume the forms — among
which consciousness is one — whose sum is called mind.
The view that the soul has a number of powers, of a
higher and lower order, he declares to be a psycholog-

HEKBART — BENECKE. 91

ical myth. Every single idea manifests itself, in con-
sequence of its contrasts with others, as a force that
sets the mass in motion. Thinking, feeling, imagining
are only specified differences in the self-preservation
of the soul. Consciousness is only the sum of relations
in which the soul stands to other entities. Repressed
ideas that have not entered consciousness are feelings ;
as they enter consciousness, they become appetites;
and, united with the hope of success, the appetite
becomes will.

Herbart was followed by Benecke, who contends that
the soul, far from being a simple entity, is composed
of a multiplicity of similar powers. These he divides
into elementary (or primordial) and evolved powers;
the latter resulting from the union of elementary
powers with impressions and ideas. For him, then,
the soul is no longer a constant, but a variable, subject
to development. He deems the existence of an imag-
ination, of a memory, of an understanding, of a will,
etc. — as powers independent of ideas — an absurdity ;
and he shows that they are attributes or results of ideas.
The simplest psychical formations are the sensuous sen-
sations, which remain as traces in the soul. These traces
multiply. The similar ones attract one another, and
are strengthened into perceptions; similar perceptions,
by an analogous process, unite to form concepts, conclu-
sions, judgments, etc. ; clearness of concepts, clearness
of consciousness, constitutes understanding. The rapid-
ity and other features of these developments depend,
subjectively, on the strength (power to retain), vivid-
ness (tendency to assimilate), and susceptibility of the
primordial powers; they depend, objectively, on the

92 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

number and intensity of the impressions, percepts, and
concepts. Thus, starting from simple premises, he
teaches that all manifestations of psychical force are
the necessary results of the subjective peculiarities of
the primordial powers, and of the multiplicity, inten-
sity, and clearness of impressions.

Herbart had shown the absurdity of assuming a
number of special, independent faculties of the soul ;
Benecke had proved that the soul is capable of develop-
ment— a thing that grows; the next step was taken
by Herbert Spencer, who shows that this growth is
organic, subject to the ordinary laws of organic develop-
ment. Thus, he made psychology strictly a natural
science, to be henceforth modified, extended in its
scope, corrected in its errors, limited in its theories,
by the same laws of criticism that apply to other
natural sciences. Availing himself of the discovery of
the laws of evolution, of the correlation, the inde-
structibility, and mutability of forces, of their insep-
arability from matter, he has built up a system of
psychology which, on account of its clearness and
strict adhesion to scientific principles, is destined to
supplant, or, rather, to crown the work of his predeces-
sors, and to become one of the most potent agencies
in hastening the recognition of correct principles of
education.

LECTURE IX.

PESTALOZZI : BIOGRAPHICAL.

In order to review the work of practical educators
during the period sketched in the last lecture, it be-
comes necessary to turn back to the last quarter of
the eighteenth century. Here we find the philanthropi-
nists, among whom Basedow, Campe, and Salzmann
occupy the highest rank, engaged in attempts to give
practical shape to Rousseau's views on education. They
owe their generic name to the Philanthropinum at
Dessau, an institution founded by Basedow under the
auspices of Duke Leopold; an institution similar to
Francke's pedagogium for the education of the sons of
the nobility, but on purely philanthropic and cosmo-
politan principles. Campe was great as an author of
this school of pedagogy; and Salzmann is remarkable
as the most practical of its followers, his philanthropi-
num, near Gotha, is the only one that has continued
its existence to this day.

In a detailed history of pedagogy, the consideration
of the labors of these men could not be passed over
without injury to a full understanding of educational

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94 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

progress; but my limited time and, more yet, my spe-
cific aim, compel me to content myself with a mere
mention of them, and to pass at once to a more promi-
nent figure — to Pestalozzi.

Pestalozzi was born on the 12th of January, 1746, at
Zurich, in Switzerland. He lost his father, a physician,
in 1751, and his education was left in the hands of a
fond mother and of a faithful female servant, ^vho had
promised the dying father not to abandon the family.
These two women were the constant and too watchful
companions of his childhood. He says of his early ed-
ucation: "I grew uj) in the care of the kindest mother,
who spoiled me wdth excessive tenderness. From one
end of the year to the other, I was kept in the house.
Every essential mean, every impulse to the develop-
ment of manly vigor, manly experience, manly disposi-
tion, and manly exercise were wanting, although the
peculiarities and weaknesses of my individuality needed
them very much." Perhaps this accounts for the extra-
ordinary want of practical sense that characterized all
his undertakings, for his want of caution and circum-
spection, for his excesssive sentimentality, and for a
peculiar almost childishness in all his doings and say-
ings. But it accounts, too, for his great inexhaustible
love of mankind, for his unshaken faith, for his unlim-
ited power of self-sacrifice, and for the fact that he
assigned to the mother the most important position in
the education of children.

He received his scholastic education exclusively in
his native city. Zurich possessed, at that time, in
addition to the elementary school, a so-called German
school, in which ordinary school education found its

PESTALOZZI. 95

limit; a Latin school, which prepared for the learned
professions; and a higher school, intermediate between
the gymnasia and the universities of a later date.
Pestalozzi visited these schools in their order. The
first professional study to which he devoted himself
was that of theology, but he soon abandoned this in
order to devote himself to jurisprudence. This, too,
failed to satisfy him, and, in 1767, he left school in
order to devote himself wholly to agriculture.

He had read Rousseau's Emile, which had appeared a
few years before, and he was affected by the book to a
remarkable degree. He writes about this: "As soon as
this book appeared, my exceedingly impractical dream-
sense was transformed into enthusiasm by this exceed-
ingly impractical dream-book. I compared the educa-
tion which I had had, in the prison of home and school,
with that which Rousseau sketched for his Emile. The
home and school education of all the world seemed de-
formed to me, and I thought I had found the panacea
for all these evils in Rousseau's Emile.'''' He threw his
books away, burned his manuscripts, and went to a
widely-known, successful farmer in the Canton of Bern,
to study the art of cultivating the soil, as well as the
sufferings and wants of the country people, who lan-
guished at that time in a condition bordering on slavery
and, in many respects, transcending it in abjectness.

A year afterward, he bought a tract of sterile heath-
land, near the village of Birr, in the Canton of Argau.
He had a house built on his farm, and devoted the land
to the raising of madder. These lands, which he named
"Neuhof" (the New Farm), he had bought with money
borrow^ on the prospects of a favorable marriage with

96 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

the daughter of a wealthy Zurich merchant. She became
his wife at Neuhof, in 1769 ; but his efforts at farming
did not prove successful, the creditor withdrew his capi-
tal, and her fortune was mostly lost. Pestalozzi himself
ascribes these misfortunes to his absolute practical un-
fitness, his entire want of skill and capacity. The
results of his practical efforts, in whatever he under-
took, were as mean as his plans and aspirations were
lofty. He himself says that "there was an immense
contrast between his aims and his achievements, be-
tween what he wanted to do and what he did and could
do."

About this time, he conceived the plan of uniting a
poor-school or, rather, a home for poor children, with his
farm. Several cities gave material support to the enter-
prise, and, in 1775, the new institution was opened with
fifty children. In summer they were to be occupied
with agricultural pursuits; in winter, with spinning
and weaving. In leisure hours they were to receive
instruction in speaking, reading, writing, etc. The
w^ants of the children were to be supplied, in part at
least, from the products of the children's work.

The new enterprise was taken up with enthusiasm,
but it soon began to deteriorate. The children, mostly
the sons and daughters of beggars, disliked work, and
made the most unreasonable demands. In these they
were abetted by their parents, who continued to visit
the institution for the purpose of extortion and com-
plaint. Many of the children ran away as soon as they
had received new clothes. But Pestalozzi wanted to
persevere; he would rather "share the last morsel with
his children" than to give up the institution. He lived

PESTALOZZI. 97

"like a beggar, in order to teach beggars how to live
like human beings." At last, in 1780, however, the
institution had to be given up, because it lacked all the
necessaries of life. "I was poor now," says Pestalozzi,
in utter despondency; *' I fared like all others who
become poor through their own faults. I lost all con-
fidence in myself, even in what I actually was and
could do. My friends, too, loved me only hopelessly.
All who knew me exj^ressed the opinion that I was
hopelessly lost."

But the self-sacrificing fidelity of his wife, Anna
Schulthess, and the encouraging words of an influ-
ential friend at Basle, reassured him. During the same
year, in 1780, he published his first work, entitled
'^ Evening Hours of a Hermit^^'' which contained the
fundamental thoughts of all his subsequent efforts in
behalf of education. In this book he attempted to
show, with the warmth and affection peculiar to his
womanly nature, that all school education which is not
built upon the foundation of humane education, must
mislead; that true education calls for the development
of all the faculties and capacities in the individual;
that this purely humane education must precede all
training for special stations and callings; that it alone
can lead to an independent, honorable, and happy life;
that all instruction and all practice must have an in-
tuitional basis, must be adapted to the child's peculiari-
ties and surroundings; that, in these things, true self-
dependent insight must take the place of authoritative
verbiage, of dogmatic tradition; that a virtuous character,
coupled with a deep religious sense, is the highest aim

of all education. "All wisdom," he says, "rests upon
H. p.— 9.

98 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

the vigor of a good heart obedient to truth ; and all
happiness, upon simplicity and innocence. I build all
liberty upon justice, and justice upon love; and the
source of all justice and of all earthly blessings, the
source of love and charity, rests upon the great thought
that all are children of God."

The next year, in 1781, he gave to the world his
greatest achievement, a book entitled " Lienhard and
Gertrude: a Booh for the People.''^ Gertrude, the heroine
of this romance, is Pestalozzi's ideal. In her manage-
ment of the household, in her moral influence upon
her husband — more especially, however, in her educa-
tion of her children and in her aptness to teach — he
held her up in this remarkable work as a model to all
mothers.

The schools of his time w^ere in a miserable condition;
the teachers had little or no education; the nobility and
wealthier classes demoralized and oppressed the common
people ; and to correct these errors and faults, these vices
of society, Pestalozzi wanted to place the education of
the childre'h of the common people, including their
instruction, in the hands of the mothers. Thus Pesta-
lozzi, like Rousseau, aimed at a thorough regeneration
of the race; but, unlike Rousseau, he left the rising
generation in its natural soil, and would lead it to
humanity in the famil}^, under the influence of ideal
mothers. For Pestalozzi, the child is from the begin-
ning a social being, growing up in truly natural sur-
roundings, and under the truly natural guidance of a
mother who appreciates her responsibilities, and who
has the necessary tact, skill, knowledge, energy, and
love to meet them fully.

PESTALOZZI. 99

Pestalozzi himself characterizes the aim of the book.

in the preface to the second edition, as an attemj^t "to
effect a better condition of the people on the basis of
the actual conditida^of the people and of their natural
relations." " I saw," he says, " the misery of the people,
and Lienhard and Gertrude were my sighs over this
misery. The book was my first word to the heart of
tlie poor and forsaken in the land. It was my first
word to the heart of those who, for the poor and for-
saken, are in God's stead in the land. It was my first
word to the mothers of the land, and to the heart that
God gave them, to be to their children what no human
being on earth can be in their stead." "For," he says
in another place, "if the home is not a holy temple of
God, if the mother does not cultivate the head and heart
of the child naturally, every other reform of social con-
ditions is impossible."

The effect of this work fully justified Pestalozzi's
expression : " I felt its worth ; but only as a man who,
in his dreams, feels the value of a good fortune." From
all sides, from high and low, from philanthropic socie-
ties, from princes and statesmen, honors, thanks, and
invitations poured in upon the author of Lienhard and
Gertrude. But, through his impractical indecision, all
came to naught, and he continued to bury himself on
his dilapidated farm, occasionally throwing out an arti-
cle, a pamphlet, or a book, until 1798, when he pub-
lished again a more important work, entitled ^^Investi-
gations on the Course of Nature in the Development of Man.''''

In this work he summed up, based on Rousseau and
Fichte, his views upon the aims of education. He
holds that man is naturally innocent and helpless;

100 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

his helplessness leads him to insight; this to acquisi-
tion, possession, and, ultimately, to society. Social rela-
tions bring about a life of legal right which leads to
liberty. At the same time, there is in man a natural
benevolence, which culminates in religion. The work
is valuable as a casket, containing many bright jewels
of thought and sentiment, but of little value as a system
of philosophy or as a basis for pedagogic efforts.

About the same year (1798), the French devastated the
Canton of Unterwalden and burned the town of Stanz.
Fatherless and motherless orphans wandered about the
country without shelter, food, and clothing. Pestalozzi
hastened to their rescue. The government placed an
abandoned convent near Stanz at his disposal. This he
fitted up for the orphans, of whom he gathered eighty
between the ages of four and ten. They were all in the
highest degree neglected, without discipline, ignorant,
disorderly, in rags and filth — in a state of physical,
mental, and moral degeneracy. To these outcasts of
society Pestalozzi w^ould be father, teacher, servant —
nay, mother. "A seeing man," he himself says, "would
not have ventured to do this; fortunately, I was blind,
else I should not have ventured upon it."

As in Neuhof, he began by uniting instruction with
work, but he soon recognized the inadequacy of this
mode of proceeding. For the sake of better progress,
he made an attempt to employ the older children as
teachers of the smaller ones ; he also introduced rhythm-
ical speaking in concert. " I stood in their midst," he
says, "spoke sounds to them, and caused them to imi-
tate me ; all who saw it were astonished at the effect.
I did not know what I was doing, but I knew what I

PBt5TAL0ZZI. ' • ' ' ^ 101

wanted to do, and that was death or attainment of my
purpose." However, all his efforts were in vain; he
had undertaken more than one man can accomplish,
and his institution would have perished of its own
faults, had not external circumstances caused its earlier
dissolution. In the summer of 1799, the French estab-
lished a military hospital in his convent; most of the
children were dispersed, and the remainder were given
in charge of a local priest. Pestalozzi himself, after a
short rest, accepted a position as teacher in an elemen-
tary school at Burgdorf, in the Canton of Bern, and
repeated or, rather, continued his experiments in sim-
plifying elementary instruction, as far as the mechanism
of the school permitted it.

However, the limits of the school regulations re-
strained him too much, and he established in the next
year, with an assistant, an independent educational
institution in the same town. Here he published the
book ^^Hoiv Gertrude Teaches- her Children,^^ which was
followed, in 1803, by the '' Book for Mothers:' In these
works he laid down his principles, and attempted to
show mothers how they can become the elementary
instructors of their children, thus enabling them to do
without the school for this purpose. "For," said he,
"as the child derives its first physical food from the
mother, so it should also obtain its first mental food
from the same God-given source." The contents of these
books will form, however, the principal burden of my
next lecture, so that we may now proceed with the re-
maining incidents in Pestalozzi's life.

In 1805, Pestalozzi established his institute at Yver-
don, situated at the southern extremity of the lake of

102 HfSTOJlY Of fedagogy.

Neuenburg, in western Switzerland, where he continued
until 1825. Here Pestalozzi reached the summit of his
glory. Yverdon became a center of attraction to which
the noblest philanthropists of the time, from the plainest
school-master to the greatest statesman, made pilgrim-
ages, in order to bring away a sacred enthusiasm for
popular education. From all countries they came —
from France, from Germany, Italy, Spain, even from
Russia and North America. Noble-hearted, high-minded
youths joined him in order to become teachers of little
children, and to be trained as his assistants.

In 1809, his institution numbered 15 teachers, 165
pupils between the ages of six and seventeen, from
all parts of the world, and 32 adults that studied his
methods. He writes, about this time: "The difficulties
that opposed my enterprise in the beginning were very
great. Public opinion was wholly against me. Thou-
sands looked upon my work as quackery, and nearly all
who believed themselves competent judges, declared it
worthless. Some condemned it as a silly mechanism;
some looked upon it as mere memorizing, while others
contended that it neglected the memory for the sake of
the understanding; some accused me of want of religion,
and others of revolutionary intentions. But, thank God,
all these objections have been overcome. The children
of our institution are full of joy and happiness; their
innocence is guarded; their religious feelings are fos-
tered; their minds are cultivated; their knowledge in-
creased; their hearts inspired with love of virtue. The
whole is pervaded by the great spirit of home-union ; a
pure fatherly and brotherly spirit rules all. The chil-
dren feel free ; their activity is incited by their occupa-

PESTALOZZI. 103

tions; affection and confidence elevate and guide their
hearts."

Still there were a number of evils which, jDerhaps in
his enthusiasm in consequence of unexpected success,
he did not see. There were the frequent interruptions
by the visits of princes and ministers whom the master
wished to gain for his ideas; there was the want of cul-
ture on the part of his teachers, who had little chance to
correct their faults on account of the deficient arrange-
ments of the household; there was the want of knowl-
edge of men, of organizing talent, of pedagogic quickness
of apprehension, of practical circumspection and me-
thodic skill on the part of Pestalozzi himself; and, as
a consequence perhaps, the devil of partisanship that
invaded the hearts of his teachers, and caused an open
rebellion shortly after the death of his admirable wife.

In 1816, a 3''ear after the demise of Anna Schulthess,
twelve of his teachers seceded from the institution.
Still he lingered on and, in 1818, even succeeded in
adding to his charge a poor-school in the vicinity of
Yverdon. This step contributed not a little to a loss
of original purposes, and to a final dissolution of his
whole enterprise in 1825.

" Truly, it seems to me," he writes at this time, '' as
if by this retirement I made an end to life itself; it
pains me so." He found an asylum at Neuhof, with his
grandson. Here he wrote his autobiography and his
^^ Swan's Strains,^^ in which he attempted to express, in
a. concise form, all that he had thought and felt on the
subject to which he had devoted his life.

On the 17th of February, 1827, he died. His last
words were: "I forgive my enemies; may the}' now

104 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

find peace, as I enter everlasting peace ! I should have
liked to live a month longer, in order to finish my
task ; but I thank God that he calls me away from life
on earth. And j^ou, my dearest ones, may you live in
peace, and find your happiness in the quiet life of
home ! "

LECTURE X.

PESTALOZZI : HIS PRINCIPLES AND VIEWS.

A STRANGE phenomenon, indeed, is this Pestalozzi.
For thirty years, as he says, in the height of his suc-
cesses, he had not had time to read a book, so that he
was more ignorant of the pedagogic achievements of
his predecessors than the commonest school-master. He
lacked the talent of organizing, was deficient in prac-
tical skill, a mere dreamer. By a sort of accident he
had become acquainted with Rousseau's and, afterward,
Fichte's views. He was fired by these, and induced
to undertake an entire reorganization of elementary
education.

Himself, he failed in- all he undertook; but he suc-
ceeded in kindling in others an unprecedented enthu-
siasm for popular education ; he succeeded in leading
a host of others to unprecedented success. And this
he did not accomplish by his own success, not by the
force of argument or example, but only and alone by
the force of his great love, which constituted his
genius.

He says of himself: " What I am, I am by my heart."

(105)

106 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

He was desirous to contribute his share in enhancing
the welfare of the race, in neutralizing and eradicating
the physical and moral misery of mankind; and he
looked upon education as the principal mean to ac-
complish this. His earnest pleadings for education, as
the chief factor in the elevation and consequent relief
of the masses, brought conviction to all, high and low,
ruled and rulers, so that he is justly called the " father
of popular education." Through him, Germany became
the land of pedagogy; but his influence went far beyond
the limits of German lands.

Tiie family seemed to him the proper center of all
educational efforts; but although he went too far in
this view, and although, in his own direct labors, he
aimed his efforts mainly at the school, he never lost
sight, not even theoretically, of his great discovery
that human nature itself must dictate the principles
of education.

This discovery alone, urged by him again and again,
with the eloquence of earnestness, upon all whom his
words and deeds could reach, would have sufficed to
make him one of the greatest benefactors of mankind.
He thus became the inaugurator of a new epoch in
education, the epoch of purely humane education ; he
created the possibility of basing the science of peda-
gogy upon anthropology and natural science; of making
it, indeed, itself one of the branches of natural science.

His views of the nature and destiny of man were
rather vague, but, on the Avhole, correct. They were
not reached by careful philosophical analysis, but
seemed to have sprung up in him, waked into existence
by the magic power of his genius. Man appeared to

PESTALOZZI. 107

Pestalozzi in every direction as an organism ; an inde-
pendent organism, as far as he alone is concerned; an
organic part, if viewed with reference to society, the
race, or the universe. To enter into harmony with the
whole — into communion with the Being of beings, with
God — without losing his individuality, seemed to Pes-
talozzi man's highest destiny. Justice and love were
to him man's highest virtues, in the intercourse with
others; self-reliance the highest quality, with reference
to himself.

For the education of man as an individual, as a sepa-
rate individuality, Pestalozzi found tlie general formula
in the simple and single word — evolution, development.
Whatever powers man has, must be developed harmoni-
ously, so as to form a harmonious, well-balanced whole.
All individual development manifests itself as activity,
as self-activity. This self-activity has two phases: one
from without inward, receptive, acquisitive, learning;
the other from within outward, expressive, productive,
creative.

The former, the receptive phase of self-activity, is
designated by the term intuition — anschauung, looking
at; and the instruments which the mind uses, when
engaged in it, are the senses. This phase will always
precede the expressive, reproductive, or creative activ-
ity; it forms the basis, the foundation of the latter.
Hence Pestalozzi's great principle : All instruction must
be intuitional — anschauUch — must reach the mind
through its senses. This phase of activity engaged his
attention almost exclusively, as far as his reformatory
efforts in methods of teaching extended ; and he fur-
nished an ABC of instruction which, while it was liable

108 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

to many improvements in form and scope, has never
been assailed in its principles. He was well aware of
the fact that this was only half the work required, and
he labored hard to find an ABC of skill — of art, if you
choose — of the expressive phase of self-activity, but
without success. To find this ABC was reserved for
Froebel; but were not Pestalozzi's achievements work
enough, as well as glory enough, for one man?

He labored with great success to transform learning,
the acquisition of knowledge, into an actual mental
assimilation. And, in doing this, he gained another
great point. He established beyond controversy that
the ultimate aim of instruction is not to furnish man
with knowledge and skill, but that these are valuable
mainly as means to develop the mind and other powers
of the human being. In other words, the material of
instruction was to be used, in the first and foremost
place, as an instrument for the development of the
organism.

Hence, the mode in which the learner approaches
the material of instruction or, respectively, the mode
in which it is brought to him, is of the greatest impor-
tance, since it determines the beneficial or injurious,
the furthering or hindering effect of instruction, with
reference to mental development. Now, for the best
way, he looks in the nature of man — that is, in the
insight which the anthropological and psychological
study of man has furnished. Thus he chose the only
way that leads to truth ; thus he freed pedagogy from
all preconceived and dogmatical limitations, from all
arbitrary fetters; made of it a natural science, to live
and grow, henceforth, like other natural sciences. Thus

PESTALOZZI. 109

he laid low and ejected from the school the evil spirits
of pedantr}^ that claim to be in full possession of truth,
and form an insuperable barrier to progress; and in-
stalled in their stead that modest search for truth which
moves always, and always forward.

What a great stride forward he himself made will
appear even from a superficial review of his principles
of teaching, as laid down in his last two books. He
begins with the training of the senses, with perception,
or, l)etter, with perceptions; from these he leads the
child gradually, surely, and as much as possible by its
own efforts, to conceptions, judgments, conclusions.
Every idea the child possesses has grown from the
seed, and grown strong in indigenous soil, in the
child's own mind. There is no pushing, no cramming,
no pouring in ; but only growth — healthy, vigo»3US, con-
tinuous, natural growth. What the child can not grasp
is not forced upon it ; whatever is beyond its comprehen-
sion is left for future time and increased power.

Specially, he proceeds always from known things to
related unknown things, so that the learner may ever
find a place for the new acquisition, may be enabled to
bring the new acquisition into organic connection with
what he already has or, rather, with what he already is.
Abstract ideas grow gradually, almost laboriously, from
concrete notions. He is a declared enemy of all mere
verbiage, and fails to look upon parrot-like repetition
of a statement or of an idea as knowledge. On the
contrary, he asks that the child must develop the idea
in its own mind, by its own self-active efibrt, before it
can appreciate and, consequently, before it ought to
receive the symbol or sign — the word.

110 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

In the examination of objects he always proceeds
from the whole, i. e., from the first impression, to the
parts, i. e.j to careful analysis. In the building-up of
ideas, in comparison and classification, he made sure,
first, of particulars, elements; and proceeded slowly,
gradually, continuously to general, more comprehensive
ideas and names. At the same time, he aimed con-
stantly at organic connection between the subject and
the object, between the learner and the things learned;
and strove to establish a similar connection between
the various branches of instruction and practice.

Again, he insists upon constant self-activity on the
part of the child. He never does for the child what
it can do for itself, because only its own work, only
the direct exercise of its ow^n powers, will give strength
to these and increase their substance, as it were. His
(the teacher's) activity is only directing or guiding,
only impelling or inducing, as the case may require.
This is one of Pestalozzi's greatest points", and so
prominent that Benecke, whom I have had occasion
to mention in a previous lecture, says of Pestalozzi's
method : " He aims throughout at self-active growth of
insight, in continuous progress and exhaustive com-
pleteness." And Schw^arz, a noted writer on pedagog-
ical subjects, says of him : " He has cut a new road by
the exercise of the powers in limited spheres, on a
limited number of objects; from earliest youth, in every
station of life, he wants to lead man to his greatest
good, to his divine destiny. Every one is to be brought
to a full appreciation of his own powers; and a pure,
true appreciation of his worth is to bring him to the
noblest use of his powers."

PESTALOZZI. Ill

It would be to sin against truth, and thus to deprive
history of its greatest power for good, if the faults of
the great man were overlooked here. Some of these
have already been hinted in this and the previous
lecture. Among these are the want of caution and
circumspection, of organizing talent and practical com-
mon sense; and more, perhaps, than these, his ignorance
of pedagogic thoughts and deeds in previous times. He
only knew the great misery around him, and Rousseau
and his own good heart drove him to sacrifice himself
in efforts to alleviate it.

But there are some other, perhaps minor faults, that
are important enough to be mentioned here. Among
these, his exclusive reliance upon the family, as an
educational agent, stands at the head. Aside from the
practical impossibility of educating a number of chil-
dren of various ages in the family alone, this error
of his shows an almost entire disregard of the claims
of society upon the young human being, and of the
necessity of training it, as early as possible, for social
relations, for free intercourse with equals.

Again, short-sightedness or want of scope is mani-
fested in the reduction of all sensuous impression.s to
number, form, and word. Certainly there are many
other categories of sensual existence besides number,
form, and word. Even if we look upon them symbolic-
all}^, viewing number and form, as the signs of imioressive
agents, and word as the sign of expressive action, it seems
difficult to force all that impresses us and all our modes
of expression within these terms.

Again, the use of mechanical exercises in enunciation
and speaking had become a sort of superstition with

112 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

him. He used them to such a morbid excess that they
contributed much to his defeats, inasmuch as his prac-
tice in this respect was directly opposed to his theory.
This led him, too, in his propositions concerning the
teaching of geography, history, anthropology, and nat-
ural science, into an artificial mechanism, a mind-
killing verbiage, and memorizing of long lists of names
that were as far removed from Pestalozzianism as dark-
ness is from light.

His admirable principle that, in the study of objects,
we should proceed from the near to the remote, caused
him to forget that things may be too near for convenient
and accurate observation, and misled him into the per-
nicious practice of beginning with the child's own body,
a proceeding which, by insuring failure at the start,
could not fail to bring his ideas into disrepute.

As akin to his over-estimation of the familv as an
educational factor, we should note, too, his over-estima-
tion of the mother as the educator in the family. In this
respect, the father seems to have no existence at all for
him. This fault may be due to his own early education,
and to the peculiar conditions of the society in which he
lived and for which he worked; but even a little philo-
sophical insight might have saved him from this griev-
ous error. If it was his excellence to be what he was by
his heart, it surely was his fault that his heart exercised
a too despotic control over his head.

Thus it happened that, as a practical teacher, he stood
far below mediocrity. He taught without plan; cared
neither for time nor for the fatigue of the children ;
neglected reading and writing; neither developed nor
repeated ; entirely disregarded order and expediency in

PESTALOZZI. 113

the occupations of the children ; worked only with the
masses or classes, and took no heed of individuals;
wasted much of his time in having the children repeat
after him sentences which they did not understand;
and, even in these exercises, neglected correctness and
euphony of speech.

And yet, in spite of all these faults, he is the founder
of modern pedagogy. He is this by his indefatigable
zeal, his Christ-like self-denial, his enthusiasm for truth
and human happiness. These qualities charmed all who
came in his vicinity, and kindled in them similar feel-
ings, induced them to improve upon his virtues and to
steer past his faults.

As Jessen has said of him, "he was an enlightening
creative hero of education; an eagle who, as Dante says
of Homer, vanquishes all in his flight. No one has, like
him, set the world ablaze in a holy enthusiasm for the
great task of ennobling the human race; no one has,
like him, shaken the stolid world and overcome its
resistance. He was a man great through his faith in
his ideal, great in his aims, great in the self-denial
with which he fought for his ideal, great in his zeal
to alleviate human suffering — a zeal which had be-
come a part of his very being. Thus Pestalozzi's great-
ness consists, perhaps, more in the impulse he gave
than it does in his direct achievements."

H. P.-IO.

LECTURE XL

FREDERIC FROEBEL — KINDERGARTEN CULTURE.

The most enthusiastic admirer and disciple of Pesta-
lozzi was, fortunately, a man singularly predisposed by
his training to complete the task left unfinished by the
great master. This man was Frederic Froebel. *

Like Pestalozzi, he found the aim of education in har-
monious development, in the production of well-balanced
human beings; like Pestalozzi, he looked for the princi-
ples of education in the laws of human nature; like
Pestalozzi, he required growth from within outward,
and relied, therefore, upon self-activity on the part of
the learner, as the indispensable condition of success in
educational labors. He accepted fully and unreservedly
all that Pestalozzi had done, and built upon the law of
intuition as a broad and firm basis. To this, however,
he added the law of the "connection of contrasts." At
the same time, he invented the ABC of the productive
phase of self-activity, and showed how the exercise of the

-■• For a biographical sketch, I refer the reader to the preface
of my Kindergarten Culture.
(114)

FROEBEL. 115

productive serves not only to strengthen the receptive
powers and to enrich the mind and heart, but how it
alone can render the acquisition of knowledge useful.

From the very beginning, he would have these two
phases of self-activity — the receptive and the produc-
tive— go hand in hand. Every new intuition is to be
used in new forms of expression, and to be combined in
every possible manner with previous acquisitions, in
more and more complicated, more and more directly
useful productions. He keeps the learner ever busy,
imitating and inventing with the ever-increasing stock
of knowledge ; and ever increasing the stock of ideas
with the aid of imitations and inventions, in accordance
with the law of the " connection of contrasts."

The harmonious development of man requires not only
knowledge, but also skill; not only ideas, but also the
application of ideas. Nay, if we consider that knowl-
edge manifests itself usefully only through skill, that
ideas enter life only through their application, we are
to some extent justified in looking upon the latter as
more important. Knowledge without skill, like a stuffed
elephant, maj^ challenge our astonishment, but can not
exert any influence in life; it is as unproductive of
either good or evil as the sword in the hands of a statue.
The education of children, more especially in schools,
has suffered for centuries, and particularly in modern
times, from the fatal one-sidedness of paying almost ex-
clusive attention to knowledge. Our time, as Froebel
and his followers express it, is sick from a surfeit of
knowledge. These truisms lay in the consciousness of
thinking pedagogues long before Froebel — from Plato
to Pestalozzi — but it was reserved for Froebel to let

116 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

the consciousness ripen into the deed by his invention
of the Kindergarten.

Pestalozzi, wonderfully aroused by Rousseau's vigorous
writings, and still more by the misery of the ignorant
and unskilled masses, found the way of educating the
child to independence in intuition, in the acquisition
of ideas, and invented the ABC of knowledge; but his
efforts to find an ABC of skill were fruitless, although
he devoted himself to the task with conscious longing.
Frocbel, however, animated by an equally intense phi-
hmthropy, but endowed with more philosophical insight
and more thorough knowledge, unveiled also this secret,
and indicates, in his writings on " The Education of
Maiij^^ the way to independence in skill, in the art of
doing and inventing, in jiroductive, creative activity.

With his predecessors in the mastership of pedagogy,
he holds that education must begin at birth, and seeks
the laws of pedagogic practice in the natural being and
doing of the child. He observed how the latter, from
the first dawn of consciousness, is ever eager to apply
the acquired intuition — to make use of them — partly
by simply reproducing them, partly by combining them
w^ith others formerly gained, in order to attain some-
thing new, or to enjoy the results of its creative activ-
ity. At the same time, he observed that the child, as
a living being, is attracted most by living things, and,
in the next place, by moving or movable objects.

These and similar observations led him to the inven-
tion of a number of gifts or playthings for little children.
In the construction of these gifts he was guided by his
law of the "connection of contrasts." He holds that
we owe all our knowledge, primarily, to contrasts in the

FROEBEL. 117

qualities of surrounding objects. By these contrasts our
attention is drawn to the objects, to their comparison,
their observation ; without them, comparison and ob-
servation— mental life, indeed — would be impossible,
until inkable.

These contrasts, however, are brought together again,
reduced to a common idea by intervening degrees of the
same quality in other objects. The discovery of these
intervening degrees he designates by the name, "con-
nection of contrasts," a process by which the mutual
relations in the qualities of objects are brought out,
and the unity, the oneness in them is unveiled. All
thinking, he maintains, is reducible to this law ; every
step in the history of ideas rests upon it ; even in
emotional life, in the formation of taste and character,
and in physical development, it holds good. *

The gifts, or playthings, consist of balls, cylinders,
cones, variously dissected cubes, quadrilateral and tri-
angular tablets, sticks, mats for weaving, etc. By
means of these the child is gradually and pleasantly
introduced into the Avorld of ideas, gains notions of cor-
poreality, of color, shape, size, number, etc. At the
same time, it learns to use them in imitating and,
consequently, fixing ideas gained from other objects, in
inventing new, more or less abstract combinations of
the component parts of the gift.

The results of the child's more or less self-active
efforts are classified by Froebel as forifns of cognition, of

"For a full discussion and illustrations of this law, as well
as for a detailed description of Froebel's gifts, I refer the reader
to my Kindergarten Culture,

118 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

life^ and of beauty. By the forms of cognition the child
obtains and fixes new ideas, gains knowledge ; by the
forms of life it reproduces or expresses, more or less
faithfully, ideas gained from surrounding objects; and
by the forms of beauty, or symmetrical arrangements
of the parts of the gift, it trains its inventive powers
and forms its taste.

Thus the third gift, a two-inch cube dissected into
eight one-inch cubes, offers combinations of its compo-
nent parts — forms of cognition — by which the child
obtains ideas of number, shape, size, and relations of
position. Again, it enables the child to build, in rude
outline, tables, chairs, walls, ladders, bridges, and other
fo7'ms of life; and the eight cubical blocks offer much
scope in producing a variety of symmetrical arrange-
ments, or forvis of beauty.

He lays great stress, too, upon the development of
physical vigor, grace, and skill, by means of calisthenic
and gymnastic exercises; ujwn the cultivation of taste,
scope, and power in language, by means of declamation,
song, and lively conversation ; and upon the simultane-
ous training of hand and head in imitative and in-
ventive drawing on slates and paper, specially prepared
and ruled for the guidance of the little artists.

A most important feature of his invention we have,
again, in the social games, and in the fact that all the
occupations of the kindergarten are managed in such a
way as to unfold and train the social nature of the child.
From the very beginning, the child is taught by direct
experience that it finds the richest source of happiness
in doing good — in usefulness; and that it gains strength
for greater usefulness in the free, voluntary union with

FROEBEL. 119

others, in the social subordination to common purposes.
At the same time, the kindergarten takes care not to
drown individuality, but, by enlarging its scope, con-
tinually offers new and strong incentives for its full
development.

Froebei looks upon the little children as organic
beings, whose growth must be led and followed by the
educator as the growth of plants is led and followed by
the gardener; hence the name kindergarten — garden
for children. It is true that he would have an actual
garden connected with these institutions, so that the
child may, by direct observation, become familiar with
the laws of growth, and learn to know arid love nature,
of which it, too, is an exponent. Still, such a garden,
while it is eminently desirable, is not an essential
feature of the kindergarten, since there are many other
ways to accomplish similar results. Among these, the
cultivation of plants in pots or boxes, and occasional
excursions into the fields and forests, occupy a promi-
nent place.

Froebei, however, would make the kindergarten not
only a place for the proper education of little children,
but also a training-school for mothers and nurses. He
appeals most earnestly to mothers to visit the kinder-
garten, to attend its teachings, to practice there the
art of bringing up the little ones; and he would estab-
lish institutions in which young girls can prepare
themselves for the difficult and responsible duties of a
mother or nurse. Fortunately, his appeals were not
unheeded ; for Europe, and more especially Germany,
can boast of a number of such training-schools, doing
admirable work, increasing daily in scope and influ-

120 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

ence, and sending out annually hundreds of enthusi-
astic and skillful missionaries in the good cause.

Again, Froebel's plans did not end with the kinder-
garten. Finding the body pedagogic diseased, he did not
propose to cure it by the mere addition of a healthy
member, which would be doomed to become a prey to
the general degeneracy of that body; but he meant
that the kindergarten should leaven the entire system
of teaching children, at home and at school. He would
have it used as an entering wedge to break down
whatever is illogical, unnatural — nay, inhuman — in
family and school education ; he would make it the
forerunner of school and youtli gardens, ^. e., of institu-
tions in which the learner is placed in the most favor-
able circumstances for self-active, organic growth in
every direction of his being, where knowledge and
skill, saying and doing, theory and practice, go hand
in hand at every step.

Indeed, his labors have already brought forth rich
fruit. Even a superficial review of the progress of edu-
cational principles in modern times, yields abundant
proof of the great influence that Froebel has exerted
upon the spirit which animates this progress. Every-
where we see the tendency to technical education;
drawing forms a branch of instruction in all well-
appointed school systems, even in our country; calis-
thenic and gymnastic exercises gain ground from day
to day ; music cheers the souls of thousands of little
learners, where a few j'-ears ago there was only the
monotonous drawl of recitation or the excited tone of
the rebuking teacher.

Again, it can not be denied that the employment of

rROEBEi|u H" 1 7 s H Si rr

female teachers, particularly in elementary schools, is
due, to a great extent, to Froebel's influence. lie held
that teaching the little ones is the natural calling of
woman; that by her greater tenderness, her deeper
sympathy for the yearnings of children, by her quicker
perception of their needs and wants, by her more inti-
mate relationship to the child, by her readier adapta-
bility to its ways, by her more graceful movements
and her more winning words, she is much better fitted
than man — other circumstances being the same — to
arouse the child to free obedience and eager self-activity,
and to implant the seeds of love and purity in its
heart.

Similarly, the growing employment of love, good
habit, and reason in discipline, in preference to brute
force ; the greater attention paid to the plays of chil-
dren ; the gaining practice of co-education of the sexes,
at least in elementary schools; the war against one-
sidedness in education; the greater respect paid to
child-nature; the increasing value attached to self-
activity and individuality; the demand for less routine
and more work in the branches of instruction; the
gradual decline of artifice before the claims of nature ;
the steady retreat of machine-teaching before natural
development, are unquestionably due, in a high degree,
to Froebel's influence.

It is a significant fact, when we consider what stress
was laid by Froebel upon the training of women for the
important work of early education, that, both in this
country and in Europe, the leading apostleship for the
new education was assumed by women. In Europe, the
baronness Bertha von Marenholtz-Buelow has devoted

H. p.— 11.

122 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

her life to the diffusion of Froebel's teachings. She has
established kindergartens in France, Belgium, Holland,
Switzerland, England, and Italy; and Austria has even
incorporated the kindergarten with her public school
system. In America, Miss Eliza P. Peabody and her
sister, Mrs. Horace Mann, first drew public attention to
the new education by the publication of their ''^Kinder-
garten Gwic?e," and by the establishment of a genuine
English kindergarten in Boston, a few years ago.

Thus the good work is progressing nobly; and the
regeneration of education, on the basis of Froebel's
ideas, is slowly and surely finding its way into the
home, as well as into the school.

-V

LECTURE XII.

SUMMING UP — CONCLUSION.

We see from the preceding lectures how the Caucasian
race has gradually and surely approached the principles
of development or evolution in the work of education.
It appears that these principles were alread}^, in a de-
gree, felt and followed by the Greeks; on the other
hand, even the superficial student of the educational
systems of our day will often come across practices that
seem to be fully as far removed from the laws of de-
velopment as Chinese education has been from time
immemorial.

This must needs be so, since the roots of our civiliza-
tion lie far down in Greek soil; and as far as our
civilization contains truth, Greek culture must have
contained the seeds of truth. For truth may displace
or destroy falsehood, may even grow strong upon it,
but never can come from it. Nor can we, on the other
hand, hope ever to reach full, unalloyed, absolute truth;
error ever will surround us, and eat its way into the
inmost life of many, to goad the race on to that con-
stant search, that eager yearning for truth, which con-
stitutes progress.

(123)

124 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

The Greeks emancipated education from the cnrse of
caste and asserted the claims of individuality; not, it
is true, without a grand final struggle between Plato,
who would sacrifice the individual to the state, and
who calls for an equal, common, public education, and
Aristotle, the champion of individual liberty and of the
sacredness of family ties, with which public education
never must interfere. At the same time, the Greeks
teach the race to look upward beyond the realms of
merely sensual existence, establish high ideals of edu-
cation— "the Good and the Beautiful" — and demand
harmony in culture; while their greatest teachers,
Pythagoras and Socrates, pave the way to sound natural
and rational methods of instruction.

Subsequently, the excessive idealism of Greek culture
found a corrective in the sturdy realism, the practical
common sense of the Romans; and when Rome lay
dying of her own gross sins, Christianity came to save
the highest achievements of the race, and to fertilize
them with ncAv elements of health and vigor.

Christianity, a child of Semitic civilization — a civil-
ization that looked with the greatest reverence upon
the family, and considered the fear of God as the
highest virtue — engrafted upon European culture the
principle of strict humanity, liberated it from the bane
of arbitrary and accidental external distinctions among
men, raised woman to full equality with her mate before
God, and taught respect for children, the framers of the
future.

And when, in the middle ages, its high teachings
had been misapplied by the selfishness of man for
sordid and ambitious ends, or perverted by diseased

CONCLUSION. 125

superstition into a curse, blasting earthly happiness
and paralyzing usefulness in real life, philosophy came
to the rescue, dispelled the clouds, the Sun of Truth
was again revealed, and his restoring and reforming
rays aroused European civilization to a new and better
life. Progress, that had slumbered so long, awoke to
new vigor and made rapid strides under the leadership
of Bacon, Locke, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, and a host
of others.

Through the influence of these great men, pure,
unalloyed humanity became the soul; the harmonious
development of well-balanced, self-dependent, vigorous,
and virtuous human beings, the aim of educational
efforts. Man was shown to be an organic being, subject
in all his manifestations of existence to ordinary, natu-
ral laws; growing, developing, in all directions of his
being, organically, from within outward; and all edu-
cational ends and means that are not in accordance
with these conquests of philosophy were proved to be
pernicious, and are gradually yielding before the su-
preme power of better insight.

Among the many prominent mediators of this better
insight, we have singled out Comenius, Francke, Pesta-
lozzi, and Froebel, each one representing some important
phase in the growth of a school practice, corresponding
in scope and spirit with the laws and aims of the devel-
oping education : Comenius as the pioneer of vernacular
schools, of intuitional teaching, and of analytico-syn-
thetic methods; Francke, as the founder of scientific
and technical schools, the champion of individuality
and of the greater importance of training the pupil's
powers and forming his character, compared with mere

126 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

instruction; Pestalozzi, as the father of popular educa-
tion and expounder of natural methods in the acquisi-
tion of knowledge ; and Froebel, as the apostle of self-
activity, of the productive side in child-nature, and of
female influence in the work of education.

After thus reviewing some of the leading features in
the history of developing education, it behooves us to
ask ourselves to what extent our own school system, our
immediate schools, our personal principles and practice,
satisfy in tendenc}', scope, and character the require-
ments of the "new education," so that our work may
reap direct benefits from our study. Of course, only the
first of these, our school S3^stem, is open for our common
consideration ; and, with reference to this, I beg leave
to ofier a few average results of my own personal
observation.

It is a source of just congratulation to the Ameri-
can citizen, that the political and social institutions
of his country are more favorable, nearer to humanity
than those of any other great nation in the world.
Our Constitution grants equal political rights to all
citizens, and respects personal freedom to such an ex-
tent that it leaves the conscience of all men free, with
reference to religious opinions and practices. Socially,
we judge men by their inner worth and by their
achievements, caring not for external or accidental
distinctions, except where fashion has imported folly
from abroad. Even the exorbitant value placed upon
wealth has its root in this, since wealth is the com-
monest reward of excellence. Hence, too, woman —
showing herself in so many activities the equal of
man — occupies among us a higher social position, and

CONCLUSION. 127

exerts a greater influence upon the general welfare,
than in any other civilized country. Even children
are treated with greater consideration and looked upon
with more respect than elsewhere.

These things have developed in the American citizen
an almost instinctive independence of character, which
is exceedingly favorable to the development of strong
individualities. Add to this the traditional energy and
endurance of the American, which he owes to the early
struggles of his forefathers with a reluctant wilderness
and an obstinate race, and to the glorious war of the
revolution ; add our great national power and the vast-
ness of our resources that render us wholly independent
of other nations, and there seems to be no reason why
our country should not stand foremost in culture, and
our educational systems be the best, nearest to the ideal
of the great teachers whom we have reviewed.

On the other hand, the doctrine of equal rights may
I}roduce jealousy in those less favored with capacity or
success, and may bring about an equalization, particu-
larly in educational efforts, which is adverse to the
assertion and development of individuality. Excessive
respect and consideration shown to the young may
breed a self-satisfied conceit, which, in its turn, brings
forth indolence. The ease of making a living may
strengthen this indolence, and render man content
with the acquisition of wealth and comfort, or pervert
his energy into a nervous chase after money, which
gives him the means to plunge into a whirlpool of
gross, exciting, sensual pleasures.

Thus, the very blessings that are justly our greatest
boast, expose us to a self-conceit, an indolence, a sensu-

128 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

ality, an egotism, that may pervert those very blessings
into curses, if we are not ever humbly watchful of our-
selves. Add to this, again, the fact that we owe to our
mother-country, England, an almost bigoted respect for
authority and precedent; a conservativism that hangs
ever like lead upon the skirts of progress; a utilitarian
tendenc}^ that worships the real, w^hile it scorns the
ideal or smiles at it, and we can readily understand
that much energ}^ will yet have to be expended, if the
manhood of our country is to justify the hopes and
expectations of its youth.

Yet, if we take our school system, the mightiest
factor of the future, as a criterion, we have reason to
feel reassured and encouraged. It is true, our school
system still struggles with many difficulties and suffers
from a host of faults. So many parents and school
trustees have no idea of the importance or the aims
of true education. A great number of teachers look
upon their work as a temporary, convenient mode of
making a living. The school aims, in so many in-
stances, almost exclusively at directly visible results,
and crushes all efforts at the development of mental
and physical vigor, of individuality and character,
under the dead weight of percentage; it would force
all the pupils to do a certain number of things equally
well, and thus hampers progress, favors show, and does
nothing very thoroughly nor very far; it reduces the
teacher to a recitation machine and the pupil to a
memorizing contrivance; it does, indeed, many things
that are useless or injurious, and neglects many things
that are indispensable, if education is to prepare the
young for full usefulness and true happiness.

CONCLUSION. 129

On the other hand, our people as a whole, at least
in the states that have enjoyed the benefits of a common
school system, seem to be aware of the necessity of
schools, seem to feel that good comes or can come from
them. This feeling may, in many cases, be quite in-
distinct and ill-defined; but it is sufficiently keen to
render them ever ready to sacrifice wealth for the
maintenance and improvement of their schools. No
country in the world, except, perhaps, some portions
of Switzerland, can boast of expending so much for
schools, in proportion to the cost of other public con-
cerns, as these favored states; and all the states of the
Union are gradually but surely drifting to this desirable
condition.

The wish to send to school is so general and grows
so rapidly, that the necessity of compulsory laws be-
comes ever less urgent. Our school-houses are built
commodiously, with fair provisions for light, air, heat,
and for comfort in the seats. Our school appliances,
within the narrow but expanding scope of our subjects
of instruction, are good and improving. In the methods
of instruction, imperfect as they are, much of the work
is thrown upon the learner — often, indeed, more than
his powers justify. The demand for play-grounds, for
physical training, for respect to the development of
the body, for technical instruction, for a more intimate
intercourse with nature, is steadily increasing. In dis-
cipline there is a groAving tendency to do away with
force and mere authority, and to rely more and more
upon insight and good habits on the part of the pupil ;
although, of late, a cheap sort of military discipline
has been retarding sound progress quite considerably.

130 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

At the same time, the number of parents and school
trustees that appreciate the requirements of a truly
good education is gaining from year to year. And, best
of all, the number of teachers who feel the divinity of
their calling, and who are willing to forego more lucra-
tive or less trying occupations for the sake of devoting
their lives to this, ia rapidly swelling, thanks to the
liberality of the people and to the influence of normal
schools. Before the stout hearts, the clear heads, and
the skillful hands of these men and women, the ene-
mies of progress and of a rational, natural, humane
education — active and passive, animate and inanimate,
be their name ignorance or incapacity, pedantry or pre-
tense, selfishness or prejudice — will be repelled into
the past as steadily and surely as time marches into
the future.

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