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WHAT 
 
 II 
 
 DE FELLENBERG 
 
 HAS DONE 
 
 FOR 
 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET. 
 
 1839. 
 
y 
 
 LONDON : 
 PRINTED BY LEVEY, KOBSOIN, AND FIUM&LYM, 
 
 46 St. Martin's Laue. 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 
 v^ 
 
 The name of De Fellenberg is familiar to all the 
 civilised nations of Europe and North America, and 
 may now be mentioned without offence. This ex- 
 pression implies that it once was otherwise. Yes ; 
 the age in which he has lived having been one of 
 political storms, every name which was eminent 
 enough to appear above the surface of the troubled 
 waters was claimed or denounced by a party ; none 
 could escape. Even those who disclaimed all party, 
 but who, from the highest motives, thought they 
 were bound not to live for themselves alone, nor 
 to hide their talent in a napkin, but to labour, like 
 the holy men of old, according to the light given 
 them, for the permanent good of their fellow-crea- 
 tures, were exposed to a moral martyrdom, from 
 the ignorance, misconception, and hostility of their 
 contemporaries. 
 
 Schools and education had certainly been heard 
 
Vi INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 of from the times of Rome and Greece — had not been 
 totally destroyed at the fall of the Empire — and had 
 in a degree revived with the revival of learning : but 
 the kind of education which Fellenberg contem- 
 plated, with its application to the lowest as well as 
 the highest class of society, was so new, that it is 
 still a novelty in enlightened England, after his forty 
 years' experimental labours at Hofwyl. The great 
 object to which he had determined to devote his life 
 was the practical solution of the question, whether 
 it is possible to influence and form the human cha- 
 racter by early discipline and instruction ; to set the 
 motives, feelings, and passions, in a proper course ; 
 to fix in the mind moral and religious principles, 
 giving rise to corresponding habits of action; to 
 store the mind with just ideas, and the heart with 
 Christian sentiments. He wished to raise the school 
 from a mere technical system to one of intelligence ; 
 and from a place of irksome constraint to one of 
 pleasing and beneficial occupations. 
 
 As these objects had never been attained, nor 
 even attempted, with a direct, specific, and undi- 
 vided purpose, Fellenberg's wise and benevolent 
 plans for the improvement of character were looked 
 at as dangerous innovations in the usual mode of 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. Vll 
 
 bringing up the young, and as connected with some 
 deep, secret plot for the subversion of society. He 
 had, therefore, to contend, during many years, with 
 a combination of ignorance, prejudice, and, we fear 
 we must add, in some instances, of malignity. Before 
 his time, almost the only medium of instruction for 
 the people was the pulpit ; almost the only means of 
 discipline, of training and forming character, were 
 domestic ; which domestic training consisted in a 
 short * intercourse between parent and child at cer- 
 tain hours of the day, when labour was over ; and 
 in permitting the children, during the rest of the 
 day, to wander at large in the streets of towns, or 
 the fields of the country, encouraging each other to 
 vice and impiety. It was this pernicious training 
 which Fellenberg proposed to supersede by one of 
 order, method, and discipline ; to put useful employ- 
 ment in the place of mischievous idleness, and hourly 
 Christian instruction and superintendence in the place 
 of total neglect and ignorance. Was such a scheme 
 feasible ? and if so, would it not be better and more 
 Christian than the former state of things ? 
 
 Fellenberg was led to study this question in con- 
 sequence of observing the state of Europe, at that 
 time convulsed by the French revolution. The am- 
 
Vlll INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 bition of political power was the moving principle of 
 the few, to which the many were made subservient ; 
 and the lives of all, instead of being passed in the ex- 
 ercise of peaceful virtues, with the hope and expec- 
 tation of a better world, were exhausted in the rage 
 and passions of savages. Fellenberg groaned over 
 this exhibition of human ferocity, — over the social 
 ruin which it occasioned, — over the total absence of 
 Christian character which it betrayed. He beheld 
 Christian men, as they called themselves, tearing 
 one another to pieces, and for no ostensible good, — 
 the mere instruments of the few ringleaders of the 
 world's misery. Human nature seemed to have dis- 
 carded all virtue, and to have become the receptacle 
 of that assemblage of vices denounced by the apostle 
 — " envy, variance, wrath, strife, hatred, sedition, 
 drunkenness, revellings, adultery, murder." 
 
 Fellenberg at first imagined that something might 
 be done among the rulers of mankind, the directors 
 of the political storm, to calm this turbulent state, 
 and to introduce harmony into this chaos; but he 
 found them totally indifferent and apathetic, and 
 blind to all but the scene in which they lived. 
 Every man forms a horizon for himself by his 
 actions, thoughts, and reading. The demagogue 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. IX 
 
 sees nothing but the mob before him ; the soldier, 
 nothing but the battle ; the politician, often, espe- 
 cially in troublous times, nothing but the intrigues 
 around him. None but the Christian philanthropist 
 can take an enlarged view of man in his present and 
 future hopes — his social condition, his capabilities 
 of improvement, the possible extent of happiness or 
 misery for which he may be born. The Bible pre- 
 sents him with the ideal perfectibility of universal 
 man - inspiring those who drink deep into its spirit 
 with high and noble hopes for the welfare of hu- 
 manity, and with an ardent desire to promote it ; 
 while those who are wholly absorbed in the business 
 of life remain pagans in a Christian age, and all 
 their ideas of man are mean, low, and perishing : 
 to them man still continues " a brute that perishes." 
 Fellenberg, therefore, found no sympathy from the 
 statesmen of his day ; they were callous to the com- 
 mon social rights of states and of men, as well as 
 indifferent to all views and projects of moral im* 
 provement. In fact, what does the mere politician, 
 whether demagogue or tyrant, require of man, but 
 to be a blind instrument in his ambitious grasp ? 
 He wishes his follower to have enough mind to 
 direct his physical strength most effectually accord- 
 
X INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 ing to the command of a superior, but no more. It 
 is the enlightened politician — the legislator properly 
 so called — who considers man not as a tool with 
 which he is to work, but as a ward committed to his 
 charge, and for whose character, usefulness, and 
 happiness, he will be held responsible at the day of 
 judgment. 
 
 Fellenberg living in such an age of vice, im- 
 piety, and misery, felt keenly the degradation and 
 corruption of man ; and also that this was no new 
 state of things, though an aggravated one. He saw 
 that Europe had never been practically Christianised ; 
 that she had been converted from paganism little 
 more than in name; and that her barbarism had 
 never been extirpated. He beheld in history a 
 swarm of nations issuing from savage forests, con- 
 quering a comparatively civilised nation, separating 
 into feudalities, continuing their wars with each 
 other, ignorant of letters, studying no art or science 
 but that of the sword. The outbreakings of modern 
 revolutions were nothing but a continuance of the 
 history of the race. It was no new or sudden vol- 
 cano, acting by new and unknown laws : the causes 
 were deeply laid in the ignorance and barbarism of 
 the people, and in the pugnacious and arbitrary prin- 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. XI 
 
 -ciples of the rulers. We are not here questioning 
 the providential wisdom of the history of man, as 
 shewn in the European march from barbarism and 
 paganism to civilisation, Christianity, and rational 
 and constitutional liberty : but we cannot insist too 
 strongly upon our pristine barbarism and ignorance, 
 and the total want of any general moral means of 
 removing them, beyond the formalities of religion ; 
 lest it should be imagined that the mass of the 
 people among our ancestors were in possession of 
 ample and efficient means of moral and religious 
 instruction. 
 
 Fellenberg was one of the few who traced the 
 tumults and troubles of his age to the moral de- 
 pravity of men in their social relations. With the 
 Bible in his hand, and an enlightened philosophy in 
 his heart, he considered society and men as they 
 were in fact, as they ought to be as Christians, and 
 as they might be under a proper guidance and sys- 
 tem of early discipline and instruction. Unlike 
 others who had preceded him, but with partial and 
 theoretic views of the subject, he did not propound 
 his ideas to the public in writing ; but, convinced 
 of the truth, power, and force of the principles he 
 had arrived at, he determined upon submitting them 
 
Xll INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 to the test of an experiment, to which he pledged his 
 talents, property, and life, — and for so doing was 
 denounced as the enemy of his race ! 
 
 The improvement of mankind in the arts of civi- 
 lisation seems to be under laws of more certain, or, 
 rather, more rapid operation, than their improvement 
 in morals. The civilisation of arts seems to be first 
 attained ; that of intellect next ; and that of morals 
 last of all. Indeed, the two former may advance 
 while the latter seems to retrograde. This was the 
 case among the early Eastern nations, and among 
 the Greeks and Romans : so much so, that it be- 
 came a kind of philosophical proverb, that when 
 nations had attained to what was then deemed their 
 highest point of so-called civilisation and refinement, 
 they retrograded and declined by a natural necessity. 
 The most civilised nations of Europe seem to have 
 attained, during the last century, about the same 
 degree of refinement which belonged to Greece and 
 Rome in their best days. They were great in arms, 
 arts, oratory, and poetry ; but they had not improved 
 in morals in an equal degree. They had, indeed, 
 theoretically a better religion ; but the superstitions 
 of barbarous times were not worn out, the reforma- 
 tion of a corrupt creed was only partially effected ; 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. Xlll 
 
 and the peculiar sublimity of the Christian code of 
 morals, the conquest over the selfish principle of 
 man, and the exaltation of his motives into a de- 
 pendence upon Divine direction and assistance, 
 opening to him a field of progressive and infinite 
 improvement, were almost unknown. Vice abounded 
 in all classes of society, according to the circum- 
 stances, opportunities, and temptations of each ; and 
 the few holy characters which were scattered through 
 the mass, seemed to be entirely isolated, and to exert 
 no leavening process upon the surrounding crowds. 
 At one time, vice was the test of loyalty, as piety 
 was of disaffection ; and the spread of infidelity was 
 by some considered as a sign of national prosperity. 
 We venture to say, that these feelings and judgments 
 are not yet extinct. In our own age, it has been 
 scarcely creditable to belong to Bible or missionary 
 societies ; and infant-schools were once considered 
 as the nurseries of freethinkers, or as the visionary 
 projects of Utopian philanthropists. It seemed to 
 be absolutely necessary that mankind should expe- 
 rience practically the utmost horrors, misery, and 
 anarchy of vice and ignorance, and have that expe- 
 rience reiterated upon them generation after genera- 
 tion, before they could be convinced of the inherent 
 
XIV INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 and indefeasible malignity of vice, and of the sublime 
 beauty of holiness. The French revolution did in- 
 deed strike terror into the hearts of men, and made 
 crime at length detestable. Not that it was the first 
 or only consequence of vicious principles which Eu- 
 rope had witnessed — far from it — for she was bred 
 in war and rapine ; but vice appeared in a new garb, 
 and less under the direction of its usual leaders. 
 Still, the horror that was felt was more political than 
 moral. Men feared the miseries of vice as exhibited 
 in public convulsions ; but they continued blind to 
 its effects on social and domestic happiness. Provided 
 the state were free from change, they cared not for 
 the tears shed in secret over the degradation of pri- 
 vate infamy. Another step was necessary in the 
 moral demonstration; which was, that public pro- 
 sperity and security should be deemed to be utterly 
 incompatible with private vice. 
 
 To arrive practically at this momentous conclu- 
 sion is a great era in the history of man, because it 
 leads at once to a practical inquiry of an experi- 
 mental kind ; and when men are once bent upon 
 an experimental pursuit, universal experience proves 
 that their labours will be rewarded with a rich 
 harvest. 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. XV 
 
 Slow are men to be convinced of the importance 
 and necessity of moral character to the security and 
 prosperity of states ; but slower still are they to dis- 
 cover in what way that moral character can be 
 attained. The subject of the formation of character 
 among the mass of mankind is altogether new. The 
 characters of men have been formed in past times by 
 national circumstances, and not at all by artificial 
 means. By artificial means, we understand schools. 
 There are only two means of forming character — 
 the domestic hearth and the school. The former is 
 evidently suited only to nations in a barbarous or 
 semi-barbarous state. When men have advanced to 
 a certain point of civilisation, the parents among the 
 mass of the people are too much occupied in their 
 daily callings to be able to influence their children 
 sufficiently. The children then cease to imbibe the 
 instructions or character of the parent, and come 
 under the irregular and mischievous influence of 
 each other ; the parents also themselves, in passing 
 from the barbarous to the civilised state, contract 
 the vices peculiar to the latter. Every state of so- 
 ciety is harassed by its peculiar vices, of which the 
 mass are the victims. The domestic teaching, there- 
 fore, soon becomes worse than nothing — it is only a 
 
XVI INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 name. Under that name, the children of neigh- 
 bouring families herd together, and contaminate 
 each other. The character of man is habit : what, 
 then, more fatal than the association of human 
 beings, without the practice of virtue and prudence ; 
 without self-denial and experience ; full of passion 
 and irregular desire ; and without control and dis- 
 cipline ? Profligacy and recklessness must be the 
 inevitable consequences. If there were not some 
 unknown check upon this state of society, some 
 providential superintendence, permitting all evils to 
 have a certain sway and no more, with a view to 
 the ultimate extermination of evil through its own 
 odiousness, we should be filled with despair at the 
 moral prospects of man under such circumstances, 
 and foresee nothing but increasing vice and increas- 
 ing political convulsion. 
 
 We have said, that parents, as soon as society 
 passes from the barbarous state to the pursuit of 
 arts, are totally incompetent to educate their own 
 children, and that the artificial education of the 
 school must commence. This is true of all classes 
 of society, as well as of the lowest. Education be- 
 comes an art, as well as the manufacture of articles 
 of consumption. It becomes subject to the law of 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. XV11 
 
 the division of labour; and they who engage in it 
 will excel in it by the same necessity that a mechanic 
 excels in his peculiar occupation. Upon this prin- 
 ciple, schools become necessary for all classes, to 
 supply the want of time, attention, and knowledge, 
 in parents ^f all ranks. If mankind had been capable 
 of anticipating and foreseeing their own wants before 
 they were pressed upon them by a painful expe- 
 rience, schools and schoolmasters would have been 
 coeval with the first transition from a state of bar- 
 barian war to one of incipient civilisation and the 
 cultivation of the arts. But man cannot foresee, and 
 can only learn by pain and sorrow how to obviate 
 the recurrence of similar suffering. The formation 
 of character by means of schools, — i.e. by means 
 of systematic discipline and instruction, — is a new 
 thought. Schools were first established for other 
 purposes; and when established, the formation of 
 character was not an element in their system, nor 
 is it so yet. Schools were established for the sake 
 of mere knowledge ; for cultivating the intellect, not 
 the heart. The progress of society required a cer- 
 tain number of persons who could read and write, 
 in order to fill, in church and state, certain offices 
 which had sprung up from the necessities of society ; 
 
XV111 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 and it was long before these necessities were really 
 supplied. Of those who were thus educated, some 
 turned their attention to literature and general know- 
 ledge, and thus opened a new field for the employ- 
 ment of the human mind — afield of mere abstract 
 knowledge and speculation, totally unconnected with 
 practical purposes. 
 
 But by the same condition that the practical 
 position of government and of the church required 
 that a certain number of persons should receive 
 what was called a learned education, the position 
 of affairs in the middle classes of society also began 
 to make some education appear desirable. Persons 
 were not fitted to carry on the common business of 
 life without a certain amount of instruction ; and as 
 only one kind was to be had, men were obliged to 
 send their children to the schools which happened 
 to be in existence. These schools were all of the 
 same character : the subjects taught, and the mode 
 of teaching, were the same, whatever condition of 
 life the pupils were intended for; and this system 
 was a necessary one under the circumstances, be- 
 cause some of the scholars being intended for the 
 learned professions, as they were called, became the 
 principal objects of the master's care. He adapted 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. XIX 
 
 his system to them ; and the others were obliged to 
 follow it, and to make the best of it, though it might 
 not be the best preparation for them and their pro- 
 fessions> as it was supposed to be for others. 
 
 In order to understand the history of schools, 
 and to make allowance for the defects of the early 
 ones, and through this history to improve our own, 
 we must consider that the early schools were con- 
 fined in the materials they had to work with. 
 These were few and scanty both in kind and degree. 
 Every science and art had to be discovered before 
 it could be taught : grammar and logic, geography 
 and maps, arithmetic, geometry, and natural philo- 
 sophy, elementary history, the mythology of the 
 classics, illustrations of manners and customs, dic- 
 tionaries, — every thing had to be constructed ; so 
 that it is wonderful what and how the early schools 
 contrived to teach. The subjects taught, and the 
 mode of teaching, had to undergo a progress of dis- 
 covery and improvement, like all other sciences. It 
 might have been expected, the teachers should have 
 discovered what they were most in want of; but we 
 should bear in mind, that their time and thoughts 
 are occupied not in discovering, but in teaching. 
 Many of the most important materials of teaching 
 
XX INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 are derived from other professions. The teacher 
 only selects and concentrates what he finds useful 
 to his purpose. The early schools, of necessity 
 exceedingly imperfect, have unfortunately entailed 
 their imperfections upon their successors. The 
 objects they contemplated were unfavourable to 
 enlarged views, or to any thing like an educational 
 system. With them education was a mere appren- 
 ticeship to the learned languages — a mere trade, 
 not a science. They professed to teach one thing, 
 and one thing only, the grammatical elements of 
 Latin, and, perhaps, of Greek. We say elements, 
 because that degree of teaching which consists in 
 writing and speaking those languages with facility, 
 has hardly yet been attained in any school. This 
 leads us to consider a wonderful fact, that, though 
 every child learns to talk his own language while he 
 is a child, yet, after ten years' teaching of the Latin 
 or Greek language, the scholar has not learnt to 
 speak, and scarcely to write it. The withering 
 effects of this contracted system of teaching, this 
 limiting of instruction to Greek and Latin, were not 
 so much felt in the higher departments of society, 
 for which it was chiefly intended, because such in- 
 struction occupied only a portion of a long period 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. XXI 
 
 of pupilage, and because no other knowledge or 
 science was required in some of the professions; 
 while in others, personal labour and perseverance 
 made up for all deficiencies of elementary teaching. 
 And we must never forget that the innate powers, 
 faculties, and principles of the human mind, are not 
 to be judged of by the results of any teaching which 
 has hitherto prevailed. Teaching cannot create : 
 mind is a creation. Teaching is only moulding that 
 which already exists ; and this moulding, if not con- 
 ducted skilfully, and agreeably with the original laws 
 and intentions of the Creator, will only deface his 
 work, instead of bringing it to its intended perfec- 
 tion. The mind of original ability and talent, there- 
 fore, made its way amid all difficulties, and amid the 
 vices of all teaching, to its proper station in the 
 world of mind, and was no proof of any excellence 
 in the system under which it was trained. With the 
 majority of minds it was far different. A contracted 
 and dry system was to them a second nature, and 
 frustrated the first which they had received at 
 birth; and the faults of the teaching were imputed to 
 the original creation. Thus nature became libelled 
 by the very persons who ought to have worshipped 
 her : the beauties they had defaced were pronounced 
 b 
 
XX11 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 never to have existed, and the distortions of art were 
 asserted to be natural deformities. 
 
 The incurable and ruinous consequences of this 
 contracted system were seen and first remedied in 
 the profession of arms. As the art of war became 
 a science, and dependent upon mind more than upon 
 brute force, real knowledge, a knowledge of arith- 
 metic and geometry, became the only basis upon 
 which it could be erected. Government was there- 
 fore obliged to establish schools of its own, adapted 
 to its purpose ; not merely schools for completing 
 education, analogous to universities, but elementary 
 schools for teaching the simplest properties of num- 
 bers and space. When other persons demanded that 
 these elements should be made a part of teaching in 
 schools, they were pronounced unnecessary and use- 
 less, except for certain mechanic arts. When admitted, 
 they were taught by permission rather than upon 
 principle, and a certain air of contempt was thrown 
 over them. Elements upon which depended the per- 
 fection of the art of war and national security and 
 independence, and upon which the whole fabric of 
 the universe was created, were pronounced to be con- 
 temptible, and are still held in all the higher English 
 schools to be of very inferior importance. 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. XX111 
 
 The middling classes of society also at length 
 perceived the imperfect and inadequate teaching of 
 the schools. At the age when parents were obliged 
 to remove their children from school, they found 
 them not only deficient in all knowledge calculated 
 to prove practically useful in the employments for 
 which they were destined, but even in that to which 
 their time had been solely devoted. Not to have been 
 taught useful practical knowledge, was an evil ; but 
 not to have been taught that which alone had been 
 attempted, was more serious still. These middling 
 classes, however, had not the power, like govern- 
 ment, of correcting these evils : they could not esta- 
 blish schools and professorships of their own ; neither 
 their time nor their funds allowed of it. They were 
 compelled to accept what the schools offered, and to 
 make the best of it. Fortunately the consequences, 
 however injurious, were not so fatal as they would 
 have proved in the other case, had that also been 
 without a remedy. Inferior and limited teaching 
 rendered them a less intelligent class of people, less 
 skilful in their employments, less capable of im- 
 proving their situation and circumstances, less useful 
 members of the community, with fewer resources, 
 fewer means of self-recreation and rational amuse- 
 
XXIV INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 ment, and left their moral character much lower 
 than it ought to have been ; but it did not expose 
 these classes to absolute ruin, as would have been 
 the case with the nation, had government not taken 
 the education of its military servants out of the 
 hands of the common schools. 
 
 We have called the schools of former days a sys- 
 tem of mere teaching, because of their confined plan, 
 objects, and attainments; we have now to consider 
 what they were as places of education. School and 
 education are thought to be synonymous terms ; and 
 so they ought to be — but so it has not been. Educa- 
 tion is a term of wide signification, and will not 
 apply, except in a most qualified manner, to any 
 narrow or partial system. A system which merely 
 proposes to teach one particular art, science, or lan- 
 guage, is not an education, except in a very loose 
 acceptation. All the early period of life, up to the 
 time when a person enters upon a profession or a 
 business, is the period of education. In whatever 
 way he may be taught or managed during that pe- 
 riod, that teaching and management is called his 
 education, however imperfect or even objectionable 
 it may be. In one sense, every thing which happens 
 to a person, from the cradle to the period of his 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. XXV 
 
 entering on active and responsible life, may be very 
 justly called his education ; because, by all those 
 circumstances, whatever they may be, whether good 
 or bad, favourable or unfavourable, in a school or 
 out of a school, private or public, his habits and 
 character are formed, and he becomes a good or 
 bad member of society. But true education contem- 
 plates the whole man, — not one faculty alone, but 
 all his faculties, powers, feelings, and principles ; so 
 that the word is of wide import, and may include 
 either the very highest or the very lowest set of cir- 
 cumstances in which a human being may be brought 
 up. It is necessary to bear in mind this expansive 
 meaning of the term, because it affects every argu- 
 ment on the subject, and entirely alters its com- 
 plexion, according as it is applied to the higher or 
 lower classes of the community. Thus a person who 
 has low and contracted ideas of education will call 
 any school -instruction an education, however few 
 may be the subjects taught, or however imperfect 
 the method of teaching. In speaking of even the 
 highest schools, he will consider their education per- 
 fect, because they stand high in public estimation, 
 without inquiring into the details of the system fol- 
 lowed, or its effect upon the character and prin- 
 
XXVI INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 ciples. Some people have no idea of any education 
 beyond the bare teaching of the classics, and will 
 hence condemn the education of the lower classes ; 
 as if there was nothing else which they might pro- 
 fitably learn, and as if education had nothing to do 
 with the formation of character independently of 
 learning Latin and Greek. 
 
 To have a worthy conception of all that is meant 
 by the term education, we must not be content with 
 a dictionary, and call it with Johnson, " the instruc- 
 tion of children ;" but we must consider what man 
 is in his original and divine faculties, what is the 
 calling for which he is destined in this life, and what 
 are the ultimate expectations and responsibilities of 
 his being in the life to come. Education brings out 
 all the faculties of man with a view to the two 
 great ends of his being, both present and future ; 
 to his own personal happiness, and to the good of 
 society. If there is one feature in education more 
 prominent than another, it is this, that it involves 
 moral and religious character more than intellect. 
 It is the connexion of education with character, and 
 the great dependence of the one upon the other, 
 which renders the subject of universal interest and 
 of unbounded importance. 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. XXVU 
 
 This view of education has only of late began 
 to be generally taken. The early schools were en- 
 tirely intellectual. They proposed to themselves only 
 the cultivation of the intellectual powers, talents, and 
 abilities, in a restricted sense ; and they only attempted 
 to educate for the demands of the day, which were 
 some knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages. 
 There was a historical reason for this : the records 
 of revelation were enclosed in these languages; 
 those records could only be understood and fairly 
 estimated by the study of their languages. They 
 had been the mother-tongue of the first disciples of 
 the religion, and of the great works of the first 
 scholars, and orators, and, we might almost say, 
 philosophers, which had adorned it. They contained 
 what may be called its early literature and external 
 history. When, therefore, our Germanic forefathers 
 were sufficiently civilised to begin the acquisition of 
 literature, they were compelled, by the moral necessity 
 of circumstances, to cultivate the Latin and Greek lan- 
 guages ; and schools were compelled, in like manner, 
 to make those languages their principal, if not their 
 only subject of instruction. Thus education became 
 identified with the study of those two languages, 
 and the name and thing were defined in accordance 
 
XXVlil INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 with this narrow, but, at that period, not unim- 
 portant purpose. To teach them, was to educate ; 
 and to be educated, was to have been at a school 
 where they were taught. After the demand for per- 
 sons so educated had been supplied, and persons 
 intended for other professions, and for the middle 
 walks of life, began to frequent these schools — and 
 after some other kinds of knowledge began to creep 
 into them, — as such knowledge grew up in the 
 world, and came also into demand, the same intel- 
 lectual character continued to possess the schools. 
 The training of the moral habits was not con- 
 sidered to be the chief, or even a leading end to 
 be aimed at. 
 
 The same necessity which compelled persons 
 who were intended for the higher professions to 
 study Latin and Greek, compelled other classes to 
 make different acquisitions of knowledge. Thus read- 
 ing, writing, and the first elements of numbers, be- 
 came absolutely necessary for a certain number of 
 people of all classes, as the affairs of common life 
 became more complicated, and as trade and com- 
 merce extended. Schools, therefore, for teaching 
 these elements alone, descended to the lowest ranks, 
 from which indeed — such was the demand for this 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. XXlX 
 
 knowledge — many persons arose, who, by ability, 
 industry, and perseverance, attained to wealth and 
 celebrity, and laid the foundation of influential fami- 
 lies in the kingdom. But the numbers of such 
 schools were still small compared with the whole 
 population, and worldly utility was the chief end 
 proposed in them both by master and scholar. How 
 it happened that so much time was consumed in 
 making such trifling attainments, may now appear 
 extraordinary; but the art of teaching was in its 
 infancy, and consisted chiefly in giving children an 
 opportunity of teaching themselves, rather than in 
 directing or contributing to their acquirements. The 
 greater part of the school-time was occupied in doing 
 nothing. Children were confined within doors during 
 certain hours, whether occupied or not; and with 
 this so-called teaching all parties were satisfied, if 
 we except the scholars, who, employed upon dull, 
 irksome, and often unintelligible tasks, never tasted 
 the sweets of knowledge, of which none was im- 
 parted — did not feel, that, even in their avowed 
 studies, they made any progress, and therefore con- 
 sidered school only as a species of imprisonment. 
 
 The last half century has seen such changes in 
 European society, manners, habits, education, arts, 
 
^XXX INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 and sciences, as cannot be paralleled in the history 
 of mankind. One of its grandest features has been 
 a moral one : it has been the era of Bibles. In all 
 ages of the Christian dispensation, missionaries have 
 been sent forth, more or less, to announce the glad 
 tidings of salvation to all lands ; but in none has the 
 Bible itself been sent forth to be its own herald, 
 with or without the accompanying missionary, with 
 the same zeal or to the same extent. In no former 
 age had it been felt, that nations of professing Chris- 
 tians might be enveloped in pagan darkness as 
 much as those who never heard the name of Christ ; 
 and that the possession, and therefore the spirit of 
 the Bible, was in many Christian places as rare as 
 in pagan land. This was a great moral discovery, 
 however strong the term may appear to be ; and the 
 men who could make and feel the value of that dis- 
 covery possessed no ordinary mind and heart, and 
 were an earnest of the moral spirit which was awa- 
 kening from its slumbers. This spirit could not fail 
 to diffuse itself into all those subjects which con- 
 cern the character, happiness, and improvement 
 of man. It should have been watched, appreciated, 
 and directed, instead of being confounded with a 
 mere revolutionary mania. If, indeed, this spirit 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. XXXI 
 
 had not sprung up, all Europe would probably 
 have run the same course of " decline and fall" 
 as did the empires of old. The Bible stood be- 
 tween us and the precipice, and saved the world 
 politically, as the divine Author of Christianity had 
 saved it morally. 
 
 It was this moral spirit which prompted the edu- 
 cation of the people at large — of the lowest order of 
 society, as they have been called. Education had 
 begun to spread among this class beyond the mere 
 demand for it of which we have spoken ; but it was 
 expensive, and extremely imperfect, even in impart- 
 ing the trifling elements of reading, writing, and 
 arithmetic. The importance, however, of this degree 
 of education, as the handmaid of religion and mo- 
 rality, was beginning to be perceived ; and though 
 the ostensible object was principally the acquisition 
 of the elements of knowledge, the real object was 
 an ulterior one — namely, the improvement of cha- 
 racter, and the acquisition of Christian instruction. 
 When it was discovered that, by proper arrange- 
 ments, one master might teach the elements to three 
 hundred, or even five hundred children, as perfectly 
 as to a few, the moral spirit of the day was roused 
 to carry such a system into practice ; and the mag- 
 
XXXU INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 nificent idea occurred of giving to every Christian, 
 child a Christian education. 
 
 The era of popular education had therefore begun 
 — it was the companion of the Bible era. Both had 
 the same object in view ; the moral improvement of 
 all mankind, of the universal race, as far as might 
 be permitted by the conditions of this imperfect 
 stage of existence. The one was the foundation, the 
 other the superstructure; the one was the light of 
 the world, the other the guide by which that light 
 was, humanly speaking, to be reached and disse- 
 minated. 
 
 But the schools established upon this principle 
 could imitate at first none but those which preceded 
 them in their immediate object, which was, as we 
 have said, more intellectual than moral. They pro- 
 posed to improve the methods of attaining the ele- 
 ments of knowledge; and though the Bible was 
 introduced as a class-book, yet the mode in which 
 it was read partook more of an intellectual than of 
 a moral exercise. Spelling-lessons were made from 
 it, and detached parts were extracted for reading- 
 lessons, which lost much of their force by being 
 separated from the context; and sometimes sen- 
 tences were associated for the mere purpose of 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. XXX1U 
 
 learning to read, having no connexion in sense with 
 each other. Besides, it is very possible to learn to 
 spell and read, without having any comprehension of 
 the sense. At this day, the children of those who 
 speak the Gaelic language in Scotland are taught 
 to read English fluently, without understanding it. 
 The effects of these schools, therefore, were less 
 perfect than had been anticipated, though as good 
 as, under all the circumstances, could be expected 
 by those who had a practical knowledge of early 
 education, and of the intricacies of the human mind, 
 and of the numerous difficulties to be overcome, 
 before the results of education can be reduced to 
 any thing like certainty. An opinion is now very 
 generally gaining ground, that these schools have 
 not attained all that was desirable, and that their 
 methods require and are susceptible of improve- 
 ment — that they have been too exclusively intel- 
 lectual and mechanical — that they do not suffi- 
 ciently influence the moral habits, and therefore 
 the religious principles of the children. The term 
 education is beginning to be understood in its full 
 and legitimate sense, as affecting the whole character 
 of the man, moral as well as intellectual, but prin- 
 cipally the former ; that its great end and aim should 
 
XXXIV INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 be to form good practical principles and habits, 
 and not great readers or arithmeticians : and these 
 ideas have spread from the lower to the higher 
 schools. Men may be useful and happy with in- 
 ferior literary attainments, but not with inferior 
 moral principles and habits. The miseries of the 
 world in past ages have been occasioned by its vices, 
 not by its ignorance of languages, arts, and sciences, 
 any farther than as the latter may influence the 
 former. There is a growing conviction that the 
 great antidote to vice and crime, and therefore to 
 political disturbances, is to be found in an improved 
 moral education in the mass of the people. 
 
 We have thus traced the history of education 
 in Europe, according to our own impressions of it, 
 because the principles of such subjects are only to 
 be found in their history. Imagination is fond of 
 looking forward to the future in its own poetic 
 dreams, without studying the past; but the true 
 future can only be seen in the past, of which it is 
 the necessary consequence. The facts of past ages 
 contain the moral laws of man, as determined by 
 his Creator ; and the sagacious development of those 
 laws indicates the finger of Providence. The history 
 of schools must not be looked at merely in them- 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. XXXV 
 
 selves, but as proofs of the character of the succes- 
 sive ages ; and by studying the demands of this 
 character in past ages, we may foretell, to a certain 
 extent, its future demands. Schools, as well as all 
 other institutions, are formed by the general cha- 
 racter of the times, which is in a great measure 
 independent of all things but itself. While it acts 
 on all things, it is no doubt reacted upon by them, 
 in a degree; but it is itself the great mainspring, 
 the great source of vitality. Man was made to 
 govern the world and to serve his Maker ; and for 
 both purposes he must have an original independent 
 character stamped upon him, the law of which is 
 self-expansive, both in the individual and in the 
 mass, advancing from generation to generation, 
 " conquering and to conquer." We have demon- 
 strable proof of this both in philosophy and in reve- 
 lation ; for revelation was evidently intended to bring 
 man from a state of pagan barbarism into one of 
 civilisation and social blessings — to carry him be- 
 yond what any mere social institutions could do — 
 to give him new springs of action from within him- 
 self — to raise him to a sense of his individual im- 
 portance in the sight of his Maker-^to give him 
 a more penetrating moral eye, and a wider moral 
 
XXXVI INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 horizon — to elevate him from matter to spirit, from 
 sense to mind, from the impure and the grovelling 
 to the pure, the holy, and the sublime, — and to 
 make the mortal and finite forgotten in the immortal 
 and the infinite. 
 V Let us now apply the preceding considerations 
 to the character of Fellenberg. It is about thirty 
 years since the idea of popular education took root 
 in this country ; and it is only as yesterday that the 
 full meaning of the term education, as implying the 
 formation of principles and character, began to be 
 understood; but it is forty years since the subject 
 was viewed by Fellenberg in all its bearings and 
 importance. To arrive at his conclusions, to satisfy 
 himself of the improvableness of man, and of the 
 methods by which such possible improvement was 
 to be attained, required great honesty of mind, 
 strong religious principles, a genuine philanthropy 
 and gospel-love of his fellow-creatures, great know- 
 ledge of the principles of human nature, a thorough 
 sense and conviction of the deplorable moral state 
 of man, a deep philosophical spirit, and a perfect 
 disinterestedness. It was necessary that he should 
 look into himself for all the resources of which he 
 had need. He could obtain help from no one : he 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. XXXV11 
 
 eould even obtain sympathy from no one. His 
 views, when proposed to others, would appear fan- 
 ciful, Utopian, and impracticable. If they had been 
 simple and obvious, he would not have been the 
 first to entertain them. For the very reason that 
 he was the first to conceive the practical improve- 
 ment of mankind, he was not understood; not 
 being understood, he was misrepresented and at- 
 tacked. This is no new circumstance in the his- 
 tory of man; ignorance, misconception, misrepre- 
 sentation, opposition, hatred, persecution, follow each 
 other in a necessary order. The passions of men 
 follow their motives, their motives follow their know- 
 ledge." Ignorance therefore necessarily produces bad 
 motives, and bad motives rouse bad passions. The 
 enumeration and classification of motives, and the 
 inculcation of good ones as the basis of character, 
 had not yet entered into the conception of edu- 
 cators, except of Fellenberg. But Fellenberg was 
 not to be daunted or deterred by any obstacles, phy- 
 sical or moral. He trusted in the soundness of his 
 principles, in the holiness of his cause, and in the 
 order of Providence. His feelings, motives, and 
 principles, were fundamentally and essentially reli- 
 gious, though in working them out he appeared to 
 
XXXV111 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 be following a philosophical scheme, and to depend 
 upon philosophical means and principles. This 
 general mistake respecting his views and motives 
 arose from the extremely imperfect education 
 hitherto in operation, and the extremely imperfect 
 method of instruction on all subjects — but espe- 
 cially on moral and religious ones — hitherto pur- 
 sued at all schools. Words are considered merely 
 grammatically as words, and not intellectually and 
 morally as the representatives of thoughts, feelings, 
 things, and events ; and when the meaning of words 
 is required or given, it is from the dictionary, a dry 
 formal one — a distinction from other words rather 
 than the development of the meaning and bearing 
 of the word itself as the representative of things. 
 Hence the extent to which men have been deceived 
 and misled by the use and abuse of words. Partial 
 and party meanings have been attached to them; 
 and what were invented and intended originally to 
 promote the knowledge of things, have often proved to 
 be among the greatest obstacles to knowledge. The 
 business of the savage is to invent words to express 
 his thoughts, and feelings, and the objects he is 
 acquainted with; that of the civilised man, of the 
 scholar and man of intellect, is to form clear ideas 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. XXXIX 
 
 of the things which are represented by all the words 
 of the language he studies. The child is surrounded 
 by and overwhelmed with words. He reads, espe- 
 cially in this age of books, words innumerable, whose 
 sounds and letters he knows, but not their meanings. 
 When questioned upon that subject, he shews the 
 few ideas which the words have conveyed. 
 
 Those who first visited the establishment of Fel- 
 lenberg saw a great scheme in action of schools, 
 workshops, and agriculture; they saw new things 
 taught, and old things taught in a new way ; they 
 saw schools for all classes, the lowest and the high- 
 est, carried on under one superintendence. When 
 the establishment was explained to them, they heard 
 the reasons of what was done, and the dependence 
 of one part upon another. This was the explanation 
 they desired, and the one which was obviously de- 
 sirable to be given and received. They did not 
 require, nor was it possible, that Fellenberg should 
 enter into the history of his own mind upon the 
 subject, and how far his religious and conscientious 
 feelings had operated in urging him to the under- 
 taking. They therefore denominated the whole ma- 
 chinery a piece of philosophy ; and this ominous 
 word was echoed through Europe — particularly 
 
xl INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 through England — accompanied by all the vague, 
 indefinite, and erroneous ideas which modern times 
 had attached to it. Philosophy, which originally 
 meant the study of wisdom, means specifically, in 
 these days, the attempt to discover some rule or 
 law under which a number of facts may be ranged, 
 or to deduce some maxim of common sense from 
 the study of a particular subject, by which our actions 
 may be directed and regulated. The English pride 
 themselves upon their practical common sense on 
 all subjects, and upon their disregard of theory and 
 philosophy, as unsuited to practice ; but they forget 
 that this is only philosophy under a different name, 
 and that the greatest philosopher is he who can best 
 adapt general rules and maxims to the practice of 
 common life. If we glance at the state of crime — 
 at that of pauperism a few years ago — and at the 
 general results of education among the middle and 
 upper classes, — we shall have no great reason to 
 boast of our common sense, or of our wisdom in 
 discarding the study of philosophy as applicable to 
 the improvement of man. 
 
 It is a great thing to introduce the love of any 
 subject or science into the heart ; or to excite, in 
 one's self or others, the sentiment of love at all. He 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. xli 
 
 who has it not, has only half a title to humanity ; he 
 who has once attained it, has entered into the highest 
 class among the beings to which he belongs. For 
 this truth we have the surest possible authority — 
 that of the Divine Founder of our religion; love 
 being made by him the grand test of discipleship. 
 This love must be as diffusive as the works of its 
 primary and great object, the Maker of all things. 
 The sentiment which has once attached itself to him 
 must spread over all his works; because wherever 
 they are, He is, for they exist only in him. It even 
 attaches itself to inanimate and insensible things ; 
 it sees " sermons in stones, and good in every thing." 
 Much more does it unfold itself towards its own 
 kind — towards the image of the Divinity, which is 
 stamped upon every human being. A man may be- 
 come an earnest politician, or a violent party-man, 
 or a philosophical writer upon plausible theories of 
 imaginary virtue, without any practical sentiment of 
 regard and love for man, or of reverence for his 
 Maker ; but no man without that sentiment will en- 
 gage in a scheme of benevolence entirely practical, 
 which will require years of labour, anxiety, self-sacri- 
 fice, and expense, to bring to perfection. It is a com- 
 mon proverb, that it is easy to talk, but difficult to 
 
xlii INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 practise. If Fellenberg had been like other men, he 
 would have been satisfied with writing or declaiming 
 on these subjects ; but he would not have retired from 
 public life, that he might surround himself with objects 
 of care and responsibility, and have drawn upon him- 
 self the suspicion and ill-will of his countrymen and 
 of prejudiced foreigners. 
 
 We must not, however, omit to mention, that 
 Fellenberg was preceded in his philanthropic path 
 by one celebrated individual, Pestalozzi ; * whose 
 sensitive nature, shocked at the vice and brutality of 
 the lowest class of society about him — filled with pity 
 for the deserted and destitute state of the children 
 — and deeply penetrated with the utter inefficiency 
 of all the common methods of training them up to 
 Christian virtue, — determined to try what methods 
 entirely new might accomplish in saving them from 
 destruction, vice, and infamy, and forming them to 
 industry and religion. He simply assumed these 
 principles — that children are created with minds, 
 feelings, affections, a moral instinct, and an under- 
 
 * It should not be forgotten that Pestalozzi himself had 
 been preceded by Rochow, Basedow, Campe, and Saltzmann ; 
 to each of whom education owes some improvement. 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. xltii 
 
 standing ; that mere memory is one of the lowest 
 of the faculties ; that learning by rote, without the 
 participation of the understanding, is not only use- 
 less and disgusting, but positively injurious, since it 
 tends to weaken, and may even pervert, the judg- 
 ment ; that the exercise of the affections and under- 
 standing in a natural way must be agreeable and 
 interesting to children ; and that both nature and 
 revelation must be delightful to the human soul, if 
 presented to it in a proper manner. The problem 
 to be solved was, How is this method to be dis- 
 covered? Pestalozzi discarded at once the usual 
 primary step of the alphabet and of spelling, and 
 deferred them till a certain portion of knowledge 
 had been acquired by oral instruction. Instead of 
 letters, he presented to the children things them- 
 selves, and explained to them their nature and uses ; 
 their qualities, as perceived by the different senses ; 
 their uses in the common concerns of life ; their na- 
 tural history ; how they were produced in nature ; 
 and what changes they underwent before they be- 
 came applicable to different uses. In all this, the 
 understanding preceded the memory ; and the child- 
 ren were found to be born with a relish for knowledge 
 which had never been suspected, and with an innate 
 
Xliv INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 ability for acquiring it which had been thought to 
 be the result only of a long and refined education. 
 In like manner, instead of giving them moral pre- 
 cepts to commit to memory, he drew out their moral 
 feelings by suitable questions, and by supposed cases 
 of life and manners ; by bringing before their ima- 
 gination scenes of domestic life, family affection, 
 good and bad conduct ; and by applying the ideas, 
 feelings, and principles, thus drawn forth, to their 
 own behaviour one among another. When he had 
 in this manner informed and enlightened the con- 
 science and moral judgment, he brought his instruc- 
 tion to the test of Scripture, which he illustrated 
 and enforced, and then impressed upon them as the 
 highest moral authority, and one to which their 
 whole nature should be subject. He next opened 
 to them, after having thus prepared the way, the 
 spirituality of their own nature, and the eternal 
 improvement for which it had been created. He 
 then returned to the first and simple principles 
 from which he set out, and shewed how the ex- 
 ercise of the senses, and the knowledge obtained 
 by them, were the first links in the chain of divine 
 benevolence and wisdom, by which the young were 
 both to lay hold of wisdom and happiness them- 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. xlv 
 
 selves, and to glorify Him who made and upheld 
 them. 
 
 Pestalozzi could not fully explain his views of 
 education or of human nature : he was surrounded 
 with difficulties ; those views were extensive, embra- 
 cing man in all his faculties, feelings, and affections ; 
 in all his stages of childhood, youth, and maturity ; 
 in all his relations of child and parent, servant or 
 master, subject or ruler ; and as a religious being, 
 looking forward to a responsible eternity. No man 
 can appreciate education who does not view it in its 
 whole extent. It is the contracted view of it, of 
 which we have spoken before, that causes it to be 
 misunderstood and undervalued. But to carry his 
 plans into effect, Pestalozzi required time — the same 
 individuals to be under his management during the 
 whole period of education, till they should be old 
 enough to enter upon active life : he required the 
 means of maintaining his establishment, and teachers 
 to assist imbued with his own views, and practically 
 capable of acting upon them. Then he had to 
 contend against the prejudices and self-interest of 
 people about him — of the parents — of the Church 
 to which he belonged — and of the public function- 
 aries of the state— who were all jealous of new ideas, 
 
Xlvi INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 whatever they might be, and who feared that, however 
 corrupted and vicious the people were, every attempt 
 to improve them would only make them worse. Pes- 
 talozzi had neither the funds to support his estab- 
 lishment, nor health, strength, and calmness, to con- 
 tend against the opposition he met with from those 
 who misapprehended his views, or envied him the 
 chance of success, or opposed him for mere party 
 purposes. Thus, this great friend of humanity and 
 practical religion became a martyr to the grand 
 cause for which man was created and redeemed — 
 the cause of moral regeneration and of the practical 
 influence of the Gospel. 
 
 But Pestalozzi had not lived in vain. Though 
 some of his pupils had repaid his kindness and con- 
 fidence with base ingratitude, others had caught a 
 ray of his spirit, and contributed to spread its light 
 through Europe by various publications. No real 
 friend of man should ever be disheartened at the 
 slowness with which his good suggestions are under- 
 stood and received by the world, nor at the obloquy 
 through which they have to pass on their road to 
 adoption. If a man can sow but " one grain of mus- 
 tard-seed" during this his mortal pilgrimage, he may 
 lay his head in peace upon the pillow of death, satis- 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. xlvii 
 
 fied that he has not lived in vain. We cannot but 
 believe that there is an especial providence over the 
 hearts and lives of the moral improvers of mankind. 
 " Every good gift and every perfect gift is from 
 above, and cometh down from the Father of lights." 
 Society could not hold on its progressive course 
 without continual accessions of light and know- 
 ledge, exhibited and conveyed through the agencies 
 of the zealous and disinterested lovers of their kind. 
 These necessary and invaluable gifts are all rays 
 from Divine wisdom. It is our business to study 
 and profit by them, and to observe in them the 
 general rule or law with which they are connected, 
 in order to work with them for the improvement of 
 man. 
 
 When Fellenberg, therefore, began to direct his 
 mind to the formation of moral and religious cha- 
 racter in youth, as the preventive remedy for vice 
 and crime, and as the necessary steps, humanly 
 speaking, of elevating the heart to Christian prin- 
 ciples, he had the advantage of the experience of 
 Pestalozzi, and of other less eminent men, which 
 materially smoothed down the first difficulties of his 
 path. It had been proved that children might be 
 taken from the most abandoned parents, and after 
 
Xlviii INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 being for a certain time brought under the steady, 
 judicious, and kind discipline of Pestalozzi, would 
 become tractable, orderly, and industrious. Vice 
 seemed to disappear spontaneously, and good con- 
 duct to take its place. Idleness ceased to possess 
 charms ; regular labour and mental cultivation be- 
 came happiness. A spirit of Christian affection and 
 Christian duty grew up among the pupils, and reli- 
 gious principles became motives of conduct. 
 
 Before Fellenberg began to act upon his views, 
 he had arrived at the conclusion, that the only solid 
 basis of human character was religion ; but as man 
 is compelled to work by means (and, indeed, means 
 form also the mode of development of the Divine 
 wisdom and power), he had to look to means for 
 the attainment of his object — to contrive the various 
 employments and mental tasks, and the whole system 
 of management, which must pervade his establish- 
 ment. Superficial observers imagined, when they 
 beheld all this apparatus, that what was obvious 
 to the senses constituted the whole of Fellenberg's 
 ideas : because they did not see the soul of the ma- 
 chine, they concluded there was none ; and because 
 Fellenberg was not constantly sermonising his pupils 
 — though religion was on all suitable occasions directly 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. xlix 
 
 inculcated — they doubted his religious motives. No 
 conclusion could be more illogical. Fellenberg ought 
 to be allowed the same privilege which is enjoyed by 
 all superintendents of a large and complicated plan. 
 While examining it in detail, we are apt to forget 
 one point in considering another; we are apt to 
 overrate the relative importance of parts while in- 
 specting them ; we may differ in our opinion of the 
 subordinate arrangements ; we may make many mis- 
 takes from our own incompetence to judge ; we may 
 forget, in our objections, the capability of improve- 
 ment which belongs to all human plans ; and we may 
 not see the difficulties with which the subject has to 
 contend. 
 
FELLENBERG'S VIEWS. 
 
FELLENBERG'S VIEWS. 
 
 In the preceding remarks we have taken a view 
 of the history of education and society in Europe, 
 according to the impressions which reading and re- 
 flection have made upon ourselves. We have at 
 the same time faithfully described the effect which 
 the revolutionary spirit of the age had upon the 
 mind of Fellenberg in his younger days, and the 
 practical conclusions which he drew from it with 
 respect to the necessity of an education of a totally 
 different kind from any which previously prevailed 
 in Europe, embracing in its operations every class 
 of society in its peculiar wants, and extending to 
 the whole nature of man, physical, moral, and intel- 
 lectual. 
 
 In the following chapter we shall permit him to 
 speak for himself : we shall collect his own expres- 
 sions and trains of thought, as put forth on different 
 occasions, as far as difference of languages will enable 
 us to do so. We shall merely give them a unity and 
 arrangement which they do not possess in the ori- 
 ginal, in consequence of their having been written 
 at different times, and addressed to different persons, 
 sometimes orally, sometimes in writing. The words 
 
 B 
 
2 fellenberg's views. 
 
 of the original we shall generally preserve, and its 
 spirit always. 
 
 We establish our institutions (says Fellenberg) 
 upon the basis of Christianity; we begin our la- 
 bours with the Gospel ; we proceed upon its prin- 
 ciples and conditions. Every sound system of edu- 
 cation must begin and end with the instructions 
 and lessons of Jesus Christ ; it must rest on him and 
 his doctrines, motives, rules, and principles. As his 
 motives are the only ones upon which human cha- 
 racter can be properly formed, so his revelations of 
 its ultimate destiny and prospects are the only object 
 of moral perfection to which it can be worthily 
 directed ; and the Divine assistance he has revealed 
 and promised is the grand co-operation, without 
 which it would be vain to indulge any hope of suc- 
 cess. In the instructions of Jesus Christ is to be 
 found the substance of the theory of education — the 
 best practical example for the educator to follow ; 
 and in the result we should aim at no other object 
 than the realisation of the kingdom of God upon 
 earth, to which he has directed mankind. 
 
 The great traits of the character of Christ may 
 at the commencement seem to our pupils like the 
 first dawning of the rays of the morning, which are 
 scattered and almost lost in the clearness of an un- 
 clouded horizon. The mind of the child is far from 
 being able to comprehend the divine love of Christ, 
 embracing all mankind with inexhaustible and pro- 
 
fellenberg's views. 3 
 
 found sympathy ; or his unbounded love for our 
 race, and his intense labours and sufferings as a 
 proof of his love. We cannot at first follow out 
 this grand picture in all its details ; we must be- 
 gin with its principal features, and allow them 
 to sink into the mind, to take root, to be well and 
 familiarly pondered over; to become incorporated 
 with the mind, and to appear natural to it and a 
 part of itself, before we proceed to fill up the out- 
 line. We must wait till the mind opens more and 
 more — till its faculties of judgment and reason, as 
 well as its feelings, are developed. This advance of 
 the mind must be watched, and fed as it proceeds 
 and is able to bear stronger food. The system of 
 Jesus Christ, though adapted to persons of all ages 
 in its different departments, is yet to be worthily 
 comprehended only by adult minds, and by those 
 who have given all their energies to its cultivation : 
 it is so comprehensive and sublime, that we may go 
 farther, and say that every generation will find new 
 views and prospects in it, as their own minds and in- 
 tellects are more and more expanded and filled with 
 all divine and natural knowledge. The essential 
 points will not alter ; but new beauties will come 
 into sight, and an effulgence unknown to former 
 times will burst upon the eye. We are none of us 
 competent at present to understand all the mysteries 
 of Christ : to us and to our children do they belong ; 
 and they will be revealed to those who come after 
 us, in proportion to the fitness of their hearts and 
 
4 FELLENBERG S VIEWS. 
 
 minds to receive them. These things we must 
 remember in the instruction of children. This in- 
 struction is to be carried through a long succession 
 of years ; from the cradle to manhood ; from the 
 age of three or four, when they first begin to lisp 
 their hymns and letters, through the period of child- 
 hood, up to that period when they can understand 
 the reasonableness of the rule, " to whom much is 
 given, from him much will be required : " and the 
 prudence of the maxim, " keep your loins girded, 
 and your lamps burning:" and the justice of the 
 award, " thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good 
 things, and likewise Lazarus evil things ; but now 
 he is comforted, and thou art tormented : " and the 
 awful truth and principle of human conduct, " if 
 they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will 
 they be persuaded though one rose from the dead." 
 It is evident that these truths form a gradative 
 system, adapted to the different ages of life ; that 
 they must be taught ; and not merely taught by 
 rote, but by feeling and conviction, to the opening, 
 the growing, and the mature mind. What is suit- 
 able for the man is not suited to the youth ; what 
 is intelligible to the youth is not so to the child ; 
 but if the child has not been taught to feel and to 
 believe the truth of the pathetic histories of the 
 Bible during his age of young and vivid feeling, 
 and to sympathise with all the good, and against all 
 the evil, of which he hears from a loved parent's 
 lips, he will never give a moral attention to, nor feel 
 
FELLENBERG S VIEWS. 5 
 
 a moral interest in, the higher principles which will 
 afterwards be displayed to him ; nor discover a moral 
 taste for truth as truth, when his mind is old enough 
 and strong enough to appreciate the profoundness 
 and importance of that question, "What is truth?"* 
 Christ then, as a model, is to be continually held 
 up by the educator to the eye of his pupils, from 
 the junior to the senior class, as the bright ex- 
 emplar and illustrator of human conduct, both in 
 civil and religious matters, till at last they are able 
 to receive him religiously as their head and Saviour, 
 and the great head of the spiritual world. When 
 they are able to attain to this view, the business of 
 the educator may in a manner be said to cease, and 
 to be handed on to the minister of religion. The 
 two offices are in a degree blended together, and 
 yet distinct ; and it is a matter of delicacy and re- 
 finement to draw the line between them, For this 
 purpose, the aid of the minister must be sought, 
 and his specific place assigned in the business of 
 education. 
 
 Never could the sublime morality of Revelation, 
 and the exalted character of Christ, be better pre- 
 sented to the imitation and adoration of our race, 
 than at this moment. Never could his example in 
 instructing the ignorant, directing the wandering, 
 and in delivering the world from moral evil, be more 
 strongly recommended to the true philanthropist, 
 
 * See Note A at the end of the volume. 
 
6 FELLENBERGS VIEWS. 
 
 who may lay claim to the high office of being his 
 true disciple. Our own age, like others, has its 
 moral evils to encounter ; those of a corrupt and 
 selfish heart, of a proud and conceited scepticism, 
 of dangerous theories and innovations, and of awful 
 and sweeping revolutions. The human mind has 
 received a wondrous intellectual enlightenment, 
 mighty for good or for evil, with which our edu- 
 cators have not kept pace in their moral training. 
 A new race of educators is demanded, who shall 
 base all their classical and natural knowledge upon 
 that rock alone where the waves of moral ruin can- 
 not reach it, — the Rock of Ages, the Rock of Reve- 
 lation, as a system of practical morals, upon the 
 rock of Christ and of God. The study of the 
 classics, of Greek and Roman history, will encircle 
 the mind with subjects for comparison and illustra- 
 tion. Mixed up with an absurd and dangerous my- 
 thology, they contain models of pure composition 
 and style, with profound remarks upon the prin- 
 ciples of human nature, as they appeared to men of 
 acute minds, who were unaided by the indispensable 
 light of Revelation for a correct understanding of 
 our nature : but at every step the pupil requires to 
 have their beauties and errors carefully separated 
 and pointed out, and their morality strongly con- 
 trasted with the only true standard — that of the 
 Gospel. He may then perceive the infinite supe- 
 riority of Christianity over the superstitions of the 
 ancients, and the philosophy of their wisest men. 
 
FELLENBERG S VIEWS. 7 
 
 He will see the necessity of a Revelation for the 
 moral wants and security of mankind, and be pre- 
 pared for a full and complete course of Scripture 
 history, so as to have a clear view of the most beau- 
 tiful and harmonious of all subjects of contempla- 
 tion — the rise, progress, and completion of God's 
 miraculous dealings with men ; the small and im- 
 perceptible beginnings by which he made himself 
 known to Abraham, and convinced him, in an ido- 
 latrous age, that there was a God who made and 
 governed the world, and would one day judge it ; 
 the more public and awful proofs which he gave of 
 his government in the history of Moses ; the race 
 of prophets which he raised up, whose sublime com- 
 positions extinguish, in their superior blaze, even 
 the idolised productions of Greece and Rome ; the 
 retributive history of the destinies of the Jews, as 
 interwoven with that of other nations, — their pro- 
 sperous virtues, their ruinous crimes ; and lastly, the 
 consummation of all, in the indescribable simplicity 
 and sublimity of the religion of Christ— the poorest, 
 meanest, humblest of mankind, and yet the most 
 affectionate, pathetic, and profound of all ; the ser- 
 vant of all, and yet the king and ruler of all ; cut 
 off in the flower of his youth, only to live for ever, 
 both in the heaven of heavens and in the hearts and 
 lives of men to the latest generations ; and more 
 near to each generation in proportion as it is more 
 remote from the period of his death, because each 
 generation, by its moral improvement, is more ca- 
 
8 fellenberg's views. 
 
 pable of receiving and appreciating the character 
 of Jesus Christ, and, to use a strong figurative ex- 
 pression, of receiving him into their hearts ; and 
 because it is nearer to the day of his second coming 
 to judge and to save. 
 
 This scheme, and system, and history of Revela- 
 tion, leads at once to a practical result. It sets 
 aside in an instant all inferior motives and rules in 
 morals ; it enters into no calculations even of the 
 utility and advantage of virtue ; it lays no schemes 
 for attracting the applause of the world, or for se- 
 curing a niche in the temple of Fame ; its maxim is 
 simple, persuasive, and overpowering, viz. " to do 
 the will of God from the heart," and thus to " know 
 that the doctrine is of God." Its most convincing 
 argument is a life of purity ; the weakness of man, 
 the power of God. A pagan moralist imagines he 
 can do all things, and ends by doing nothing, — he 
 cannot even conquer himself; the Christian mo- 
 ralist, diffident of his own power to keep the least 
 portion of the law, ends by keeping all in the power 
 of another. 
 
 Thus, the best preparation for understanding 
 and valuing the Christian revelation is to implant 
 its spirit in the heart of the pupil, and to accustom 
 him to act it out in his daily avocations, studies, 
 and pursuits. Precept alone is meagre, dull, and 
 dead ; it is what is called " mere morality." The 
 child must be accustomed to the exercise of bene- 
 volent feelings as a daily occupation, before he can 
 
FELLENBERG S VIEWS. V 
 
 understand the assurance that " it is more blessed 
 to give than to receive ;" he must make many un- 
 successful efforts to walk steadily in the course of 
 duty and prudence, before he can be convinced of 
 his need of Divine aid and guidance, or before he 
 can understand and feel the command, " If any man 
 lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth libe- 
 rally, and upbraideth not." The young pupil must 
 never be allowed to consider religion and religious 
 sentiments as things distinct and separate from his 
 ordinary life ; instruction and practice, theory and 
 action, must go hand in hand together. This habit 
 must begin to be formed from the commencement ; 
 the pupil must be accustomed, with conscientious 
 care, in every part of his intercourse with others, 
 " to do unto others as he would they should do unto 
 him," even in the most minute details of action and 
 self-restraint; otherwise he will not be able, at any 
 future period, to regulate his conduct by this fun- 
 damental rule without the greatest difficulty. From 
 this early neglect of practice, and resting in the in- 
 culcation of mere precept, arise the constant imper- 
 fections which we see in the conduct of persons 
 anxious to do what is right ; and of which none are 
 more sensible than they themselves, when they have 
 once begun to study their own heart, and to act 
 upon the profound, though pagan principle, " Know 
 thyself." 
 
 This view of religion is the principle, rule, and 
 practice of our establishment ; but in addition to 
 
10 fellenberg's views. 
 
 this, in order to do full justice to the pupil and the 
 subject, and to give a sanction to its paramount im- 
 portance, each pupil is placed under the especial 
 care of a minister of religion, chosen or approved 
 of by his parents, whose duty it is to instruct him, 
 more deeply than school-exercises allow of, in the 
 essential doctrines of Christianity. Thus, he is in- 
 structed in the faith of his parents and family, with 
 as much care and earnestness as if he were under 
 the domestic roof, while he is led, by the peculiar 
 discipline of the school, to carry out the preceptive 
 part into daily action and practical habits ; at least, 
 this, if not fully effected, is the aim and scope of 
 the whole system. 
 
 The summary of this part of the education is 
 therefore the following : — the whole of the Scripture 
 history read, with portions committed to memory ; 
 selected books and divisions read critically, and 
 committed to memory ; a summary of Christian 
 doctrines and duties, expressed as much as possible 
 in Scripture language. In the upper classes, a more 
 enlarged compendium of the same ; a course of what 
 is called natural religion and morals, according to 
 the views which we are now enabled to take of them 
 from the light of Revelation ; the study of the Greek 
 Testament ; and finally, a concise and general ac- 
 count of ecclesiastical history. The religious ser- 
 vices of the Sunday are intended both for devotion 
 and instruction ; and two lessons in the week are 
 especially devoted to an account of the instructions 
 
fellenberg's views. 11 
 
 of the preceding Sunday, in which explanations 
 are given of any thing which was imperfectly under- 
 stood. 
 
 It need not be said, that great difficulties some- 
 times ^rise on this subject with new pupils. They 
 come at all ages, and from all kinds of previous 
 training and instruction. Many have been sent 
 hither as a last resource, when the character had 
 been neglected or contaminated. Great considera- 
 tion is requisite whether they can be received with- 
 out danger to the other pupils ; and if received, in 
 what way their minds and dispositions may most 
 judiciously be drawn into the studies of the place ; 
 how their barren thoughts may be fertilised, and 
 their habits of indolence and self-indulgence ex- 
 changed for those of active duty and application. 
 They are treated with great tenderness and con- 
 sideration, as persons whose previous circumstances 
 require pity and sympathy ; they are made to under- 
 stand the system and objects of the place, before a 
 regular routine of study and employment is required 
 of them ; their better feelings, their ideas of pro- 
 priety, and their good sense, are appealed to, in order 
 to carry conviction to their hearts of the friendly and 
 beneficial intentions and tendency of things around 
 them. If these representations are found insuffi- 
 cient, after a certain period, to solicit their appro- 
 bation and concurrence, and their previous habits 
 appear irradicable, it seems wiser to allow them to 
 return to their friends, than to prolong a useless and 
 
12 fellenberg's views. 
 
 dangerous contest. But generally, the happiest con- 
 sequences result from this considerate mode of pre- 
 senting the subject. It is that which the divine 
 Author of Christianity himself proposes for our 
 model and imitation. Considering the almighty 
 power which he wielded, it is wonderful how little 
 recourse he had to threatenings, and how unceas- 
 ingly he urged the language of persuasion ; " Come 
 unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden ; 
 take my yoke upon you, for I am meek and lowly 
 of heart ; and ye shall find rest." When he fore- 
 saw the calamitous fate of Jerusalem, though he 
 knew he had to pass through the most bitter agonies 
 from the cruelty of the people, yet, instead of any 
 degree of satisfaction at the retaliation they were 
 to undergo from the arm of another, he wept over 
 their miseries, occasioned by their obstinacy and 
 crimes. Such must be the general spirit of every 
 system which would reform, establish, and perfect 
 the human heart. Severity may occasionally be 
 necessary, especially in those systems of which it is 
 the principal feature, and in those schools which, 
 like an army, can only be held together by corporal 
 punishment ; but in a system which lays any claim 
 to the title of Christian, mild appeals to good feeling 
 and good sense must form the rule of government, 
 and severity must be the exception. We are of 
 opinion that the present low state of morals in 
 countries professing so pure, refined, and holy a 
 religion as that of Christianity, is chiefly owing tp 
 
CONSCIENCE AND MORALS. 13 
 
 the neglect of these grand principles of the Gospel 
 in the education of youth ; to their not being made 
 the principal object in education; to their being 
 postponed to the cultivation of mere intellect, with- 
 out any mixture, or with very little mixture, of the 
 heart and affections ; the latter being made the ex- 
 ception rather than the rule. Perhaps we are to 
 consider this fact as a proof that the minds of men 
 are still very far removed from the spirit of the 
 Gospel, notwithstanding the length of time during 
 which religious establishments have existed, and the 
 myriads of religious volumes which have been writ- 
 ten. But to return : it is therefore the object of 
 this establishment to build up education upon the 
 Gospel — upon practical Christianity ; to form from 
 this the spirit of the school, of the teachers, and of 
 the pupils ; to consider the cultivation of the intel- 
 lect as secondary and subordinate, and as springing 
 out of the other as its root. 
 
 CONSCIENCE AND MORALS. 
 Having fixed upon the Bible as our basis of 
 action — as the only basis of all human action — we 
 have next to consider what man himself is, and in 
 what way the educator, as far as human means are 
 concerned, must proceed to draw out the feelings 
 and faculties of the pupil towards the principles of 
 the Bible, and to instil its spirit into his heart, so 
 as to make it the motive and safeguard of his con- 
 duct. It is evident that to make the Bible useful, we 
 
14 CONSCIENCE AND MORALS. 
 
 must consider the nature of the being to whom it is 
 addressed. Unless he had a nature corresponding to 
 the instructions of the Bible, it would be perfectly 
 useless to him. The Author of the one is also the 
 Author of the other, and has made the two to answer 
 to each other. We must therefore seek for the ap- 
 plication of the one in the nature, principles, and 
 constitution of the other. These must be studied 
 as well as the book, if we would know how to apply 
 the wisdom of the book, and to make it efficacious. 
 We must assume that, as man is addressed as a re- 
 sponsible and rational being, he possesses a moral 
 nature, a conscience, and an understanding : he pos- 
 sesses a will in common only with other animals ; 
 but he possesses distinctively, as man, a conscience, 
 and an intelligent, reasoning mind. These two prin- 
 ciples must always be kept in view by the educator. 
 The will, which constitutes the final point upon 
 which character turns, is assailed by an infinity 
 of motives, which urge it to decide and to yield 
 itself to their influence ; whilst conscience and rea- 
 son stand by, as it were, in awful suspense, to deliver 
 in their verdict when the irrevocable step is made. 
 How are these motives to be presented or controlled 
 by the educator, so as to lead and fix the will to 
 prefer what is good, noble, and Christian, to what is 
 evil, low, animal, and ruinous ? 
 
 The religious feelings are bound up with our 
 very first impressions, if properly managed. The 
 first conceptions and impressions of the infant are 
 
CONSCIENCE AND MORALS. 15 
 
 derived from the countenances and actions of those 
 around him. The office and look of maternal love, 
 and tenderness of maternal affection, open heaven 
 to the child, through the medium of the heart of 
 the mother. The maternal care which watches and 
 labours for the good of the child with the warmest 
 affection, the most anxious foresight, and the most 
 unwearied efforts, without expecting any other re- 
 ward than the delight of contributing to his welfare 
 — which sees and provides for all that his mind can 
 grasp — should give the child his first conceptions of 
 the all-wise, all-good, and all-powerful God. Our 
 first ideas of the character of the Deity, and of his 
 infinite perfections, are derived from the manners, 
 conduct, and affections of those around us, by sepa- 
 rating the more perfect from the less perfect, and 
 by compounding the former together into a simple 
 whole. Therefore, if nothing which is good and 
 amiable is exhibited to us by our first instructors, 
 we can form no conception of a superior Being, who 
 is all goodness and benevolence. There will be 
 many drawbacks in the mind of the child, owing 
 to the many imperfections of those about him, even 
 in the best of characters ; but if no virtues, or 
 scarcely any, are presented to him — if the sur- 
 rounding characters are vicious and inconsistent 
 — the child will have no good position to start 
 from, no rock to build upon ; his experience will 
 be a struggle amid conflicting experience and prin- 
 ciples ; he will hear and see occasionally what is 
 
16 CONSCIENCE AND MORALS. 
 
 right, and he will find an echo to this in his own 
 breast ; but he will see much more which is wrong, 
 which contradicts the former, and will find in him- 
 self desires and motives at war with his other prin- 
 ciples, without any overruling standard to refer to 
 for decision. Thus good and evil hold a balance 
 before him, in which the evil side predominates 
 and the mind, wanting a decided preponderance 
 and permanent ascendancy of right, is thrown upon 
 its immediate gratifications, which are all of a 
 selfish nature, according to the first law of a sen- 
 tient being, which must be its own preservation and 
 immediate enjoyment. 
 
 In our situation as educators and teachers, the 
 most sacred duties of parents devolve upon us ; we 
 should therefore seek to present to our pupils the 
 same disinterested, benevolent, unvarying, and con- 
 sistent care, which they would receive from devoted 
 and conscientious parents, with hearts willing to do 
 their duty, and minds capable of doing it, in order 
 that they may draw from us their first ideas of the 
 Divine attributes and providence. In this view, our 
 office becomes one of the most high and holy ones 
 which men are capable of discharging, as the pupils 
 have to receive from us the great principles of 
 right and wrong, of a useful or pernicious life, of 
 happiness or misery, of weal or woe, for time and 
 eternity. Let no one think that our arrangements 
 for this high purpose are too complicated and 
 careful, too minute, too scrupulous, embracing too 
 
CULTIVATION OF THE CONSCIENCE. 17 
 
 many objects of pursuit, study, or employment. We 
 have the whole character to form, from childhood 
 to manhood, and from the cottage to the palace, 
 since we embrace in our system the education of 
 every rank in the community. Without attempting 
 to enfeeble with words what cannot be fully ex- 
 pressed, we must observe, that every appearance of 
 nature which exhibits the wisdom, goodness, and 
 power of the Creator, with the aid of a faithful con- 
 ducting hand, will bring the child continually nearer 
 to the invisible Creator, Preserver, and Benefactor, 
 and lead him gradually to perceive his delightful 
 and glorious relation to the Most High, — 
 
 To look through nature up to nature's God. 
 
 For as the Bible is the will of God expressed in 
 words, nature is his will expressed in actions. 
 
 Favourable moments should be seized, without 
 forcing the attention of the child from the subject 
 before him, to lead him to reflect on the superiority 
 of the works of nature, considered as those of God, 
 over all the works of man, in their beauty and per- 
 fection, and in their display of skill and wisdom ; 
 and especially in the powers by which the physical 
 changes of nature are carried on, so totally unlike 
 and superior to any power which man has hitherto 
 been able to employ. The utmost power which 
 man can employ is mechanical, and that belonging 
 to the lower standard of mechanism ; for its higher 
 standards, as electricity, he has been unable to wield, 
 c 
 
18 CULTIVATION OF THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 for his own purposes, to any great extent. Besides 
 these, nature employs as a superaddition a variety 
 of vital energies, far beyond the control and con- 
 ception of man, giving rise at once to the idea of a 
 spiritual Cause, whose powers and resources are 
 peculiar, distinctive, and incomprehensible. Thus 
 the mind, properly led to observe and comment upon 
 these interesting and extraordinary facts, is daily 
 filling itself with the idea of Divine power, as shewn 
 in his works, made visible and tangible at first, as 
 if for the purpose of mathematical demonstration, 
 but spiritualised by the studious and devout mind 
 into an essence invisible and untangible like itself, 
 and capable of making all things out of nothing. 
 
 Conscience is at first only a principle, having 
 different degrees of original strength in different 
 individuals, but capable in all persons of education 
 and expansion, and of taking cognizance of all the 
 actions and thoughts of the heart. It must be spe- 
 cifically cultivated, in order to be improved and 
 developed. Most systems of education pay strenuous 
 attention to the cultivation of the memory from the 
 very cradle, as if they thought that all excellence 
 were numerical, and consisted in the mere number 
 of ideas, without regard to their nature or their 
 relations and combinations; and by these means 
 pupils may be brought to learn by heart with rapid 
 facility many hundreds of words, without attaching 
 any meaning to them. If we wish the conscience to 
 be perfected, we must cultivate it with the same 
 
CULTIVATION OF THE CONSCIENCE. 19 
 
 assiduity. We must first awaken it, and enable it to 
 feel its own power. We must exercise it by constant 
 appeals to it under all the circumstances which 
 arise through the day. As there are no actions 
 which do not bear directly or indirectly upon 
 morals and conscience, so we must be constantly 
 pointing out this relation. Conscience puts us im- 
 mediately in connexion with the Deity himself. 
 It is the principle in our constitution which enables 
 us to feel his character as a moral Governor : 
 mere reason would not do that. It requires a 
 moral nature in us; and that moral nature is ex- 
 pressed in one word, Conscience, or in Scripture 
 language, the Heart. But not only all the actions 
 of the day afford occasions for an appeal to the 
 conscience and the exercise of its peculiar powers, 
 but the greater part of the reading of schools, which 
 consists of history, poetry, and didactic works, affords 
 the same ; in them we exercise the conscience 
 freely and without bias on the actions of others, 
 and thus form it to a right tone of feeling and judg- 
 ment. Thus there are two moral worlds, the inner 
 one and the outer one, which, when properly taken 
 advantage of, give as ample a scope for the culti- 
 vation of the powers of conscience, as the various 
 books which are studied in schools do for the cul- 
 tivation of the memory ; and all this exercise ought 
 to be so conducted as to lead us up to God himself 
 as the superintendent and guardian and judge of 
 conscience. It is something to have been created a 
 
20 CULTIVATION OF THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 being possessing this faculty ; but the mere pos- 
 session of it sinks into insignificance when compared 
 with the sublime and all-important truth, that God 
 is the guardian of it, and of its rights and respon- 
 sibilities. The most unnatural thing a man could 
 do, if he were responsible to none but himself, would 
 be to act against his conscience ; but now, having 
 Qod for its guardian, it is also the most dangerous 
 thing he can do, for upon it, and upon it alone, 
 depends his eternal happiness or misery. It is 
 therefore of the utmost consequence to begin early 
 in life, even from the cradle, to awaken, call forth, 
 and exercise this faculty — to obey its dictates as 
 the paramount rule of life — to observe with won- 
 der and adoration the infinitely kind, wise, and 
 powerful hand, which, while it leaves the will free 
 and responsible, yet teaches, instructs, and warns 
 us, by the various events of life, to cherish and 
 obey conscience, and through that to attain to the 
 highest and purest joys of which our nature is 
 susceptible. 
 
 The nature of right and wrong, the beauty of 
 the one, the hatefulness of the other, can never be 
 learned by a child as abstract truths. Without the 
 relations of man with man, the moral law not only 
 has no application, but cannot even be fully com- 
 prehended. We become accessible to the voice of 
 the law which regulates our intercourse with our 
 fellow-men only so far as they appear before us. 
 They may be presented to us either in the com- 
 
CULTIVATION OF THE CONSCIENCE. 21 
 
 merce of life, or by means of historical and bio- 
 graphical descriptions. Without such points of 
 comparison, we have no means of forming a just 
 estimate of individual character ; and it is not until 
 we have observed and considered the actions and 
 characters of many of the most noble and excellent 
 men, that we are capable of forming any thing like 
 a just estimate of the resplendent moral glory of 
 the Saviour. 
 
 The world of little children in which the pupil 
 lives and acts is the first, the most natural field for 
 his observation. Intercourse with those of his own 
 age is more useful for the excitement and develop- 
 ment of his mind, than with adults. The continual 
 watchfulness which should observe all their move- 
 ments will discover constant opportunities to pre- 
 sent living examples of abstract truths. Every 
 occasion of this kind should be taken advantage 
 of, and the child should be thus taught to refer his 
 actions, and those of his companions, to a superior 
 law or rule, and to understand the meaning and 
 importance of the law by a continual application of 
 it to his conduct. 
 
REMARKS 
 
 ON THE PRECEDING ACCOUNT OF 
 
 FELLENBERG'S 
 RELIGIOUS AND MORAL VIEWS. 
 
 The preceding observations on the subject of reli- 
 gion and revelation are made, as we have said, as 
 much as possible in the words of Fellenberg. We 
 have attempted to give a faithful transcript of the 
 mind, feelings, and object of the author, in order 
 that his views and labours may be fairly and fully 
 appreciated. The more these are examined and 
 understood, the more highly must this venerable 
 character rise in our estimation, and the more im- 
 portant must his labours appear to the welfare of 
 society at large, because of the practical nature of 
 his institution. He has devoted his life and fortune 
 to the attempt to bring down religion from heaven 
 to dwell among men, to adapt the theories of religion 
 to common life, and to embody during the week- 
 days those truths which are spiritualised on the Sab- 
 bath. All this was in the mind of Fellenberg half 
 a century ago. At a time when the learned and 
 refined world of Europe considered revelation as 
 
PRACTICAL DETAILS. 23 
 
 at best but a beautiful fable, Fellenberg both felt 
 and acknowledged its truth, and conceived the illus- 
 trious idea of forming a practical system of educa- 
 tion for all ranks, based upon the reception of its 
 precepts and the authority of its laws. He did this 
 both theoretically and practically : theoretically, as 
 considering revelation to be a message from the 
 Almighty of incalculable importance ; and practi- 
 cally, as considering an improved system of moral 
 and Christian education to be the only remedy for 
 human vice, depravity, and revolutionary fury ; as 
 well as the only preventative of the future repeti- 
 tion of those awful scenes which were then acting 
 in Europe, desolating her fairest provinces, and 
 sweeping whole classes of society, of the highest 
 order, from the face of the earth. 
 
 We have now further to consider and to detail 
 the various means by which he proposed to carry 
 these ideas into effect. 
 
 PRACTICAL DETAILS. 
 
 Fellenberg purchased about two hundred 
 acres of land, of which fifty were arable, for the 
 scene of his experiments. His views comprehended 
 the improvement of the agriculture of his country, 
 as well as that of the character of the inhabitants. 
 He intended to make the cultivation of his own 
 estate the model by which others might learn how 
 to improve theirs. The improvement was to con- 
 sist in drainage and irrigation ; in manuring and 
 
24 MORAL USE OF LABOUR. 
 
 mixing soils ; in the rotation of crops, and in intro- 
 ducing new plants for cultivation ; in the perfection 
 of old instruments of agriculture, and the invention 
 of new ones. He had a passionate fondness for 
 agriculture, aiid great ingenuity, invention, and 
 skill in the mechanical arts. He therefore esta- 
 blished workshops upon the estate, in which all 
 the implements of husbandry for his own use, and 
 for general sale, were fabricated ; including also a 
 department for making and preserving models of 
 all machines in use, or which it was proposed to 
 bring into use at any future time. The plan em- 
 braced a better arrangement and construction of 
 the farming buildings, and an improved method of 
 managing the cattle. All, in fact, that had been 
 done in England during the last half century, for 
 the general improvement of agriculture, by various 
 societies, was aimed at by Eellenberg by himself alone, 
 in reference to the capabilities of his own estate and 
 country. But Fellenberg's views and principles led 
 him to perceive what in England had not been 
 thought of — the bearing which the pursuits of 
 agriculture might have upon the morals of man- 
 kind. Daily labour in the open air is the most 
 healthy of all occupations, both to the body and 
 mind. Children who are brought up in the country 
 acquire, under ordinary circumstances, a hardy con- 
 stitution, which is denied to the children of towns. 
 Perceiving that labour might be regulated and mo- 
 dified so as to become a system of moral instruction, 
 
TRAINING DESTITUTE CHILDREN. 25 
 
 as well as one of industrial employment, Fellenberg 
 determined to convert a portion of his estate to this 
 purpose, and to make an agricultural school his first 
 step towards the moral training of children, and the 
 improvement of their character. Peculiar as were 
 his ideas as to the proper methods to be pursued, 
 he could derive no assistance from others in the 
 commencement ; nor could he collect together a 
 sufficient number of children from their parents 
 who might be induced to remain with him long 
 enough to give his plans a fair trial. His first 
 school, therefore, was formed of the destitute or 
 abandoned children of the neighbourhood, partly, 
 no doubt, from necessity ; for, till confidence in his 
 views had been established, no others were to be 
 had. But Fellenberg was prompted in this by other 
 motives also ; by a deep and religious conviction 
 that the Deity had, in the energetic language of the 
 apostle, originally made " all men of one common 
 blood ; " that the lowest, as well as the highest, are 
 born with the same susceptibilities ; that the vices, 
 therefore, into which the lowest ranks sink, are 
 engrafted by their position, and the neglect of their 
 superiors, and might be prevented by early care, or 
 obviated by better culture. The feelings of society, 
 he found, were against these conclusions ; and he 
 felt the obligation of a Christian pressing upon his 
 conscience to remove such debasing and unfounded 
 prejudices. To rescue the poor from their moral 
 degradation thenceforth governed all his views. He 
 
26 AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL. 
 
 considered that the destitute children whom he ,>: 
 might collect, and who commonly became the M* 
 pests of the community, and the objects against V* 
 whom the penal laws were generally directed, 
 would prove at once a test of the truth of his 
 own principles of education, and of the real causes 
 of the degradation of their character. His agricul- 
 tural school was therefore his first essay in edu- 
 cation. 
 
 AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL. 
 
 The success of a school of this kind depends 
 entirely upon the master, who must be not merely 
 the teacher of reading and writing, but the com- 
 panion, friend, guide, and parent of the pupils : he 
 must never quit them, by night nor by day ; he 
 must take his meals with them, labour with them, 
 rest with them, explain every thing to them, instruct 
 them, play with them, and sleep in the same chamber. 
 Without such a master, whom the children can love, 
 because he is kind and amiable, — reverence, because 
 he is of a certain age and character, — and respect, 
 because he possesses a fund of knowledge and infor- 
 mation useful to them on all occasions, and to which 
 their curiosity can always apply and be satisfied, the 
 system cannot succeed. Fellenberg was himself the 
 friend and instructor at the beginning ; but it was 
 some time before he could meet with one to supply 
 his place in a character at all times perhaps difficult, 
 but then entirely new. At last he discovered in 
 
AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL. 27 
 
 Vehrli, one of his pupils, the disposition, kindness, 
 j simplicity, judgfiafa^jf tact, and knowledge, he re- 
 quired. Thisv-gdraon entered completely into his 
 views, perceived their extensive and beneficial na- 
 ture, and felt the honour of assisting in so valuable 
 and useful an institution. He acquired the prac- 
 tical facility of conducting it, and did so with entire 
 success until* he removed to a school of his own 
 a few years ago. The following are the details of 
 management : * 
 
 The children rise in the morning at half-past 
 
 * Children should be admitted at the age of five or six 
 years, and remain in the institution till they are twenty-one. 
 During the first ten years they are an expense to it : during 
 the last fire years they repay, by their labour, all the previous 
 outlay upon their education. They then obtain situations in 
 the world — in agriculture, or in some mechanical art, and main- 
 tain themselves like other workmen, by their skill and industry ; 
 but being better taught and superior workmen, they more 
 readily find employment ; and being of a better moral cha- 
 racter, they fill places of more trust and emolument ; and 
 possessing habits of greater economy and prudence, they turn 
 their earnings to better account. 
 
 In the year 1813, twenty-six years ago, a commission was 
 appointed to visit and examine the agricultural school at Hofwyl. 
 At the head of it was Reuyer, one of the most distinguished men 
 in Switzerland. They spent six days in examining all its details 
 — food, dress, accommodations, religious exercises, studies, 
 labours, and occupations. It then consisted of twenty-three 
 children, taken from the lowest classes, the highways and 
 hedges, destitute and abandoned ; they were now living in har- 
 mony, peace, and affection : punishment was seldom wanted ; 
 when necessary, it consisted of mild rebuke, remonstrance, in 
 
28 AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL. 
 
 four or half-past five o'clock, according to their age. 
 Half an hour is allowed for washing, dressing, mak- 
 ing their beds, and arranging their rooms. They then 
 go to prayers ; then to lessons, for one hour in sum- 
 mer, and an hour and a half in winter, and then to 
 breakfast ; then the master allots to each class, or 
 to each individual, his employment for the day. At 
 eleven o'clock they dine, and then have a lesson of 
 an hour or an hour and a half. At four or five 
 o'clock, according to the season, they have bread 
 given them, and a third lesson. At seven o'clock 
 they sup, and the master reviews the work of the 
 day, and the conduct of the children. Their beha- 
 
 private, or in public before the other children ; exclusion from 
 social meals ; and lastly, corporal, which, when necessary, is 
 inflicted with the greatest consideration and concern, so that 
 the pupil may perceive that nothing but necessity could have 
 extorted it from the teacher. This necessity is explained to 
 him ; the danger, degradation of character, and ultimate misery 
 and ruin occasioned by crime, and the propriety of preventing 
 refractory habits by bodily pain, when higher and moral motives 
 are insufficient. Corporal punishment is never required except 
 for new pupils. 
 
 One evening, after an interesting lecture, Vehrli cautioned 
 one of the children, without mentioning his name, to be on his 
 guard against a fault he had committed ; immediately all be- 
 came serious and silent, each seeming to take the reproof to 
 himself. Very often, when conscious of having committed a 
 fault, they pass judgment on themselves, and absent them- 
 selves from meals ; Vehrli then sends them their food to a 
 private room. In the year 1832 this school consisted of one 
 hundred boys. 
 
AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL. 29 
 
 viour and character are particularly noticed : praise 
 or blame are bestowed according to circumstances ; 
 and the motives, principles, and responsibilities of 
 human conduct, are explained and illustrated from 
 what has happened among themselves, as far as is 
 suitable, and intelligible to their understandings. 
 They then have prayers, and the youngest go to 
 bed, while the older ones amuse themselves in any 
 way they please — with reading or gymnastics, but 
 generally with music, in which they delight, and 
 which is made to serve a most useful purpose in 
 softening their hearts and characters. The children 
 of the Swiss peasantry are continually exposed to 
 all weathers, and therefore become hardy and 
 robust, and remarkably free from diseases ; the 
 children of the agricultural school are brought up 
 upon the same plan : they wear no hats, and in 
 summer-time no shoes ; their clothing is simple, 
 clean, and comfortable ; their bed a straw mattress. 
 They assist in preparing their own food, which is 
 the same as that of the peasantry — soup at every 
 meal, vegetables, bread and milk. They eat meat 
 only once or twice a-week ; and on holydays they 
 are allowed the wine of the country. The children 
 are habitually cheerful, happy, and healthy, which 
 is a sufficient proof of their being properly fed and 
 clothed. 
 
 During the summer they spend more time in 
 working on the farm than in winter ; but their em- 
 ployment is adapted to the age and strength of each 
 
SO AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL. 
 
 child. The youngest are occupied in picking and 
 breaking stones, or in weeding. During harvest, 
 ten or twelve hours are employed on the farm, and 
 only between three and four in instruction. In the 
 winter the school-hours are six or seven. 
 
 When the weather does not permit them to go 
 abroad, they learn to make baskets, and various 
 useful works in straw, &c. They are all taught to 
 mend their own clothes. 
 
 In order to teach habits of order and carefulness, 
 each child has a special office assigned to him : one 
 keeps the chambers clean, another the furniture, an- 
 other the pavement, &c. Three of them are chosen 
 to superintend and inspect the whole, and are changed 
 every three months, in order to accustom them to all 
 kinds of work and duty. Even the youngest have 
 some office found for them. 
 
 They are allowed to work for their own profit. 
 Each child has a garden of his own, which he cul- 
 tivates with flowers or vegetables ; he collects all 
 his manure from the roads, or from the dead leaves 
 of autumn ; he either sends the produce to market, 
 or sells it to the establishment, when he is allowed 
 its value at the end of the year, with interest, even 
 upon so small a sum as a franc. Two or three 
 children will go shares in a garden or a fruit-tree, 
 and dispose of the produce in the same manner. 
 The elder ones constantly assist the younger ones 
 in managing their ground. A principle of order, 
 method, and the division of labour, pervades all the 
 
AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL. 31 
 
 details of the establishment. The management of 
 the farm is a distinct office by itself. The master 
 of the children, though he works with them, has 
 nothing to do with the accounts of the farm; he 
 merely .works with the children, under the super- 
 intendence of the bailiff, that his whole attention 
 may be devoted to the behaviour and studies of the 
 children. For some years, in the infancy of the 
 establishment, when the number of children was 
 small, Vehrli was able to superintend all the child- 
 ren himself, and to study and influence all their 
 characters : this became impossible when the 
 number of the children increased. Vehrli then 
 acted as general director, and under him assist- 
 ants were placed; and it was found that fifteen 
 or eighteen children were the greatest number who 
 could be effectively superintended by one assistant. 
 At the same time, Vehrli continued to watch over 
 the whole, and to hold a private conversation with 
 each pupil at least once in the week, and so to re- 
 tain their affection and esteem. When the masters 
 were thus increased in number, they held private 
 occasional meetings, in which the general principles 
 and objects of the institution were explained, obser- 
 vations and suggestions made by each, and the con- 
 duct and management of the pupils detailed ; diffi- 
 culties were stated, and their remedies proposed. 
 
 The first assistants were not easily found ; but 
 as the establishment proceeded, promising pupils 
 were selected, who were prepared for the future 
 
32 AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL. 
 
 office. These went through a wider course of 
 instruction than the rest, and were allowed the 
 advantage of being taught in the higher school, 
 which was formed by Fellenberg about the same 
 time. Here they were also employed as the 
 teachers of the junior classes of the higher school, 
 filling the double office of teaching and being taught 
 alternately. This plan has been found to succeed 
 beyond expectation : the improvement in knowledge 
 and manners, among those of the agricultural school 
 who have studied and taught in the upper school, 
 has been greater than any one had been sanguine 
 enough to expect. 
 
 The agricultural pupils are distributed into 
 classes, both in their sleeping-rooms and their 
 labour, according to age, capacity, and character. 
 A pupil of doubtful or bad character is placed 
 among those whose characters are confirmed and 
 good, who exercise over him a salutary influence, 
 according to the great law of sympathy, example, 
 and the force of numbers and of opinion. 
 
 The youngest classes, besides the inspector, who 
 never quits them, have a selected pupil placed over 
 them, who acts the part of an elder brother, over- 
 looking and protecting them, and taking care that 
 they keep their persons and dress at all times clean. 
 
 The discipline of the agricultural school is mild 
 and simple, like that of the other schools. It is 
 based upon religion, and addresses itself to the con- 
 science and the understanding, and not to fear. Its 
 
AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL. 33 
 
 greatest reward is the pleasure and happiness of 
 doing what is right ; the greatest praise it meets 
 with is the sentiment of approbation. The constant 
 superintendence under which a pupil is placed pre- 
 vents his persevering in a fault : if he repeats it, he 
 is reprimanded ; if it be of sufficient importance, it 
 is reported to the superintendent. A reiterated fault 
 is reprimanded more severely; and if that is not 
 enough to prevent it, the pupil is separated for a 
 time from his companions, Corporal punishment is 
 rarely inflicted : when it is so, and is still ineffectual, 
 the pupil is expelled, as being incorrigible, and too 
 dangerous a companion for the rest. This case 
 rarely occurs ; and when it does, it is among new- 
 comers. The religious principle, with mild expostu- 
 lation, generally produces a reform. 
 
 Fellenberg considers the great art of a rational 
 and methodical education to consist in finding active 
 and useful employment for every moment of the day. 
 Children are not able to do this for themselves — it 
 must be done for them ; and whoever does it is the 
 true and only educator. It must be done under a 
 direction ; and then there is no time for idle, useless, 
 frivolous, or mischievous employment, nor even for 
 bad thoughts. All must be innocence where all is 
 useful and agreeable, and where, by an incessant 
 vigilance and inspection, nothing objectionable can 
 be done, heard, nor seen. Thus vice is prevented 
 from entering the school : it has not to be cured 
 and driven out when it has taken root, for it is not 
 
 D 
 
34? AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL. 
 
 allowed to gain admission. This is no difficulty 
 under proper arrangements, like those of Fellenberg, 
 because, the children being happy, and interested in 
 their pursuits, desire no other : all their faculties are 
 gratified ; their curiosity, their desire of knowing 
 the properties and uses of all surrounding objects ; 
 their taste for nature, which all men are born with ; 
 their taste for music and drawing, which are also 
 common to all ; and their desire for active employ- 
 ment, which is also universal in childhood. All the 
 educator has to do is to direct these tastes and desires 
 to useful purposes, and to shut out the approach of 
 evil, and of all counteracting objects and occupa- 
 tions. The system is very simple when once carried 
 out into practice, as has been done by Fellenberg ; 
 so that it is a wonder mankind have not discovered 
 and adopted it before. 
 
 This agricultural school affords the best model of 
 education, not only for the children of paupers, but 
 for those of all the peasantry. Their path in life is 
 rendered simple, by their being furnished with the 
 means of happiness ; every envious and hateful feel- 
 ing is extinguished by the spirit of Christianity, and 
 by the value they are accustomed to set upon a good 
 conscience. All useless instruction is avoided ; yet 
 no knowledge is despised or neglected which may 
 hereafter become necessary. A knowledge of, and 
 skill in, agriculture, by which they are to get their 
 living, is made the means of cultivating their under- 
 standing, and of forming their heart and character. 
 
ITS APPLICABILITY. 35 
 
 The system might be imitated in all countries, upon 
 the principle which Fellenberg has discovered, viz. 
 that the earnings of the pupils from the age of fifteen 
 to twenty-one are sufficient to repay the previous 
 outlay. The expenses of Hofwyl are not entirely 
 repaid, because the benevolence of Fellenberg in- 
 duces him to receive the children of the peasantry 
 without any engagement for them to remain till they 
 are twenty-one, and many of them are removed be- 
 fore that age, and before they have received the full 
 benefit of the system ; but a sufficient number have 
 remained to enable a general estimate of expense to 
 be made. 
 
 If such a school were established in another 
 country, some of the difficulties which Fellenberg 
 had to encounter might be avoided, and the expenses 
 diminished, and the success of it rendered more com- 
 plete. Fellenberg in the commencement could, as 
 we have seen, use no selection in his children ; he 
 took the destitute and the orphan under his care, 
 without any regard to their individual disposition 
 and character. He seems to have done so partly, 
 as we have already allowed, from necessity, but 
 partly, perhaps, to prove more clearly the truth of 
 his system and principles : as if he had said, " You 
 take the best children, and bring them up in your 
 way ; I will take the worst, and bring them up in 
 my way ; and mine shall turn out better workmen, 
 better subjects, and better Christians, than yours." 
 If he had made such a challenge, he would have won 
 
36 AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL. 
 
 the prize ; as it is, he has proved his point, which is, 
 that the making the working classes good workmen, 
 subjects, and Christians, is a matter of choice, and 
 may be effected any day, as soon as the upper classes, 
 or a certain number of them, wish it to be so, and 
 attempt to carry their wishes into effect by the means 
 he has pointed out. 
 
 Fellenberg considers that every man is born with 
 the most valuable of all capital — the sum-total of 
 his faculties of body and mind. But this capital is 
 worth nothing till it is cultivated and employed; 
 and the cultivation consists in what alone makes 
 his capital profitable and productive — the educa- 
 tion of the labourer. If this capital be brought 
 out and educated, it becomes national wealth ; if 
 neglected, the labourer becomes a burden, by con- 
 suming more than he produces, and by becoming a 
 destructive criminal. The capital of the labourer's 
 possible skill and industry is like that of a mine, or 
 the soil, — though ever so rich, it yields nothing till 
 it is worked. One of the products of this capital is 
 self-happiness ; and the happiness of every man de- 
 pends upon the skill with which this innate capital, 
 with which he is born, is worked. The truth is uni- 
 versal, and applies to all ranks of life — Memoria nihil 
 est nisi earn exerceas. The best natural abilities, 
 which ought to constitute the happiness of the per- 
 son and family to which they belong, are lost or 
 perverted for want of education, or by an injudicious 
 one. The amount of national benefit which would 
 
NATIONAL IMPORTANCE. 37 
 
 be derived from a well-trained peasantry may be 
 calculated numerically, as we calculate the amount 
 of its crime. This calculation would far exceed the 
 most sanguine views which have hitherto been taken 
 of the improvement of man. When the moral im- 
 provement of the labourer shall have become a 
 general object of pursuit, upon the principles now 
 proved to be practically possible, we shall have 
 invented a moral railroad, by which the great ends 
 of morality, religion, and national wealth, will be 
 reached with as much speed and certainty as com- 
 mercial purposes are accomplished by physical rail- 
 roads. 
 
 The peasantry who have been educated in the 
 agricultural school of Fellenberg may be distin- 
 guished from others who have not been so educated, 
 by a kindly spirit, and a quiet, peaceable conduct, 
 which never forsakes them. They are always ready, 
 in the Christian spirit, to help and assist others ; and 
 have no desire to quit their station in society, but 
 are perfectly contented with their condition in life. 
 
 If similar institutions should be attempted in 
 other countries, and children should be admitted 
 above five years of age, as at ten or fifteen, and 
 still kept till twenty-one, the expense of the esta- 
 blishment would be less, but the formation of cha- 
 racter would also be less perfect. Those who are 
 educated by the common methods, or who are not 
 educated at all, must necessarily possess a character 
 more or less vicious, at whatever age they are 
 
38 AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL. 
 
 selected to be placed in such a school ; and this 
 character, if not incurably bad, would take long to 
 reform, and prove a serious injury to the institution. 
 Such an institution, if unsuccessful, would be no 
 argument against the agricultural system of Fellen- 
 berg, though in proportion to its success it would 
 confirm his views. Those establishments in England 
 called " refuges" are under great disadvantages. 
 They take children of a certain age, who are hard- 
 ened in crime ; who have been educated in crime ; 
 who have been rejected by society, and become out- 
 casts on account of their crimes ; who have thus, as 
 it were, been interdicted the use of earth and water, 
 in being fit for no honest means of earning their 
 daily bread, — who have never been taught any. Yet 
 even these have been found capable of some reform, 
 — willing to learn a trade, willing to work, sensible 
 to kindness, grateful for it, open to religious impres- 
 sions, and thankful for religious instruction. Had 
 such children been placed under wholesome instruc- 
 tion and training when infants, and continued so till 
 twenty-one, it is impossible not to believe that they 
 would have been, in all respects, useful and religious 
 characters. The persons who have undertaken these 
 institutions, under all their disadvantages, must pos- 
 sess the highest and purest principles of our nature, 
 great enlightenment of understanding, — great faith in 
 the stability of the principles of man, in his moral 
 and rational powers, when properly cultivated, — and, 
 above all, a profound sentiment of the character of 
 
IMPERFECT IMITATION. 39 
 
 God as viewed in its holiness, justice, and immutable 
 rectitude, and love for his offspring. To believe 
 that God is indifferent or opposed to the happiness 
 and perfection of man, is one thing ; to believe that 
 he will promote that happiness and perfection only 
 through the use of means properly sought out and ap- 
 plied, is another and a totally different position. He 
 may delay the discovery of those means for ages, as 
 he has done some of the most useful and valuable 
 discoveries in art and science ; but as the means have 
 been at length discovered of attaining great perfection 
 in the one, we have a right to conclude, by a strict 
 logical analogy, that they will be discovered in the 
 other. Besides, we are not left even to analogy ; we 
 have a more sure word of prophecy, that is, of Scrip- 
 ture : for no one can be much in the Bible without 
 seeing that all its preceptive morality is prophetic of a 
 moral kingdom, at some future time to exist on earth, 
 in which all arts and sciences shall co-operate to one 
 great moral end, the Christian regeneration of the 
 world. Revelation would be almost futile without it. 
 Some such hopes and principles must have filled 
 and animated the bosoms of those persons — call 
 them philanthropists, call them Christians, call them 
 people of common feeling and common sense ele- 
 vated into a principle — who in this country, in the 
 midst of many discouragements, both in the under- 
 taking itself, and also in the low and unfavourable 
 state of public opinion on the subject, could risk 
 their credit and good name, could draw upon them- 
 
40 AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL. 
 
 selves the responsibilities of the undertaking, could 
 expose themselves to the ridicule and odium of party- 
 interest, could compromise even their worldly pro- 
 sperity, for the sake of exploring a new path of duty, 
 which, though promising much in anticipation, was 
 necessarily beset with piercing thorns in its com- 
 mencement : 
 
 Illis robur et ses triplex 
 
 Circa pectus erat. 
 
 MEYKIRCH. 
 
 When Fellenberg had proved experimentally the 
 truth of his ideas by the success of his agricultural 
 school, he proceeded to prove it still more decidedly 
 by the colony of Meykirch, six miles from Hofwyl. 
 In the year 1816 he purchased fifteen acres of 
 woodland. Thither he sent a master with about 
 twelve children. They were to build themselves 
 a house, to clear and cultivate the land, and to em- 
 ploy their leisure time in learning to read and write, 
 and the elements of knowledge. They were supplied 
 with tools and materials from Hofwyl, and with food 
 till they could raise enough for subsistence. In 
 seven years they repaid all the expenses of their 
 outlay, which was about 150/., and maintained them- 
 selves upon their little territory. Fellenberg calcu- 
 lates that fifteen acres of land would support a 
 colony of thirty children upon this plan, which is 
 the greatest number suited to such a system ; and 
 that it might be established upon land not available 
 
MEYKIRCH. 41 
 
 for the general purposes of cultivation. The only 
 difficulty is, to obtain a superintendent properly 
 qualified by temper, character, religious principles, 
 and a complete knowledge of details. 
 
 This colony was compared very naturally to the 
 story of Crusoe upon the desert island. It drew all 
 its supplies at first from Hofwyl, as Crusoe did his 
 from the ship. The children were delighted at the 
 comparison, and worked at their enterprise with the 
 greatest alacrity and zeal, and became naturally 
 strongly attached to the cottage reared by their own 
 hands, and the land converted from a waste to a 
 garden by their own labour. When these little 
 emigrants arrived at the spot which was to be their 
 future home, they found nothing but a shed on the 
 side of a precipitous mountain, under which they 
 slept upon straw covered with sail-cloth. They had 
 to level the ground, and with the earth and rock to 
 form a terrace in front, which soon became a garden. 
 The cottage they built was of one story, with a 
 basement which became the kitchen and dairy, which 
 occupied together twenty-five feet in front. Above 
 this was one room, about twelve feet wide, for the 
 day-room, behind which was a dormitory of the same 
 size, and behind this a stable of the same length, and 
 about nine feet wide. An open gallery was in front 
 of the day -room. At each end of the building was 
 a shed about fifteen feet wide, and running back 
 upon a level with the stable. So that the whole 
 front of the building was fifty feet, and the depth 
 
42 MEYKIRCH. 
 
 thirty-three ; and it was finished in about two years. 
 The colony subsists upon milk, potatoes, and bread. 
 Three hours a-day are devoted to instruction, the rest 
 to labour accompanied by explanations. The same 
 system is pursued as at Hofwyl : — reading, writing, 
 drawing, singing, natural history, the history and 
 geography of their country, common arithmetic, 
 mental arithmetic, geometry, land - measuring ; a 
 portion of botany, so far as relates to agriculture ; 
 the nature of soils and manures, and the rotation of 
 crops; platting, sewing, spinning, weaving; social 
 prayer night and morning, religious conversations, 
 Bible lessons ; the feelings and affections roused into 
 action in the midst of their tasks ; the duties of life 
 pointed out, as depending upon their relation to one 
 another and to their heavenly Father, his universal 
 love to his creatures, and the inexpressible glories 
 of his works. In the prayers which the master and 
 pupils offer up morning and evening, they never omit 
 to refer to the advantages and blessings which they 
 enjoy in this asylum, nor to pray that all orphans and 
 destitute children, in all the world, may every where 
 find kind protectors who may establish similar asylums 
 for instructing and educating them, so that they may 
 become good Christians and useful members of society. 
 This colony is one of the most affecting sights in 
 the world. To behold the happy results of youthful 
 labour, the intelligence of the children, and their 
 contented and grateful dispositions, living upon a 
 fare which most people would despise, and eating 
 
MEYKIRCH. 
 
 43 
 
 nothing but the produce of their own exertions, having 
 converted a wilderness into a garden, and made the 
 desert to blossom as a rose. 
 
 When Meykirch was first established, they wanted 
 water. To attain it, they were obliged, under the 
 direction of a skilful workman, to excavate a passage 
 into a sandstone rock five feet in height and 280 in 
 length. 
 
 On Sundays they attend the service at the chapel 
 of Meykirch, and very frequently at Hofwyl. 
 
 An establishment like Meykirch possesses one 
 very great advantage, peculiar to itself, over a large 
 one like that at Hofwyl, which is, that the pupils see 
 the whole fruit of their labours constantly under 
 their eyes. The house they live in, the fields they 
 cultivate, the food they eat, the clothes they wear, 
 are all the produce of their own hands. It is strictly 
 and properly their own. If any articles are brought 
 from other places, they are bought in exchange for 
 their own productions. But in a large establishment 
 this sense of personal production is lost sight of in 
 the multitude of producers, and the ramifications and 
 changes of the produce. We cannot help thinking 
 that there was a period in European history, when 
 the wants of the peasants were supplied very much 
 by domestic manufacture, and when the state of 
 society resembled a good deal that of Meykirch; 
 the children were brought up under the eye of the 
 parent, and engaged in some kind of domestic labour, 
 spinning, or knitting, &c, till they were old enough 
 
44 MEYKIRCH. , 
 
 to go to field-labour. The contamination of towns 
 had not reached the country, and the manners were 
 more pure. If it ever were so, that state of society- 
 has passed away, never to return ; and the benefits 
 of it upon the character of the young must now be 
 sought for by more artificial methods — by an en- 
 lightened and Christian philanthropy anticipating 
 evil habits by a precautionary system, and applying 
 the best improvements of modern art, science, and 
 moral management, to the judicious formation of 
 habits of intelligent labour — in agricultural schools 
 formed after the successful model of Fellenberg. 
 
 « Agriculture," says Fellenberg, " seems to be 
 peculiarly fitted by Providence for the education of 
 poor, necessitous children. When taught systema- 
 tically and intelligently, it excites the faculties of 
 observation and reasoning, even among those who 
 learn it only to live by it ; but the particular end 
 which an enlightened benevolence proposes to itself 
 will only be fulfilled in proportion as we teach the 
 pupils to delight in assisting and obliging their com- 
 panions while they are working on their own account. 
 At Meykirch, the pupils are so situated as to per- 
 ceive that these two objects, the personal and com- 
 mon good, go hand in hand together. If new pupils 
 arrive, their assistance is felt to be useful in com- 
 pleting the common asylum. Their pleasures and 
 enjoyments are in common : industry and Christian 
 feeling are promoted by the same means, and travel 
 together in perfect harmony. Is it going too far to 
 
MEYKIRCH. 45 
 
 say, that that prayer, ' thy kingdom come, thy will 
 be done on earth,' is here fulfilled ?" Destitute and 
 abandoned children, who would otherwise perish as 
 outcasts, here become Christians, and earn their sub- 
 sistence contentedly, cheerfully, and gratefully. It 
 js in nature, the grand laboratory of the Creator, 
 which is now put in harmony with the Gospel, that 
 we must seek for the means and elements of primary 
 instruction and education. Our utmost wishes may 
 be accomplished by placing the rising generation 
 under the care of well- trained instructors, in the 
 midst of nature, safe from the contamination and 
 corruption of the dense and neglected population 
 of towns, which cannot grow up otherwise than 
 vicious. 
 
 " When the pupils of Meykirch were made 
 acquainted with the miserable state of Greece, and 
 the multitudes of children which became destitute in 
 consequence, they made a collection of what they 
 could spare for their relief, and petitioned in their 
 prayers that they might meet with the same educa- 
 tion and protection which they themselves possessed. 
 
 " It must not be supposed," says Fellenberg, 
 " that education consists in removing difficulties 
 from the path of the pupils ; it consists rather in 
 teaching them how to surmount them. They must 
 be taught to conquer both external and internal dif- 
 ficulties : to overcome the first by steady labour, 
 well directed ; and to master the second, viz. their 
 own passions, by habitual self-command. No occu- 
 
46 MEYKIRCH. 
 
 pation is so fitted for this purpose as agriculture, 
 provided it be followed under a kind, judicious, 
 and religious guide, who may direct and moderate 
 the efforts of the pupils, which are sometimes apt to 
 run into excess, as at others they would sink into 
 idleness and disorder." 
 
 Some years ago, the river Linth overflowed its 
 banks, and converted a considerable tract of country 
 into a useless marsh. An eminent engineer succeeded 
 in draining this by a canal ; and it was proposed to 
 establish upon the reclaimed land a colony of poor 
 children, upon the plan of Meykirch. The plan hap- 
 pily succeeded ; and while in progress, the children 
 at Meykirch took a lively interest in it, made a col- 
 lection for it, and offered up prayers for its prosperity. 
 
 Should similar establishments be formed in other- 
 countries, either for the education of destitute child- 
 ren, or for the reform of criminal ones, like the re- 
 fuges of England, Fellenberg recommends that the 
 latter should vary in the strictness of their discipline 
 and inspection, according to the character of the 
 children sent to them. In proportion as these are 
 more vicious and hardened, their labour should be 
 more severe, their discipline more rigid, and the food, 
 though wholesome, yet coarser ; and that the moral 
 inspection should be more minute and searching, 
 and moral and religious instruction more studiously 
 impressed. Thus, the mind might be subdued through 
 the body, and labour and temperance might pave the 
 way to the subjugation of the passions and appetites. 
 
the girls' school. 47 
 
 When the agricultural school was fully esta- 
 blished, Fellenberg formed one for girls, upon a 
 similar industrial plan, as far as the nature of female 
 occupations permitted. All kinds of female industry- 
 formed -the chief employment, and mental instruction 
 was introduced as secondary and subservient to the 
 former. The school was under the immediate care 
 of Madame F. and her daughters. The object was 
 to form good domestic or farming servants, or good 
 managers and housewives for the peasantry ; at the 
 same time that attention to mental cultivation, which 
 consisted in practical moral principles, a knowledge 
 of the Bible, and the adoption of its spirit as the 
 practical guide of life, was made a leading object, as 
 in the boys' school. 
 
 We may take this opportunity of observing, that 
 an industrial education in these days is totally dif- 
 ferent from what it was, or could have been, a cen- 
 tury ago. It would then have been mere labour 
 without mental exertion, and without principles 
 either moral or religious : that seems to have been 
 the character of many of the old charity-schools; 
 the children were kept to constant labour, like 
 animals, in unwholesome apartments, and upon a 
 bad diet, without any mental instruction whatever ; 
 they were consequently cramped in mind and body ; 
 the masters frequently abused their office, and over- 
 worked and ill-treated the children. The present 
 day-schools, which attend merely to mental instruc- 
 tion, however imperfect in forming character, are 
 
48 THE HIGHER SCHOOL. 
 
 still far superior to the old charity-schools. But 
 the enlightened labour-school of Fellenberg gives 
 to labour a moral character ; and the instruction 
 with which the labour is accompanied, and the 
 intelligence and kindness of the superintendent, 
 give to the same name a totally different meaning. 
 In this school the children, even if they were never 
 to learn to read, would become more intelligent, and 
 better qualified for service, than most of those who 
 are now educated in our best national schools ; they 
 would have a practical knowledge of an extensive 
 kind. Agriculture taught in this way comprises in 
 itself a vast fund of knowledge, and all of it of 
 importance : soils, geology, mineralogy, drainage, 
 land-measuring, manuring, chemistry; plants, vege- 
 tables, forest-trees, fruit-trees, botany ; implements, 
 machines ; animals, for labour or for food — their 
 habits, food, management, — are but a few of the 
 particulars. 
 
 In Fellenberg's school the knowledge is chiefly 
 communicated to the children by word of mouth, 
 not from books. 
 
 The secret of the system lies with the educator. 
 
 THE HIGHER SCHOOL. 
 
 Fellenberg would not have done justice to 
 his comprehensive views and wishes, had he rested 
 in his agricultural school. He conceived that the 
 characters of all classes depended upon the habits 
 and principles imbibed in their education. The 
 
THE HIGHER SCHOOL. 49 
 
 -elementary faculties and principles of human na- 
 ture are the same in all ages and in all classes. 
 The character of the grown-up man depends upon 
 the age in which he lives, the class in which he is 
 born, and the education he has received in that class, 
 —comprehending in that word not only his book- 
 instruction, but the moral training, and the com- 
 panions with which he has been trained, or those 
 with whom he has associated. Peculiarities will 
 arise in the intermixture of these principles, which 
 may appear at first sight exceptions to general laws ; 
 but they will be found, on examination, only to be 
 branches of higher laws, and not to be by any means 
 aberrations. Thus, the good sense, judgment, vigil- 
 ance, intelligence, and piety of particular parents, 
 may keep their children from contamination, and 
 habituate them to right discipline from the cradle to 
 the age when they are too old, and too enlightened, 
 and too strongly confirmed in good principles, to be 
 corrupted. Till the world becomes more moral and 
 more Christian, this parental vigilance and good sense 
 is perhaps our best hope for character ; but in the 
 present state of the world it is of rare occurrence. 
 Sometimes it seems to fail altogether, and the best 
 parents, or those who seem to be so, have unprin- 
 cipled and profligate children. But in these cases it 
 will generally be found, that though the parents had 
 some of the points of good educators, they had not 
 all. In this case the moral argument is like the 
 mathematical one — some of the necessary data are 
 
 E 
 
50 THE HIGHER SCHOOL. 
 
 present, others are absent. Can we wonder that the ex- 
 periment does not succeed ? It is impossible it should 
 succeed. Nature is consistent and logical ; she will 
 bend to no one's caprice ; she is stern, inexorable, 
 and unflinching in her laws ; she pities the weakness 
 and blindness of her children, but she will not for- 
 give them. Let no man hope to be unscathed in 
 that warfare, in opposing the moral laws of nature. 
 
 Again, an individual may be born with a rare 
 combination of principles. He may possess the 
 higher faculties strong, the lower ones weak. He 
 may have a clear and strong conscience, a good 
 judgment, an energetic will, a paramount sense of 
 right and justice, with unconquerable firmness ; the 
 lower appetites may be moderate or weak, they may 
 require but little self-control, while he possesses it 
 in abundance. The temptation, therefore, to do 
 wrong is small; the inducements to do right are 
 many and strong. Such characters exist from 
 birth. Genius extends itself to morality, as well 
 as to works of intellect and fancy. Some men are 
 born great moralists, as others are born great poets, 
 mathematicians, musicians, or mechanics. These 
 are practical points of the utmost importance. They 
 have never been studied by educators, nor even 
 by metaphysicians. The moral children should be 
 searched out, and well instructed, and be selected 
 for the instructors and educators of others. Such 
 characters will persevere in virtue, or goodness, or 
 religion, call it what you will, in spite of all obstacles, 
 
THE HIGHER SCHOOL. 51 
 
 and come out of the fiery ordeal of life victorious 
 over all temptations. 
 
 These considerations are not to lead us away 
 from the general law or fact, that the character of 
 the mass of mankind is formed by circumstances. 
 Upon this principle Fellenberg proposed to establish 
 a school for the higher classes, in which the usual 
 branches of a first-rate education should be taught 
 by the best masters; but the school should differ 
 from others in the following respects : — 
 
 1. The subjects taught should not be confined to 
 a knowledge of Greek and Latin, but should com- 
 prehend the elements of all subjects which are useful 
 in the conduct of life, — modern languages, natural 
 philosophy, natural history. 
 
 2. The number of teachers should be increased, 
 so that the teaching of each should be more com- 
 plete, perfect, and satisfactory, by having fewer sub- 
 jects and fewer pupils to attend to. 
 
 3. No one subject should be considered as in- 
 trinsically superior to another, but each should be 
 important in its place ; and its relative importance 
 should only be estimated like the objects of nature, 
 in which nothing is predominant, and nothing can be 
 spared. The whole would be imperfect without the 
 presence of all the subordinate parts; and all are 
 important in their place, and in the conception and 
 plan of the great Architect. 
 
 4. In giving this general education to all the pu- 
 pils, there would still be room for making distinctions 
 
52 THE HIGHER SCHOOL. 
 
 according to the taste and genius of individuals. 
 When the individual taste was clearly declared for 
 languages, or natural philosophy, or pure mathe- 
 matics, or natural history, he could have the oppor- 
 tunity of indulging that taste, in consequence of the 
 abundant supply of masters or professors who were 
 obtained to reside in the establishment. 
 
 5. It was not an object of the school to be a 
 nursery for other institutions, where excellence in 
 some one acquisition was held to be the criterion 
 of all human excellence. When this is the object of 
 a private seminary, as in most English schools, all 
 studies must be sacrificed to the one in which all 
 excellence is supposed to consist. Thus, a particular 
 species of composition used to be thought the per- 
 fection of the human mind. Now composition is 
 properly the order and arrangement of knowledge 
 in a perspicuous method ; but scholastically it was 
 nothing more than stringing words together accord- 
 ing to certain arbitrary rules, and had no reference 
 to the sense and the subject-matter. Thus nonsense- 
 verses were once an important part of school-exer- 
 cises ; and at all times it would be difficult to con- 
 ceive how boys could learn to arrange knowledge 
 when they had none to arrange. However, Fellen- 
 berg avoided this difficulty, by discarding the idea 
 that the acquisition of a prize constituted human 
 perfection. 
 
 Fellenberg's school has been improperly com- 
 pared with other schools, as if success in getting 
 
THE HIGHER SCHOOL. 53 
 
 prizes constituted the criterion of its merits. This 
 was unjust to him, who never professed such an 
 object. It might as well be imputed as a fault 
 in the Gospel that it did not make scholarship its 
 test of excellence. Fellenberg determined to be a 
 Gospel-schoolmaster, or none at all; to make his 
 pupils men of principle, while he enlightened their 
 minds, and to leave prizes and academic honours to 
 those who valued them. 
 
 A great question has been raised in Europe of 
 late years as to the methods of teaching Latin and 
 Greek. We spend ten years in learning these lan- 
 guages, and 1500/. of money, and at last we know 
 them very imperfectly ; therefore, say the public, 
 the method is bad. No, say the teachers ; you are 
 idle and stupid. Then, say the public, since we are 
 too stupid to learn the dead languages, teach us 
 something useful. No, say the teachers ; we teach 
 this or nothing. But Fellenberg says, " excellence 
 in languages is like other excellence, — it depends 
 upon individuals when the foundation is laid. Those 
 who are properly taught will afterwards become 
 proficients, if they have the taste and inclination ; 
 those who have no taste will never learn, under any 
 system. But if they learn not the dead languages 
 at ordinary schools, they learn nothing. But we 
 will give them the opportunity of learning, not 
 merely the dead languages, which they may have 
 no taste for, but that without which they are unfit 
 
54 THE HIGHER SCHOOL. 
 
 for life, and which they may have a natural taste 
 for, if not for " the dead languages." 
 
 6. And again ; " we wish to form our school, not 
 upon a system of prizes, but upon a system of charac- 
 ter. We wish to teach our pupils in what excellence 
 really consists, and not to mislead them with false 
 views and erroneous estimates of human duty and 
 responsibility. We do not teach them that excel- 
 lence consists in any one acquisition whatever, but 
 in the harmony of all, and chiefly in the use made of 
 every acquisition. What we labour at, is not the 
 quantity acquired, but the relative value of it, and 
 the use made of it." 
 
 Far be it also from Fellenberg to sit in judgment 
 upon the particular use and application of old and 
 national institutions. He is not a meddler; he 
 does not condemn, or pull down; he assists, and 
 builds up ; he had no wish that his institutions 
 should spread before they were tried and found 
 successful. He had no wish to supplant old institu- 
 tions, but to form new ones, to serve as remedies for 
 evils notoriously and widely existing. The scho- 
 lastic subjects and methods of instruction might 
 serve the purpose of education for a particular 
 system of society, while it left untouched a con- 
 siderable portion of evil which infested a collateral 
 part of that system; and till a remedy was found 
 out for the collateral part, the machinery of the 
 other part might continue. But Fellenberg had no 
 
THE HIGHER SCHOOL. 55 
 
 such system to support ; his was not a part of that 
 scholastic system; and he might therefore be well 
 excused in entering upon a new field, which, without 
 interfering with any other, would supply certain 
 wants Which were widely felt and complained of. 
 
 " There is a large class of young men," says 
 Fellenberg, " who are men of property and influence 
 in different parts of Europe. They are sent to the 
 present schools, because there are no others- They 
 do not want a knowledge of the dead languages, nor 
 do they want college- prizes. Prizes are no dis- 
 tinction to them; they are distinguished by their 
 hereditary renown. What they want, is the general, 
 not the scholastic, cultivation of their mind. They 
 want the elements of scientific, interesting, useful 
 knowledge ; not of philology or school-logic. Above 
 all, they want the cultivation of the heart, which the 
 schools never taught. They want to know that they 
 have a heart, a conscience, and an eternal responsi- 
 bility ; that their birth, rank, and wealth, are but a 
 responsibility, on which the happiness of thousands, 
 perhaps of millions, depends even in this life, and 
 for which they will have to account to their Creator 
 and Judge in the life to come. To teach this is my 
 business ; but to teach it is not the work of an hour, 
 but of a life. A precept or a sermon will not effect 
 it ; it requires a whole youth of training. They must 
 be trained, not lectured. This, therefore, is the prin- 
 ciple of my school, — to form the character. It is 
 nothing to say, that my pupils cannot carry off prizes 
 
56 THE HIGHER SCHOOL. 
 
 at Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Oxford, or Cambridge. I 
 train them not for that, but to return to their fami- 
 lies in peace, as affectionate sons, intelligent masters, 
 vigorous in manly constitution, benevolent to their 
 inferiors, loyal to their kings, upright in all their 
 transactions. These are the objects which I propose 
 to myself. By them I must be judged, not by aca- 
 demical honours. I wish to form men apt and fit to 
 exercise all the arts and honours of peace or war, as 
 Milton has so well expressed it." 
 
 Thus Fellenberg began his school for the higher 
 classes ; and as it was not a preparatory school for 
 any higher seminary, but one which professed to 
 finish the education of those who frequented it ; and 
 as he believed it to be desirable to form the mind 
 by means of a circle of sciences or studies, he was 
 obliged to imitate a university in introducing a com- 
 plete universal course of languages, sciences, history, 
 literature, drawing, music, &c. Still, the acquisi- 
 tion of knowledge was made secondary to that of a 
 good healthy constitution of body, and of firm moral 
 and religious principles. He had obtained the secret 
 of producing these effects in his agricultural school ; 
 and by a judicious and discriminating modification 
 of these means to the higher school, he succeeded in 
 his object in that also. The number of hours de- 
 voted to study in the higher school was increased, 
 but they were fewer than in ordinary schools ; while 
 the occupations of the pupils between the hours 
 of study were so systematised, and arranged, and 
 
THE HIGHER SCHOOL. 57 
 
 superintended, that no time was really idly spent; 
 nor had the pupils the opportunity of acquiring 
 objectionable habits. Gardening, agriculture, and 
 gymnastic exercises, fill up the intervals between 
 school- hours. A practical knowledge of agricul- 
 ture, and of the construction of machines and im- 
 plements, form a great subject of study, both on 
 account of its healthiness, and because many of the 
 pupils are heirs to large domains, in which their 
 knowledge may be turned to the best account. 
 
 The same preventive system of inspection pre- 
 vails in both schools. The boys are not allowed to 
 acquire vicious habits, and then lectured upon their 
 sinfulness; but the formation of the habit is pre- 
 vented by ever-watchful vigilance ; just as the eye 
 of the parent is ever awake, in the early years of 
 life, to prevent those numberless accidents and im- 
 proprieties to which the inexperience, as much as 
 the wilfulness, of children is liable. 
 
 But this preventive system is not incompatible 
 with the fullest enjoyment of the boys. The in- 
 spector is present to prevent mischief and vice, not 
 to check the sallies of youthful joyance. The in- 
 spector is the friend, not the " pcedagogus acer" of 
 the school. He is ever ready to explain, instruct, 
 and to compose any differences which may arise, and 
 never loses sight of the one grand principle of human 
 life, that all men are brethren, tied to each other by 
 different degrees of consanguinity, and that the hap- 
 
58 THE HIGHER SCHOOL. 
 
 piness and well-being of the whole is made up of 
 those of each of the individuals. 
 
 The arrangements for the night are made upon 
 the same principle. About twelve pupils sleep in 
 one room ; but when they retire to rest they are 
 accompanied by an inspector, who does not quit 
 the room till all are asleep. It is impressed upon 
 their minds that the night belongs exclusively to 
 repose and sleep. As soon as the wants of the 
 body are supplied, bed becomes relaxing and ener- 
 vating both to body and mind. The pupils are 
 therefore habituated to fall asleep as soon as they 
 go to bed, and to arise at an early hour, as soon as 
 they awake. The great secret of obtaining sleep is 
 exercise in the open air, inducing bodily fatigue. 
 It was long ago observed, that " the sleep of the 
 labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or 
 much ; but the abundance of the rich will not suffer 
 him to sleep." Thus the principles of a good educa- 
 tion have been known to the wise for ages ; it may 
 almost be said that Fellenberg alone has reduced 
 them to practice. 
 
 The relation between the highest and lowest 
 classes of society has formed a subject of great 
 dispute and uncertainty. Some have considered 
 them as totally opposed to and incompatible with 
 each other ; that wealth and rank on the one hand 
 imply poverty and misery on the other; that in a 
 perfect state of society, all should be equal. Some, 
 
{/ 
 
 THE HIGHER SCHOOL. 59 
 
 who approve of a distinction of classes, imagine that 
 it is so far unnatural, that while it exists the lower 
 classes must be degraded, discontented, and unhappy ; 
 that consequently there always must be in them 
 a latent spirit of insubordination and dissatisfaction, 
 which can only be kept quiet by force in the higher 
 classes acting upon ignorance in the lower ones. 
 
 Fellenberg considers the distinction of ranks to 
 be a natural law of man, and a providential appoint- 
 ment of the highest and most benevolent wisdom. 
 It provides for every kind of pursuit, occupation, 
 and study. It brings all the faculties of body 
 and mind to their highest perfection. Universal 
 perfection may in a degree belong to mankind 
 as a race, but it cannot possibly belong to man as 
 an individual. The acquirement of one physical 
 excellence is necessarily incompatible with that of 
 its opposite ; so of the qualities of the mind. To 
 bring to perfection all the bodily powers, a number 
 of persons must be trained, each in his own depart- 
 ment. Much more is this principle requisite in 
 mental pursuits, which are infinitely more varied and 
 incompatible than those of the body. 
 
 The idea that the lower orders of society are 
 naturally discontented, and envious of the higher 
 classes, has arisen from this cause, among others, viz. 
 that the upper classes, and the schools in which they 
 are trained, have hitherto too much inculcated the 
 principle of rivalry and an insatiable ambition. They 
 have done all they could to spur on this principle. 
 
60 THE HIGHER SCHOOL. 
 
 From the very cradle, taunting and invidious com- 
 parisons are made; personal superiority is fostered 
 and lauded for its own sake, as possessing an in- 
 trinsic value ; rivalries and jealousies are encouraged 
 and fomented. No independent rule of right and 
 excellence is established. All excellence is resolved 
 in a great measure into this, that it consists in some 
 personal superiority over another. The inferior 
 person is always more or less degraded. 
 
 Those who have been brought up upon this prin- 
 ciple imagine, that to be beneath another in rank or 
 wealth is to be degraded, miserable, and discontented ; 
 and therefore that the lowest class of society must 
 necessarily possess these feelings, and be at constant 
 enmity with the higher classes. Nothing can be 
 more unphilosophical than this notion, or more re- 
 pugnant to our conceptions of a wise Providence, 
 or to the truths of revelation. The rivalry-spirit 
 is one which belongs essentially to a barbarous state 
 of society, not to one of Christian civilisation. The 
 savage provokes every other savage to a jealous rivalry, 
 while the Christian provokes his neighbour to love 
 and good works. The rivalry of schools is one of the 
 legacies of savage life, in which all happiness was 
 deemed to consist in personal superiority. 
 
 Fellenberg, relying on his conviction that the 
 distinction of classes is a Divine appointment, con- 
 siders that the better the two classes of high and low 
 understand each other's real position and circum- 
 stances, the less will the lower one be disposed to envy 
 
THE HIGHER SCHOOL. 61 
 
 the higher one, and the more will the latter be 
 inclined to respect and sympathise with the former. 
 He therefore formed the two schools near each other, 
 as parts of the same establishment. The pursuits 
 and occupations of both were carried on in sight of 
 each other. The higher pupils could observe that 
 the lower ones had the same affections and faculties 
 as themselves, and were as full of happiness and 
 enjoyment, while their labour was absolutely neces- 
 sary for the comfort of all ; that in the midst of this 
 labour they were contented and cheerful, free from 
 envious passions, and imbued with sentiments of 
 respect and attachment for their superiors in rank ; 
 that their minds were equally capable of cultivation, 
 as far as their leisure-time allowed ; and that they 
 were as capable of receiving pleasure from the beau- 
 ties of nature and of art. Above all, they could see 
 that they possessed the high principles of morality, 
 and justice, and the love of truth, equally with them- 
 selves ; that they were as incapable of falsehood and 
 hypocrisy, and possessed hearts as bold, true, and 
 loyal, as belonged to the best of the land. 
 
 On the other hand, the agricultural pupils per- 
 ceived that the condition of the higher pupils was 
 not one of idleness nor of unmixed delight ; that they 
 were subject to a discipline as strict as their own, 
 though of a different kind ; that each hour brought 
 its allotted task, which could not be omitted ; that 
 during the hours of leisure and exercise, the enjoy- 
 ments of each seemed to be equal ; that occasionally 
 
62 THE HIGHER SCHOOL. 
 
 it was evident that the other pupils had secret causes 
 of dissatisfaction peculiar to themselves ; that a more 
 luxurious mode of living did not appear to be accom- 
 panied with more pleasure than a more temperate 
 one ; and that the expenses of the higher school 
 were a source of immediate profit and advantage to 
 themselves. 
 
 Thus, in happiness and enjoyments the two 
 classes appeared to be equal ; while in the pro* 
 duction and distribution of the produce of labour, 
 they appeared mutually essential to each other's 
 comfort ; the labour of the one being necessary on 
 the one hand, and the capital of the other on the 
 other hand. 
 
 Fellenberg's system allowed of an explanation of 
 this mutual relationship, and afforded him the op- 
 portunity of inculcating lessons of kindness and 
 good offices among the higher pupils toward the 
 lower ones. Presents were occasionally made to 
 them, and assistance afforded, either in the purchase 
 of useful tools, &c, or in times of sickness ; and the 
 same charitable spirit was called forth towards the 
 parents of the children who lived near, and towards 
 the other peasants of the neighbourhood. Thus 
 the end of Fellenberg was attained in the higher 
 school; which was, not to produce great scholars or 
 men of abstract science, but good men for every-day 
 life, who might feel and acknowledge the brother- 
 hood of all mankind, and promote, to the utmost of 
 their power, the welfare of the community. 
 
VILLAGE SCHOOLMASTERS. 63 
 
 VILLAGE SCHOOLMASTERS. 
 
 When Fellenberg had succeeded in his three 
 schools, he began to think how the blessings of the 
 agricultural school might be conveyed to the vil- 
 lages of his country where it was most wanted. For 
 this purpose, he selected the boys who were most 
 fitted for the purpose, and trained them for masters 
 instead of workmen. When they quitted the esta- 
 blishment, they returned to their native villages to 
 act as common schoolmasters, and to train the child- 
 ren under their care, as much as possible, upon the 
 principles of Fellenberg, i. e. to form their character 
 upon moral and religious grounds, and not merely 
 to teach reading and writing as barren arts. 
 
 Fellenberg also invited the village schoolmasters 
 from all parts of Switzerland to spend their summer 
 vacation ( which lasts nearly three months, on account 
 of the peculiar summer-occupation of the peasantry 
 and their children,) at Hofwyl, at his own expense, 
 that they might study the details of the establish- 
 ment, and particularly of the agricultural school. 
 Every part of the system was explained to them ; 
 and lectures were delivered, both explanatory of it, 
 and also of those subjects which might be useful to 
 them in their ordinary profession. 
 
 The subjects more particularly attended to in 
 instructing the village schoolmasters are — 1. Reli- 
 gion; 2. the language of the country, in reading, 
 analysis, understanding the subject read, the expres- 
 
64t SUMMER VACATION. 
 
 sion of the thoughts by writing or in conversation ; 
 3. arithmetic ; 4. writing ; 5. drawing ; 6. music. 
 To these are added occasionally the most useful 
 parts of natural history, anatomy, natural philosophy, 
 geography, history of Switzerland, outlines of gene- 
 ral history, history of Christianity. The instruction 
 is partly by books, partly by the oral teaching of the 
 professor. 
 
 Though all these subjects are taught, yet the 
 higher object of the heart and understanding, and 
 the inculcation of good principles, are kept steadily 
 and principally in view throughout. Fellenberg meets 
 his pupils every evening, to review the work of the 
 day, to encourage their efforts, to impress upon them 
 the importance of order, neatness, and exactness in 
 their own schools, of a discipline at once mild and 
 firm, and the advantage of extending their influence, 
 if possible, beyond the school-hours of the children, 
 to their private pursuits and domestic conduct. 
 
 The last days of their stay are devoted to a gene- 
 ral examination of all that has been done, by the 
 professors, and in the presence of deputies from the 
 government of Berne. The last day is dedicated to 
 a general fete, to which all the inhabitants of Hofvvyl 
 are invited ; and on the following morning the 
 teachers return home, each with his knapsack on 
 his back, grateful for the generous hospitality they 
 have received, and anxious to turn to good account 
 their new talents among their native villages. 
 
INTERMEDIATE SCHOOL. 65 
 
 INTERMEDIATE SCHOOL. 
 
 One more institution was necessary in order to 
 complete the circle of Fellenberg's benevolent and 
 judicious ideas. He had now successfully established 
 his model-farm with its workshops, his agricultural 
 school for the poor, and his high school for the rich 
 and noble : there wanted an intermediate school 
 for the children of the middle classes, in which the 
 usual branches of education might be taught at a 
 moderate expense. The system of this school was 
 to be less laborious and more intellectual than that 
 of the agricultural school, and less intellectual and 
 comprehensive than that of the high school. 
 
 The great value of agricultural labour having 
 been sufficiently proved, in forming the physical 
 constitution and in influencing the moral character, 
 and even the healthy condition of the intellect, a 
 modified system of manual employment in the open 
 air was introduced into this school; and whatever 
 the employment was, it was made the subject of 
 explanation and instruction, as in the agricultural 
 school. 
 
 Thus, in Fellenberg's system, no time spent in 
 the open air is lost for the purposes of instruction, as 
 it is in most schools. The business of the teacher 
 is not over when the school is closed : he is still 
 teaching by oral explanation and observation amid 
 the work or even the games of the children. His 
 book is then the great book of nature, " whose 
 
66 RECAPITULATION. 
 
 minister and interpreter " he is, to use the language 
 of Bacon. He is then surrounded by an infinity of 
 objects which strike the senses with palpable lessons, 
 instead of the dry, arbitrary characters of books, 
 which too often convey no instruction at all. 
 
 RECAPITULATION. 
 Having thus presented a view of the history of 
 Fellenberg's mind upon this important subject ; of 
 his feelings of benevolence towards the destitute, and 
 the vicious and criminal ; of his motives and reli- 
 gious principles ; and of his machinery for attaining 
 the object of his wishes, viz. an improved moral 
 education and character, and improved intellectual 
 abilities — we will here present those means at one 
 view. 
 
 1. A model-farm of the most approved methods 
 of cultivation. 
 
 2. An experimental portion, about one-tenth of 
 the whole, for testing new ideas, new machinery, 
 new plants, new methods of draining, manuring, 
 ploughing, sawing, cutting, &c. 
 
 3. Extensive workshops for manufacturing agri- 
 cultural implements, either for private use or public 
 sale. 
 
 4. A workshop for the manufacture of model- 
 machines, either of those in use, or of those im- 
 ported from abroad, or of those proposed to be tried 
 at some future period. 
 
 5. An agricultural school for the children of the 
 
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 67 
 
 peasantry, whose chief employment is labour, under 
 a well-informed teaching, either in the fields, garden, 
 or workshops ; and whose intervals of labour are em- 
 ployed in learning the elements of knowledge. 
 - 6. A school of industry for girls, upon the same 
 plan, as far as difference of sex permits. 
 
 7. A provision for training masters for agricul- 
 tural schools. 
 
 8. A summer school for the instruction of village 
 schoolmasters. 
 
 9. An intermediate school for the education of 
 children of the middle classes of society. 
 
 10. A high school for the education of the child- 
 ren of the wealthy and noble families. 
 
 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 
 Fellenberg has succeeded in what constitutes 
 the highest efforts of a great genius, i. e. in the har- 
 monious union of elements apparently, and at firs f" 
 sight, heterogeneous and contradictory. He has 
 united labour with learning ; the acquisition of a 
 trade or manual employment as a means of obtaining 
 a livelihood, with the cultivation of the mind ; all 
 the advantages of country pursuits, — fields, forests, 
 mountains, fresh air, exercise, — with all the advan- 
 tages of towns — books, society, professors, lectures, 
 arts and sciences ; the contemporaneous education 
 of the highest and lowest classes, each acquainted 
 and sympathising with the other, knowing each other's 
 character, pursuits, sources of happiness or anxiety, 
 
68 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 
 
 and yet not interfering with or incommoding each 
 other, but, on the contrary, mutually benefiting, by 
 the interchange of capital for the produce of indus- 
 try, and by kindly offices, as in real life ; the public 
 education, whose principle is discipline and strictness, 
 and the mutual influence exercised amongst num- 
 bers, — with the domestic training, whose principle is 
 personal kindness, mildness, indulgence, and, when 
 necessary, expostulation ; the most vigorous and 
 manly health of the body, with the highest culti- 
 vation of the mind ; the education of the peasant, 
 with that of the legislator, the politician, and the 
 nobleman ; the most gentlemanly manners, with 
 manual employments of what would be thought a 
 humble kind. He has made useful and laborious 
 employments honourable, and directed honour into 
 useful paths. He has shewn that agriculture, the 
 most useful of all arts, is also the most moral and 
 enlightening, and the most fitted for being made the 
 basis of education, either for high or low ; that as no 
 pursuit is more calculated to prevent vicious habits, 
 so none is more effectual in eradicating them. Sleep 
 is the grand restorative of body and mind ; it gives 
 new vigour to the faculties, as well as to the body. 
 Who does not know its effect in fixing an idea tena- 
 ciously in the memory ? But it must be sound ; and 
 sound sleep is the result remarkably of some kind of 
 agricultural labour in the open air. Cincinnatus 
 was called from the plough to command the army 
 and the senate. Enough use has not been made of 
 
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 69 
 
 this memorable fact: it includes the profoundest 
 wisdom, applicable in all ages. Fellenberg has 
 almost alone understood it, has acted upon it, has 
 systematised the principle, and sent his young nobles 
 from practical agriculture to cultivate, adorn, and 
 rule their own domains, and grace the courts of 
 their sovereigns by unsullied integrity and enlight- 
 ened ability. He has perfected, at the same time, 
 the mind and the body ; he has also perfected con- 
 jointly the heart and the head ; he has made religion 
 predominant in the heart, and yet based the under- 
 standing upon principles, — a difficulty seldom over- 
 come ; for men are generally either superstitious or 
 sceptical. A pupil at Hofwyl cannot be supersti- 
 tious, for he is surrounded by facts ; he cannot be 
 sceptical, for he is surrounded by evidence. No 
 sooner has he caught a feeling than it is fixed upon 
 a principle, upon a law of nature, and upon the 
 Lawgiver of nature. Even his doubts are valuable, 
 for their solution becomes to him a moral demon- 
 stration. To doubt with an enlightened companion 
 is to reason ; to reason is to prove. The strongest 
 doubt, clearly solved, leads to the firmest conviction. 
 Feeling and conviction are the two ends of Fellen- 
 berg's lever. Uniting them, the human mind is at 
 rest in principle, but ever progressing in knowledge, 
 benevolence, happiness, and wisdom. 
 
 Fellenberg has made all his children, from the 
 orphan to the noble, from the peasant to the pro- 
 fessor, revolve round one common centre, that of 
 
70 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 
 
 religion ; this is the secret of his influence. But 
 he has drawn every one into activity ; this is the 
 secret of his success. To converse with him, you 
 would suppose him an apostle ; to visit his farm, 
 workshops, schools, you would suppose him a man 
 of business, a man of the world. On this account 
 visitors to Hofwyl draw the most opposite conclu- 
 sions from what they see, according to the time they 
 stay, the parts of the establishment which they ob- 
 serve, or the conversations they hear. One thinks 
 Fellenberg an enthusiast, another a speculator, an- 
 other an interested proprietor,- — because he has im- 
 proved his property. To draw a fair conclusion 
 upon a momentous subject, which is no less than 
 the happiness of millions, and the peace of govern- 
 ments, and their protection from a demoralising and 
 revolutionary spirit, which has been long abroad, 
 and perhaps is not yet quelled, — every part of the 
 establishment should be examined, with the motives 
 and views of the owner, and an induction made upon 
 a full collection of facts. 
 
 There is an analogy to this in nature. To look 
 at the beautiful external world, we might mistake it 
 for the Divinity himself: it was so mistaken in for- 
 mer ages. God is matter, said the ancient sceptic ; 
 and mind is matter, says the modern sceptic. To 
 look into our own minds, and feel their spirituality, 
 we might be tempted to conclude that spirit could 
 not produce so opposite a substance as matter, and 
 that matter is self-existent ; so says scepticism in all 
 
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 71 
 
 ages. The fact is, that every part of the universe is 
 so important, and so teems with wonder in itself, 
 that while surveying it, we see not the necessity of 
 any thing else, nor the connexion which binds to- 
 gether an infinity of wonders. 
 
 Forty years have elapsed since the foundation of 
 this establishment : we are unable to say how many 
 since its entire completion and success, in the forma- 
 tion of the intermediate school, the last stone of the 
 edifice. But England has not yet sent a messenger 
 to inquire the news and to report, " to bring the 
 " grapes from the valley of Eshcol." Some few 
 individuals have wandered so far, and have amused 
 a small circle, on their return, with a partial detail 
 of its phenomena, as they have done of the noble 
 mountain-scenery in the neighbourhood. How few 
 have understood the moral lesson I Three thousand 
 children are annually committed in London as offen- 
 sive criminals against the laws : they are annually 
 punished, and again let loose upon society to live by 
 crime. How few have inquired whether it be possible 
 to reform them, and to make them useful members 
 of society ; and whether there be a spot in the 
 world where such children are reformed, or are so 
 trained as not to need reform! Yet it has been 
 proved that these children might be reformed without 
 expense; for they would repay, by their labour, all the 
 expenses of the reform. Yet no one has been offi- 
 cially sent to inquire. Those to whom the guardian- 
 ship of morals is committed have not inquired, How 
 
72 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 
 
 can crime be prevented, how can criminals be 
 saved ? 
 
 If it be allowable to love one's country instead 
 of a party, it is to be hoped and prayed for, that 
 some educator may soon arise, heaven -born, "to 
 turn the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of 
 the just," — to locate himself with thirty orphans or 
 destitute children upon fifteen acres of land, there 
 to build for themselves a sacred home, a house of 
 labour, and a house of prayer and thanksgiving ; 
 rearing around them the food they eat, and pre- 
 paring the clothes they wear, or an equivalent for 
 them ; and setting an example to the neighbourhood 
 of peaceful content, useful labour, religious principle, 
 and social happiness. Or when shall the educator 
 arise for the higher classes — for that great majority 
 of them who wish not to be great scholars or mathe- 
 maticians, but men of useful knowledge and common 
 sense, — a knowledge which belongs to their own 
 business and bosoms, which shall qualify them for 
 the management of their estates, and for the im- 
 provement of those who live upon them, their 
 tenantry and their peasantry ? 
 
 This is now the consummation devoutly to be 
 wished for. The effect of punishment, as an instru- 
 ment of reforming the human mind, has been tried, 
 and has failed. Prisons, hulks, transportation, death, 
 have had their fair experiment. The invention of 
 legislators and judges has had a full trial, and has 
 effected almost nothing ; and is only persevered in 
 
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 73 
 
 from a sense of overwhelming necessity. Let the in- 
 vention of an English Fellenberg be now applied to, 
 to do that by prevention which others have in vain 
 attempted as a cure. 
 
 And yet there is no obstacle in the way of the 
 educator when he shall appear. He has but to do 
 his work and prosper. If he shall shew an example 
 of an English Meykirch, men will see and believe ; 
 and some who see w r ill go and do likewise. If the 
 laws of England have provided no educator, neither 
 have they forbidden one to be provided. He is in 
 the moral world what a new machine is in the manu- 
 facturing world, — a desideratum. He will be re- 
 ceived, when he appears, with open arms and with 
 smiles, rather than with frowns. Let him only arise, 
 and he will prosper. Such is our fervent wish and 
 our increasing conviction. It is impossible that the 
 'success of Fellenberg can fall to the ground, or be 
 lost upon England. 
 
 England deliberates before she acts. She col- 
 lects her facts before she draws her conclusions. She 
 may occasionally appear to sleep ; but she is only 
 then pondering, in order to choose, decide, and act. 
 Her institutions for religion, charity, arts and sciences, 
 cover the land, and are still increasing. When she 
 has once caught the idea of moral institutions for the 
 practical formation of character in early life, she will 
 display the same sagacity, integrity, and ardour, in 
 this humane, enlightened, and glorious march, as in 
 all the other brilliant achievements of her history. 
 
74? CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 
 
 Crime and pauperism, the present great blots in her 
 scutcheon, will diminish, and perhaps by degrees 
 disappear ; and she may then send forth with con- 
 fidence her swarms of hardy, virtuous, and intelligent 
 peasants and mechanics, to cultivate her numerous 
 and vast colonies, carrying with them the religion, 
 laws, arts and sciences of their forefathers, to people 
 the wilderness, to make the desert blossom as the 
 rose, and to gladden the valleys with industry and 
 plenty. 
 
 Her language, religion, and national freedom, 
 will spread to unknown lands ; she will instruct and 
 convert savage nations, and Christianise the heathen ; 
 and if, in the midst of her earthly glories, she main- 
 tains a humble, grateful, and devout spirit, rendering 
 due honour and homage to Him who has honoured 
 her, she may long continue a great instrument in the 
 hands of a beneficent, but mysterious, and withal a 
 retributive Providence, for civilising, enlightening, 
 blessing, and perfecting mankind. 
 
 Note to p. 40. — The colony of Meykirch was put an end 
 to in -the latter part of the year 1835 : the pupils returned to 
 Hofwyl. Fellenberg was unable to purchase more waste land, 
 which would have been requisite in order to continue and ex- 
 tend the colony. The object of the experiment had succeeded 
 in proving the possibility of redeeming waste land, and making 
 it pay its own expenses. The land was then let as a regialar 
 farm. 
 
NOTE A. 
 
 The following remarks on the subject of religion, 
 drawn from various parts of Fellenberg's writings, 
 appeared to be too great an interruption to the im- 
 mediate object of the work to be introduced into the 
 body of it ; but as they could not be omitted with 
 justice to his general character, and as they contribute 
 to give it a finer polish and a deeper tone, they are 
 here recorded. 
 
 The nature and law of the human mind is a law of 
 birth and commencement — of a nascent, incipient being 
 — a law of development and improvement — a law of 
 continual progress, of indefinite and perhaps of infinite 
 extent, — we therefore follow that law from the begin- 
 ning, and make it, not only the basis of all instruction, 
 but also its constant companion ; testing, balancing, 
 and supporting every thing ; and appropriating every 
 acquisition to its proper position and station. 
 
 There are two points, among others, to be considered 
 in religion — the one is, the idea of a revelation itself; 
 the other, that of the life and character of the Author 
 of the Christian revelation, Jesus Christ. The first 
 involves the idea of the want of it to man himself, 
 considered as a moral agent, and with reference merely 
 to his situation in this life. Man is said to be com- 
 pounded of a low and a high nature — the one, which 
 he has in common with the brutes, of an animal appe- 
 titive kind, continually urging him to the preservation 
 of the body and of its grosser gratifications ; the other 
 
76 NOTE A. 
 
 enabling him to look upwards to art, science, intellect, 
 right and wrong, and the world of mind and of spirit. 
 The low nature comes first into exercise, anticipates in 
 a measure the high one, and fixes all the habits against 
 it, before the period of its action and influence. Hence, 
 when the higher nature begins to operate in the mature 
 man, and he awakes, as it were, from the dreams of 
 youth and of imagination, to the realities and responsi- 
 bilities of his moral being, he finds himself too often in 
 a wilderness where he expected a paradise. His youth 
 has too often been both mispent and badly spent ; it 
 has not only been negative as to good, but positive as 
 to evil. During that period, habit, the law of our 
 nature, has formed us in spite of ourselves, and brought 
 us into wretchedness, from which we strive in vain to 
 escape. "We may say, in a certain sense, that without 
 any fault of our own, but by the irresistible influence 
 of the circumstances of our education, we find our- 
 selves devoted to the lower part of our nature, and 
 strangers to the higher part. Such would be the history 
 of mankind, if left to their own natural faculties. They 
 would never be able to rise above the animal part of 
 their nature, nor above the savage state of society. If 
 we observe some nations of antiquity, previous to all 
 knowledge of a revelation, making some advances 
 beyond this state of degradation, we must consider it 
 as owing to the general arrangements and operations 
 of Providence, with reference to an existing partial 
 revelation, and an intended universal one. The an- 
 cients did hot owe their progress, strictly speaking, to 
 the force of their natural faculties, but to the secret and 
 unknown superintendence which they received from an 
 affectionate Providence, who had better things in store 
 
NOTE A. 77 
 
 for his family of man, and was preparing the way for 
 happier times and seasons. 
 
 As a further proof of this, we see that even in our 
 day, with all the advantages we possess of knowledge 
 and the diffusion of Bibles, yet all which has hitherto 
 been accomplished by parents, nature, and conscience, 
 in the education of children, has been inadequate to 
 insure to them Christian minds and dispositions. We 
 fail even with the Bible in our hands — what could we 
 hope to do without it ? 
 
 This is one view of the nature, value, and necessity 
 for a revelation, viz. the impossibility of ever raising 
 man above a savage state without it — above a life of 
 sensual indulgence and gratification, into a moral and 
 intellectual life, aspiring to improve and exalt his own 
 character, and benevolently endeavouring to soothe the 
 ills of suffering humanity, the afflictions and wants of 
 those around him. Men would have no fellowship 
 with men, without the principles of a revelation, but 
 would live the life of tigers, with ingenuity added 
 to their savage faculties to heighten their natural 
 ferocity. 
 
 Another view of a revelation is, that without it we 
 could never know what our nature is capable of, even 
 in this life, much less in another; We could not know 
 that this mind, so weak and feeble, so ignorant at its 
 birth, so full of appetite and passion at a more advanced 
 age, does yet possess within it a germ of immortality 
 which cannot be destroyed nor separated from it, which 
 may unfold itself, even in this life, into a character of 
 high and consummate excellence. We are authorised 
 by revelation, and by revelation alone, to pronounce 
 upon the possible character of man, and to assert that as 
 
78 NOTE A. 
 
 a certainty which would without it be considered only 
 as a poetic dream. Indeed, the assertions of revelation 
 respecting the future development of the human cha- 
 racter, though they deal in certainty and fact, are more 
 sublime and glorious than poetic imagination has ever 
 yet been able to conceive, — not only more than it has 
 dared to conceive, but more than it has been able to 
 conceive. They fully justify the hopes and exertions 
 of those, in modern times, who have been called, rather 
 in derision, the Philanthropists, but who have been able 
 to conceive and to appreciate this exalted view of the 
 future human character which revelation declares will 
 take place, and who have very consistently searched 
 zealously and indefatigably for the means which, ac- 
 cording to the principles of human nature and the 
 ordinary dealings of Providence, are calculated to con- 
 duce to that end, among which an improved system of 
 moral (including in that term religious) education is no 
 doubt the most efficacious. 
 
 The other point of revelation, viz. the life and cha- 
 racter of the Author of Christianity, is another subject 
 of consideration for those who engage in the education 
 of the young, with the hope of establishing their cha- 
 racter upon a Christian basis. The divine Author of 
 Christianity did not merely give the world a set of 
 precepts of a superior moral tendency, and leave them 
 to make their own impression upon it, but he lived a 
 life of illustration ; so that what he practised, rather 
 than what he taught, contained the principles he wished 
 to enforce. He desired his followers, and through them 
 all mankind in all ages, to live as he lived, as well as 
 to practise his precepts ; for all his precepts were em- 
 bodied in his life, and became practically explained and 
 
NOTE A. 79 
 
 exhibited in it ; so that had he said nothing in the 
 way of precept, his principles and maxims would have 
 become evident to the attentive student of his character, 
 and intelligible to those who wished to become his dis- 
 ciples, and to follow him in the moral of his life. 
 
 We must remember as educators, that the whole Bible 
 is a record of a similar principle, that is, an illustration 
 of high human character by the example of many emi- 
 nent men devoted to the entire sacrifice of self, in order 
 to attain to that purity and dignity of nature which 
 was intended for us by our great Creator. It is true 
 that these men have intermixed many precepts with 
 their own histories, and that many are also recorded 
 unconnected with practical examples ; but wherever 
 they stand, they are illustrated, and made visible and 
 intelligible, by the living examples which succeed each 
 other, like characters in a drama, throughout the whole 
 of the history. It is not a little remarkable that, with 
 so many bright examples before us, we should at last 
 have One so much brighter as to cast all the rest into 
 the shade. One, not a citizen of a particular region, 
 with a certain mannerism about him unsuited to an- 
 other clime, but a citizen of the world, speaking and 
 acting like ourselves, so as to appear almost to belong 
 to our own age as much as to one of two thousand 
 years ago. There is a natural simplicity and propriety 
 about the precepts, and actions, and conduct of Jesus 
 Christ, which seem to belong and to be suitable to 
 every age and to every country. He is, in all respects, 
 the perfect model of a perfect and faultless human being ; 
 a model which, on that account, as well as on many 
 others, can never be hoped to be reached by any other 
 person : but still its perfect naturalness and propriety 
 
80 NOTE A. 
 
 render it most proper to be set before all ages and 
 classes, as their model of excellence, which they are to 
 study, to understand, and to imitate, as far as circum- 
 stances, and their own powers, and the will of God 
 permit. This, then, is another point in which revelation 
 is invaluable. It has given us a model of which we 
 can say — Look at this, and imitate it; " go thou and 
 do likewise ;" " look unto me, and be ye saved, all the 
 ends of the earth." Here is a model and a prophecy — 
 a rule and an example — a direction and an encourage- 
 ment. From this we draw an unanswerable inference 
 in favour of the future amelioration of the character of 
 man on earth. It would have been trifling with human 
 hearts, if so much precept, and so perfect an example, 
 had been given us in vain. Had the improvement of 
 man on this earth been an impossibility, had it not been 
 contemplated in the order and intentions of Providence, 
 all religious precept, history, and example, would have 
 been thrown away ; it would have been little less than 
 a mockery of poor human nature. No ; the precept 
 and history of the Bible looks to a future earthly reality ; 
 and the model of Jesus Christ, though far above what 
 man will ever reach, is nevertheless a type towards 
 which he will be continually tending, while he is con- 
 tinually polishing off the deformities and roughnesses 
 which render him as yet so infinitely inferior to his 
 great original. 
 
 We may remark further, with respect to revelation 
 in general, that it harmonises in the most perfect man- 
 ner with the instructions which the Deity has already 
 afforded us, in so many ways, in the sphere of what is 
 called natural religion, concerning our highest good. 
 It adds a full security to our faith, which would have 
 
NOTE A. 81 
 
 no solid ground to rest upon, if left to itself without a 
 higher sanction, considering its situation amid many 
 difficulties, arising from the ignorance, scepticism, and 
 vices of men. Revelation, in the midst of a world of 
 selfishness, inculcates the most extensive and noblest 
 benevolence, and the most active and disinterested phi- 
 lanthropy. It teaches, or rather commands us (for all 
 its precepts are commands), to love, not only our natu- 
 ral friends, but our enemies also, those who may have 
 sought our injury. It recommends this sentiment by 
 actions as well as by words, in the exhibition of the 
 life of its Founder, who spent his life in doing spon- 
 taneous and unrequited good to men of all parties and 
 opinions and of all nations, knowing beforehand that 
 some of these very persons would assist in putting him 
 to death ; and who crowned all his other philanthropy 
 by voluntarily suffering a cruel death for the sake of 
 shedding incalculable blessings upon all races of men 
 through time and eternity. Without this love, philan- 
 thropy, and death, mankind would have been as much 
 lost as the independence of a nation is whose armies are 
 beaten in the field, and her capital in the hands of her 
 enemies. Such would have been the lot of miserable 
 man, — a prey to savage ferocity, ignorance, crime, and 
 woe. Revelation comprises a moral law for the gradual 
 improvement of man, which eighteen centuries have not 
 only not been able to improve, but have not yet arrived 
 at the perfect comprehension of ; for when any modern 
 philanthropist, after the example of Jesus Christ, con- 
 ceives the possibility, and attempts to prove the prac- 
 ticability, of realising the moral code of Christ in the 
 hearts of the young, by a more careful and judicious 
 education, he has frequently been looked upon as a 
 
 G 
 
82 NOTE A. 
 
 visionary enthusiast ; according to which view Jesus 
 Christ himself must have been a visionary enthusiast, 
 and must have died in vain, when he contemplated the 
 happiness, improvement, and salvation of man as the 
 consequence of his death, — a supposition almost amount- 
 ing to blasphemy. The moral code of this revelation 
 penetrates the sanctuaries and inmost recesses of human 
 nature, leaves neither depth nor height unexplored, and 
 is adapted to the peculiarities of all periods of life, con- 
 ditions, and nations. It has continued to advance and 
 spread for eighteen hundred years, and to triumph over 
 the prejudices and vices of men, notwithstanding the 
 weakness and frailties of those to whom it was committed. 
 It has maintained itself against all the attacks of its 
 enemies ; and through all these contests, as through a 
 series of confirming and purifying trials, it has become 
 at this period, what it will continue to be more and 
 more, the highest glory of God the giver, and of man 
 the receiver. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 We here subjoin an abstract of the opinions and senti- 
 ments of Dr. C. H. Scheidler, professor of theology 
 at Jena, on the subject of education in Europe, and of 
 the establishment of Fellenberg. He calls his book, 
 " The Vital Question of European Civilisation ;" and 
 he views the system as seriously connected with the 
 present and future well-being of society in Europe. 
 
 " It appears to me necessary to make a few histori- 
 cal and political observations on the present critical 
 condition of our civilisation. We behold two broad 
 and striking facts, the increase of poverty in the lower 
 classes of Europe, and of demoralisation in all. The 
 disorganisation which exists to so great a degree 
 in France and Spain, exists in a less degree in all 
 Europe. The political horizon is gloomy : the con- 
 tinuance of peace seems doubtful. If a general war 
 begins, no one can calculate its awful consequences 
 amid a population at once so enlightened and de- 
 moralised. We ought therefore to seek for remedies 
 in time; and if any probable ones are in existence, 
 to apply them judiciously and boldly to our position. 
 We must not be content with mere suggestions and 
 proposals of improvement, since these would justly be 
 deemed Utopian ; but we must require practical ex- 
 periments of many years' growth, such as may satisfy 
 the minds of practical statesmen in these critical times. 
 
84 APPENDIX. 
 
 " The visionary schemes for promoting the improve- 
 ment of society which were proposed by St. Simon, 
 Fourier in his Social Colonies, and Owen in his La- 
 bouring Communities, prove the morbid state of societj^ 
 its passion for excitement, and its dislike of regular, 
 steady application of body or mind, at the present 
 moment. 
 
 " No improvements which relate only to the out- 
 ward forms of society will reach the evil. Even an 
 extended representative system, however good it may 
 be in itself, is insufficient. These outward forms re- 
 quire an inward guarantee ; for they may at any time 
 be annihilated by a coup d'etat. Improvement can 
 only arise out of a respect for what now exists, endea- 
 vouring to modify and improve it, but not to super- 
 sede it. 
 
 " In every respect, the educational establishments 
 at Hofwyl appear to answer the demands of the day. 
 They point out, in a positive and practical manner, a 
 radical cure for the corruptions of modern civilisation. 
 They do not present us with imaginary proposals, but 
 with substantial and accumulated facts, which have 
 been tested by the experience of many years. They 
 contain a whole, consisting of many parts, every one of 
 which maintains its own proper and specific relation to 
 the rest, and to the natural concerns and business of 
 life. 
 
 " In order to understand them properly, we must 
 go back to the period preceding their formation, and 
 the attempts then made, by different individuals, to 
 arrest the progress of social demoralisation. 
 
 " Rousseau was one of the first of modern geniuses 
 who strongly pointed out the evils of modern society, 
 
PROFESSOR SCHEIDLER'S SENTIMENTS. 85 
 
 the corruptions of the higher classes, the narrow 
 pedantry of the learned, the universal attention paid 
 to a dry intellectual culture, and the utter neglect of 
 the heart and affections. His constitutional character, 
 no doubt, led him into extremes ; he took morbid views 
 of life, and even considered all civilisation as an evil, 
 and neglected too much the consideration of religion as 
 an element of social progress. Still, his writings had 
 great influence, particularly in Germany. Basedow, 
 Campe, and Salzmann followed, who though they had 
 great errors, yet opened a larger range for the educa- 
 tion of the mind generally, particularly in the study of 
 the mother tongue and of the natural sciences. 
 
 " These improvements, however, were confined en- 
 tirely to the upper classes ; nothing was done for the 
 middle and lower ones. 
 
 " Next arose Henry Pestalozzi, a man of distin- 
 guished abilities, destined to point out to others the 
 proper road by which the vices and decline of modern 
 civilisation might be combated and subdued. His life 
 coincided with that great event, marking the vices of 
 European civilisation, the French revolution, in which 
 also the democratic principle first appeared as the an- 
 tagonist of the ancient aristocratic principle. Pesta- 
 lozzi possessed a lively imagination, fervour of mind, a 
 strong sense of right and of compassion for the oppressed 
 and suffering. He first followed the profession of juris- 
 prudence and public life ; but having given offence by 
 his hostility to the injustice of some of the political pro- 
 visions of his country, and Rousseau's works on educa- 
 tion having then appeared, he determined to follow 
 out his views of the amelioration of the disposition and 
 heart of man, by devoting himself to practical educa- 
 
86 APPENDIX. 
 
 tion. He too had his faults in this new path : he had 
 too much dislike for learning and science ; he did not 
 sufficiently appreciate existing relations ; and he did 
 not make use enough of Christian principles, though 
 he possessed the true Christian disposition himself. 
 Still, we must rank him among the most distin- 
 guished men of our time, by the power and depth of 
 his mind, by his self-sacrificing love and enthusiasm in 
 the great cause of human improvement in spite of his dis- 
 appointments, and by the impulse which he gave to edu- 
 cation throughout Europe by his improved methods of 
 early instruction, which still continue to work, and must 
 do so, being founded in nature. They have also been 
 adopted and further developed, by the successful ex- 
 perience of many years, by his friend Fellenberg, whose 
 flourishing institutions are an indisputable and consoling 
 proof of the practicability of arresting the decline of 
 civilisation, and of preventing its anarchical tendencies. 
 Though they are in themselves individual and local, yet 
 "having once succeeded, they are capable of being applied 
 in any country and by any person, or even by public 
 authority, to check the demoralising influences of a 
 state of over-civilisation. 
 
 " Philip Emanuel von Fellenberg was born in June 
 1771, at Berne, of a family distinguished for patriotism 
 and high character. His father was professor of juris- 
 prudence, then a member of the Bernese Sovereign 
 Council, prefect of Wildestein in the canton of Aargau, 
 and afterwards a senator at Berne. He was as much 
 distinguished for learning as for integrity and upright- 
 ness. His mother was the grand-daughter of the cele- 
 brated Dutch admiral Von Tromp. Her early lessons 
 had great influence in forming the mind of Fellenberg 
 
PROFESSOR SCHEIDLER'S SENTIMENTS. 87 
 
 to the love of his country and of humanity. His 
 teachers were Rengger, afterwards minister of the in- 
 terior Swiss central government, and Lereche, after- 
 wards professor of theology at Lauzanne. He was 
 then sent to the institution of Pfeffels at Colmar, and 
 next to Geneva. In 1789 he went to Tubingen, where 
 he studied jurisprudence under Hofacker, and then the 
 philosophical sciences. On his return home he devoted 
 himself to the classics and the Kantian philosophy. 
 For several years he travelled over all Switzerland and 
 the south of Germany ; and having formed an early 
 acquaintance with Pestalozzi, who was twenty -five 
 years older than himself, he became convinced like 
 him of the critical state of society, and its threatening 
 demoralisation in public and private life; and that 
 nothing could resist its ruinous tendencies but a re- 
 generated national education among all classes. His 
 sagacious apprehensions were fully confirmed in the 
 outbreak of the French revolution. He went to Paris 
 in the year 1795, which convinced him still more of the 
 truth of his ideas. After this he devoted himself to the 
 study of agriculture, taking no part in politics till 1798, 
 when the revolution of Switzerland, effected by the 
 French Directory, compelled him to join the patriots, 
 which he did with so much zeal, that a price was set 
 upon his head by the French commissioner Mingaud, 
 and he was obliged to emigrate. He afterwards dis- 
 charged with ability the duties of quarter-master of the 
 upper circles of Berne. In the end of 1798 he superin- 
 tended the contributions of clothes and food from the 
 canton of Berne to that of Unterwalden, deplorably 
 pillaged by the French. He was soon after sent by 
 the Swiss central government to Paris, on a commis- 
 
88 APPENDIX. 
 
 sion of great delicacy, where he had reason to be ex- 
 tremely disgusted with the conduct and principles of 
 Reubel and Rapinat. On his return home, he pur- 
 chased Hofwyl, six miles north of Berne, containing 
 four hundred and forty Magdeburg acres,* where he 
 entered upon his plans of agricultural and educational 
 improvement, which he has pursued ever since, now 
 nearly forty years, having devoted to it his whole pri- 
 vate fortune of about 20,000/. His first attempts drew 
 upon him the odium of the aristocratic party, which 
 was suspicious of his intention, and the consequences of 
 his plans ; and afterwards of the democratic party, which 
 thought them equally hostile to their interests. 
 
 " In 1830, in consequence of the regeneration of 
 Switzerland, he became a member of the constitution, 
 and afterwards of the council and of the educational de- 
 partment, and in 1833 landamann of Berne, the highest 
 office in the state, which last office he soon resigned, in 
 order to devote himself more completely to his own insti- 
 tutions. These he offered to present to the state on certain 
 considerations, in order to establish them in perpetuity ; 
 but was prevented by the illusions, the envious and jea- 
 lous passions, and the cabals of his contemporaries. 
 
 " Fellenberg cannot be understood except we go 
 to his principles. It never was his intention merely to 
 give to a few individuals instruction on a better plan 
 than any other institution offered ; his intention was, to 
 prove a principle applicable to the whole of society, 
 that principle resting upon revealed religion as a basis, 
 — a point too much neglected by preceding educa- 
 tionists. He assumed that God had created in man 
 
 * Two English acres contain three Morgen (the above- 
 named measure) and a few square feet. 
 
PROFESSOR SCHEIDLER'S SENTIMENTS. 89 
 
 certain dispositions and faculties, by the moral training 
 of which, together with the physical training of the 
 body, the happiness and perfection of the individual 
 and of society were to be brought about ; according 
 to the expression of the apostle, i the new man, which 
 after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.' 
 He considered that this image might be destroyed 
 by a perverted education, as it might be developed 
 by an appropriate one. Labour he looked upon not 
 in the old light of a disgrace and an evil, but as the 
 honourable means of health and independence. 
 
 " He insisted, moreover, that the existing relations 
 of society must be deeply respected, as founded on the 
 will of God, till they could be improved by time, — a 
 point which Rousseau and others had overlooked. He 
 viewed the state as a generalisation of the family, and 
 possessing the same principle of subordination and of 
 mutual dependence and affection. The wisest of the 
 ancients took the same views, as Pythagoras, Lycurgus, 
 Plato, Aristotle, which they could not carry out fully 
 from the absence of Christian principles. He wished 
 the family-principle to reign in his schools, which they 
 were to aid, and assist, and develope, but not to destroy, 
 nor to slight and deteriorate. While he adhered thus 
 closely to the practical routine of life, he always had in 
 his mind's eye the great ideal perfection of the whole 
 man and of all men, held up to us so clearly and beau- 
 tifully in the Christian code, that God will have all men 
 progress till they reach ' the measure of the fulness of 
 the stature of Christ.' 
 
 " He allowed of no theory in education but what was 
 inductive, according to the aphorism of Goethe, ' Be- 
 lieve in life ; it teaches better than orator or book.' 
 
90 APPENDIX. 
 
 Nor did he expect that any one system in educa- 
 tion would solve all difficulties, or be applicable to 
 all characters. He believed that each individual was 
 created with a specific character and genius, which it 
 was the duty of the educator to study and to manage ; 
 and that the peculiar disposition of each pointed out the 
 destination intended for him by Providence. Hence 
 he views education as a species of self-cultivation, which 
 enables the individual to bring to perfection his peculiar 
 talents, so that he may produce the greatest amount of 
 good to himself and others. 
 
 " Having considered the increase of pauperism as 
 one of the greatest evils of modern civilisation, both 
 in itself and in its being the necessary cause of a moral 
 and criminal degradation as extensive as itself, and 
 indeed much more so, on account of the contagious 
 and absorbing tendency of low moral notions, — he 
 applied himself earnestly to the solution of the problem 
 of physical or economical independence. He suc- 
 ceeded most happily in proving the practical needless- 
 ness of pauperism, by the profits of the labour of his 
 industrial school above its expenses ; and, warned by 
 the example of Pestalozzi, that no system can prosper 
 without a prosperous economy, he paid great attention 
 to the profits of his own estate as one of his leading 
 duties. He thus established the soundness and prac- 
 ticability of his plans by a double argument, — the edu- 
 cation formed the moral and industrial character of the 
 children, and the labour of the children repaid the ex- 
 penses of their education. The same results might be 
 obtained by nations now the example is before them. 
 They might ensure the moral and religious character of 
 their pauper-children, and their industrious independ- 
 
PROFESSOR SCHEIDLER'S SENTIMENTS. 91 
 
 ence ; and the labour of these children, so trained, 
 would repay the national outlay upon their education. 
 
 " He also shewed in his system, that it was not 
 necessary to separate the schools for the different classes 
 of society, but that there were great advantages in 
 having them near each other, as it enabled the different 
 ranks to understand their true relative position, their 
 mutual dependence, the necessity of the distinction of 
 ranks, — of the labourer and of the capitalist, each confer- 
 ring and receiving peculiar benefits, — and the corre- 
 sponding necessity for a distinct course of study and 
 intellectual education ; while a common moral feeling 
 of kindness, charity, respect, and esteem, pervaded the 
 whole, according to the Christian law, being all one in 
 social harmony,— an institution never before realised, 
 but now effectually so." 
 
 Here follows a more detailed account of the agricul- 
 tural improvements of Fellenberg and of his work- 
 shops, which, having been spoken of at length in the 
 former part of this book, need not be here repeated. 
 
 " There is this radical difference between the agri- 
 cultural improvements of Fellenberg and those of the 
 rest of Europe, and even of England. They are else- 
 where considered as an end, a commercial end, of 
 producing a better and more profitable animal or 
 crop than can be done by the old methods. He con- 
 siders them only as means by which a more rational 
 and contented disposition may be given to all classes 
 of the community. Having increased the produce of 
 his land sixfold, he considers it demonstrated, that we 
 need not be alarmed at the idea of an excessive increase 
 of population, provided their moral and industrial 
 education be insured. Improvements cannot yet have 
 
92 APPENDIX. 
 
 reached their perfection, and Europe possesses much 
 land on which no improvement has begun. Industrial 
 occupation must be rendered honourable, in order to 
 make the labourer respect himself and be contented, 
 and love and respect the institutions of his country. 
 The effect of improvements hitherto has been, in a 
 great degree, to render the employment of the labourer 
 more difficult and uncertain, his poverty and degrada- 
 tion more hopeless, and his discontent more reckless, 
 because his spiritual nature has been almost entirely 
 neglected. 
 
 " We must now take a view of the higher classes of 
 society, and of their education, in the relation in which 
 they stand to the rest. It cannot be doubted that their 
 influence for good or evil over all the other classes is 
 immense and almost omnipotent, from their wealth, and 
 the moral and intellectual consequences of it. For this 
 very reason, from the weakness of the human mind and 
 the tendency of all power to self-abuse, their position 
 is the more responsible and dangerous. Though com- 
 manding all other classes, they are not independent of 
 them. Their power, indeed, consists in wielding the 
 others as instruments ; but should these instruments 
 get into other hands, as all history shews they have 
 done at particular periods, the very power which was a 
 security becomes a cause of ruin ; and those who direct 
 this ruin can only calculate upon their own prospective 
 safety by the complete annihilation, if possible, of the 
 once - privileged class. All history teems with these 
 lessons; but we need go no further than the French 
 revolution for illustration, and that ought to be the 
 more forcibly warning to us, because it threatens to be 
 only the forerunner of a general European convulsion, 
 
PROFESSOR SCHEIDLER S SENTIMENTS. 93 
 
 from the great similarity and consanguinity of the 
 European family of nations, unless the natural relations 
 of the social classes are better studied and understood, 
 and unless the minds of the higher classes themselves 
 are made alive to the dangers of their position on the 
 one hand, and to their highest interests and duties on 
 the other, which are those of the friends and guardians 
 of the other classes. This can only be done through 
 an improved educational sentiment, of which, indeed, 
 Christianity possesses the germ, but which, it is noto- 
 rious, is altogether overlooked in all the public schools 
 and great gymnasia of Europe. Selfishness, and pride, 
 and a contempt for the classes below them, as they are 
 termed, with extreme ignorance of all useful, practical 
 knowledge, and a smattering only of the classics, are 
 the acknowledged characteristics of the seminaries 
 where men of rank receive the usual education ; so 
 that it has become almost proverbial, " that the child- 
 ren of the rich generally learn nothing." These schools 
 do not profess to give their pupils a choice of study. 
 They make no allowance for difference of taste, ability, 
 or genius ; nor do they inculcate humanity and charity, 
 or benevolence, as a principle. They are limited in their 
 masters or professors for the great purposes of education, 
 which are the development of the character and the 
 peculiar talents of individuals. 
 
 " Fellenberg combated these evils by the number 
 of professors which he invited around him. Despising 
 the mercantile spirit of profit upon his pupils, which is 
 the leading principle of most other establishments, (and, 
 in a certain sense, almost necessarily so, money being 
 the great idol and the radical vice of European society 
 at present, and the portentous symptom of her threaten- 
 
94< APPENDIX. 
 
 ing downfal,) lie returned with a liberal hand to his 
 pupils that which they presented to him for a conven- 
 tual and specific purpose. Thus, according to a pupil's 
 rank, fortune, talents, or intended profession in life, 
 his parents had a choice of the line of study which 
 should engage his principal attention. For the same 
 reasons, the classes at Hofwyl are constructed upon a 
 different principle from that of any other institution. 
 Sometimes a pupil studies by himself, when there is no 
 other pursuing the same study or the same part of it, 
 which indeed requires a greater number of teachers, 
 and proportionably diminishes the profit of the super- 
 intendent, or the head-master, as he is called in Eng- 
 land. But the great end of education is thus, and 
 thus only, obtained, which is the welfare of the pupil. 
 Schools are not instituted for the sake of the master, 
 but for the sake of the pupils ; and the perfection of 
 the pupil's character, conduct, and intelligence, ought 
 to be the only object aimed at, whether we consult the 
 principles of Christianity or of common sense. 
 
 " By the number and excellence of his professors 
 Fellenberg is able to complete the education of his 
 higher pupils to any extent, including in it what is 
 usually considered as the last accomplishment of a 
 university. Some of the most celebrated literary men 
 in Europe have been professors under him ; and some 
 of his pupils have reached the highest government- 
 honours of their respective countries, — a proof of the 
 soundness of the instruction. 
 
 " That his institutions have attained a general cele- 
 brity in Europe, though little known and less under- 
 stood in England, is shewn in the fact, that sixteen 
 princes have received their education there, besides the 
 
PROFESSOR SCHEIDLER'S SENTIMENTS. 95 
 
 sons of men of rank and fortune in Russia, Poland, 
 Germany, France, Italy, Spain, America, and some 
 from England. 
 
 " In 1799 the estate of Hofwyl consisted of five houses 
 and fifteen inhabitants. The quantity of land is now 
 doubled ; the produce multiplied sixfold j the buildings 
 are thirteen larger and four smaller ones, capable of 
 containing altogether six hundred persons ; the popula- 
 tion varies from 360 to 400, which is the thousandth 
 part of the population of the canton of Berne ; a num- 
 ber of surrounding labourers have been employed for 
 forty years ; half a million of Swiss franks have been put 
 into circulation. The total number of pupils of the 
 agricultural and higher scientific schools has amounted 
 to 783 ; that of the poor school, the Meykirch school, 
 and the girls' school, to 451 ; that of the industrial 
 school to 210 ; that of the schoolmasters who receive 
 instruction in the normal courses to 247. 
 
 " When Fellenberg commenced his establishments, 
 he considered, from the first, that he was working for 
 the public good, and engaged in solving one of the 
 most important problems which could be proposed for 
 the welfare of mankind. In 1807 he declared that he 
 had bequeathed them in his will to the canton, as a 
 national institution. In 1831, after the government 
 had recognised the entire department of education in 
 all its importance, he offered to dispose of the whole to 
 the state upon being paid the value of the land, pre- 
 senting the buildings free, which would be a calculated 
 sacrifice to himself of about 12,000Z., and to give the 
 commission on whom the management might fall 5001. 
 as soon as the offer was accepted. They were also to 
 be allowed one year as a trial, during which a com- 
 
96 APPENDIX. 
 
 mission should manage the institution as a national 
 concern. This splendid and magnanimous offer was 
 rejected for the most frivolous reasons, probably from 
 motives of petty jealousy and envy, the plainest facts 
 being denied, and the results of thirty years' labour, 
 improved land and increased population, misrepre- 
 sented. 
 
 " Eellenberg wished to make Switzerland the source 
 of the moral and educational regeneration of Europe, 
 as her political situation and history were already re- 
 markable. She stands in the centre of the nations ; 
 her independence is guaranteed by the other powers ; 
 she has been from early times the cradle of liberty and 
 free institutions ; she produced some of the greatest of 
 the early reformers, Ulrich, Zwingle, and Calvin, and 
 the great Haller, the forerunner of one large depart- 
 ment of modern science — botany, anatomy, and medi- 
 cine ; she was the first to give birth to rational educa- 
 tional inquiries and improvements, in the persons of 
 Rousseau and Pestalozzi, and, lastly, of Fellenberg. 
 It is not impossible that the merits of Fellenberg 
 may be more fully understood, and his plans adopted. 
 Though a single individual, he may become the focus 
 of a light which may shine over Europe and the world. 
 It is the principle of nature to commence her grand im- 
 provements, discoveries, and inventions, in the bosoms 
 of peculiarly distinguished individuals, and from them 
 to benefit the whole world. Athens was but a single 
 city, and her political power lasted a mere moment in 
 the flow of time ; but her literary riches have spread 
 over a succession of ages, and seem destined to live as 
 long as man himself. Judaea was once the most despised 
 of all lands 5 but she gave to all a moral and religious 
 
PROFESSOR SCHEIDLER'S SENTIMENTS. 97 
 
 code, which must one day touch and animate every 
 heart on the face of the earth. So of all great disco- 
 veries, as of Guttenberg in printing, and of Jenner in 
 the cow-pock, one individual sows the mustard-seed, 
 which, when it has taken root, becomes the mighty 
 and beneficent tree. If the spirit of the founder of 
 Hofwyl should be caught by any kindred mind in any 
 land, there may similar institutions arise : human nature 
 continuing the same, born with the same faculties, sub- 
 ject to the same laws, developed by the same methods, 
 the results, if law be law, cannot fail to be the same, 
 viz. the integrity of the personal character, and its per- 
 fect harmony in all its relations, whether high or low, 
 in whatever situation of life it may be placed ; based 
 upon Christianity and morality, reverencing established 
 institutions, and favourable to social order, as the only 
 condition in which it can maintain its life and vigour. 
 If the life of that great and good man the Emperor 
 Alexander had been spared, it was his intention to 
 have established in Russia an institution correspond- 
 ing in all its parts with that at Hofwyl, where, by 
 assembling seminaries for all classes upon one spot, 
 each could have been taught its own duties, and made 
 to comprehend the mutual duties and interests of the 
 others. Each would have seen the necessity of such a 
 distribution of ranks and employments, and the manner 
 in which such an arrangement contributed to the pro- 
 sperity and happiness of all. Here pride and baseness, 
 tyranny and slavery, would be alike excluded ; for 
 employment, occupation, and industry, in every degree, 
 would be shewn to be useful and honourable. In such 
 an institution only can the young statesman have 
 pointed out to him the actual condition of society and 
 
98 APPENDIX. 
 
 its various grades: here alone can he see the stvff of 
 which mankind are made ; here alone can he see that 
 every class is alike necessary and useful to the state ; 
 that all are indispensable to her security, prosperity, 
 and greatness ; and that if any one of them were want- 
 ing, or trampled upon, or set aside, a serious injury 
 would result to the community. 
 
 " The contrast between such a place of education for 
 a statesman, and that which is in general use, is suffi- 
 ciently striking. In the latter, he is placed entirely with 
 those of his own rank : he is accustomed to look upon 
 himself and his class with a certain feeling of pride, and 
 upon all the inferior classes, as they are called — those 
 whom he is afterwards to govern, and whose happiness 
 and welfare are to form the object of his future anxious 
 life, with a degree of contempt ; ignorant, at the same 
 time, of their value, their character, virtues, talents, 
 wants, and rights — for rights belong to every class of men, 
 even in despotic Countries, and much more in free ones. 
 He then passes to a higher gymnasium or university, 
 where he is, if possible, still more separated from prac- 
 tical life, and more confined to the closet ; and, lastly, 
 after many years of false views of human nature and of 
 practical society, he has to begin the study of the facts 
 of man, and to learn to honour and esteem those men, 
 professions, trades, and even handicrafts, for which he 
 has all his life felt a certain degree of contempt. Above 
 all, he has now to learn, for the first time, (and it 
 would be well if this were ever truly learnt, under such an 
 isolated training,) the universal brotherhood of man ; 
 that all nations are of one stock ; that every man, how- 
 ever mean his outward employment, has within him the 
 mmortal spirit ; that the cultivation of this spirit is the 
 
PROFESSOR SCHEIDLER S SENTIMENTS. 99 
 
 true destiny of man, to which all politics are only sub- 
 servient ; that the kingdoms of this world, however 
 great and glorious in themselves, are as nothing in 
 comparison with the glory of the spirit of man himself ; 
 that they are only the form through which this spirit 
 is to evolve itself; that the forms are made for the 
 spirit, not the spirit for the forms. Whoever, in the 
 present age, cannot enter into these views of man and 
 of his social attributes, is unfit for the crisis in which 
 we are placed, in which the old institutions have lost 
 their authority as a principle of action ; which authority 
 emanated from a simpler set of instincts, so to speak, 
 and which now requires to be grounded upon rational 
 conviction and reflection. There is reason in instinct, 
 but the reason is not perceived while the instinct is in 
 full vigour j but when it begins to flag, or pall upon 
 the appetite, it requires the aid of reason to restore it 
 to its former rights and influence. 
 
 " Happy would it be if the nations of the earth, 
 now that the secret of the formation of character is dis- 
 closed, would prepare the way, in the language of holy 
 writ, ' to learn war no more,' by controlling the passions 
 and appetites in early life, by habits of early labour 
 both practical and moral, by affording a proper food 
 and scope for the intellectual faculties, by inculcating a 
 rational respect and value for existing institutions, and^ 
 above all, by the universal sanction and adoption of 
 practical Christianity, and by referring the whole cha- 
 racter to that simple test. 
 
 " Such a consummation of modern society might 
 seem to be Utopian and impossible, had not Fellenberg 
 given the solution of it by an experience of forty years, 
 and were there not strong evidences, in the midst of all 
 
100 APPENDIX. 
 
 our doubts and misgivings, to those who look steadily 
 below the surface to watch the under-currents, that the 
 constant tendencies of man in his social relations are 
 towards a better and a higher elevation, and one which, 
 when attained, will be less liable to revulsion and 
 relapse. 
 
 " Happy indeed will that statesman be, and blessed 
 will his name descend to posterity, who, looking 
 through the mists of party to the character and nature 
 of man himself, shall learn to respect and reverence 
 that nature as the sublimest work of Providence ; and 
 shall consider it his own highest glory, as the instru- 
 ment of that Providence, to lay the foundation of such 
 extended institutions as may, in their effect upon na- 
 tional character, produce security for the highest classes, 
 independence and content in the lowest, intelligence 
 and integrity in all. For if life be not a dream, and 
 the Gospel a fable, a day cannot fail of coming — we 
 have it from unlying lips — when there shall reign 
 ' peace on earth and good-will among men.' " 
 
101 
 
 MR. CROPPER'S 
 
 AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL. 
 
 Since the preceding pages were put together, we have 
 been favoured with the perusal of a small pamphlet, 
 printed for private circulation, with the following title : 
 " Some Account of an Agricultural School for Orphans, 
 at Fearnhead, near Warrington, Lancashire ; in a Letter 
 to a Friend. By James Cropper. June 1839 :" and 
 as the plan can be clearly traced to the founder's ac- 
 quaintance with the Swiss Institution, a notice of it 
 may properly be included in this work. 
 
 This gentleman, a member of the Society of Friends, 
 wished to make an experiment in order to ascertain how 
 far labour may be rendered advantageous in training 
 the children of the working-classes, in connexion with 
 the usual instruction given in the National or British 
 schools. His establishment consists of twenty -six 
 orphans, whom he collected from the neighbouring 
 towns : not without difficulty, because at an early age 
 children in manufacturing towns are profitable to those 
 to whom they belong. Hence many of those first brought 
 to him were the idle and troublesome. After a time, some 
 of these, by firmness and kindness, became a credit to 
 the establishment 5 others continuing unmanageable and 
 incorrigible, were returned to those from whom they 
 were received. A certain number of children were then 
 admitted of the ages of eight and nine, with the hope 
 that they could be more easily trained than older boys. 
 The first difficulty was to procure a master properly 
 qualified to superintend both the instruction and the 
 
102 APPENDIX. 
 
 labour of the children ; and when the younger children 
 were taken in, additional trouble and expense were 
 incurred, as the younger children could not labour 
 with the older ones, and the same master could not 
 superintend the school and the field at the same time. 
 Another assistant was therefore necessary. 
 
 " I have always considered religion," says Mr. 
 Cropper, " to be the basis and foundation of education 
 and character; and next to this, habits of order and 
 steady industry, though these are rather the develop- 
 ment and proofs of religious principle, than a separate 
 unconnected department. I wished at first to attain 
 my object of forming the character, from motives of 
 gratitude and duty alone ; but I have found by expe- 
 rience, that such ignorant, neglected, and untutored 
 minds, as have come under our care, require other 
 more cogent and self-interested motives to induce them 
 to self-exertion. I therefore appropriated to them nine 
 acres of land rent-free : the whole labour of which is 
 performed by themselves, under the superintendence 
 of the master, who keeps an account of the labour per- 
 formed by each boy, and rates and pays for it per rod, 
 as if done by hired labourers. Two-thirds of what is 
 thus earned is passed to the credit of the school, and 
 the remainder is divided among the boys in proportion 
 to the share of labour performed by each. The profits, 
 if any arise from the produce, are shared by the master 
 and boys: one-third being allotted to the former in 
 addition to his salary, and two-thirds to the latter. 
 This sum is invested for the use of the boys at a future 
 day. At the end of 1838, the profit from the nine acres 
 was 601., which was apportioned as above. I have since 
 allotted to them about fifty acres more land, which is 
 
cropper's agricultural school. 103 
 
 at present in a low state of cultivation, and for which I 
 shall charge a moderate rent. The same arrangement 
 is followed with these as with the nine acres ; and it is 
 probable the whole profit may be double that of last 
 year, which will make a profit to each boy of nearly SI. 
 Up to the present time (six months), the earnings have 
 been at the rate of about Ql. per annum, of which 21. 
 will be placed to their credit, and 4J. to that of the 
 establishment. 
 
 " The cost of food, clothing, and education, is 121. 
 per annum each ; but if the above estimate is realised, 
 it will be reduced to 81. each ; and if the whole profit 
 of their labour was placed to the credit of the school, 
 it would reduce the cost to SI. each. My object, how- 
 ever, was to serve the children ; and I thought the best 
 way of doing it was to give them an interest in the 
 prosperity of the concern. 
 
 " Should the boys be disposed to pursue the employ- 
 ment of agriculture, my ultimate object is to settle them 
 in small farms of three acres each. If they remain with 
 me till they are eighteen or nineteen, or older, it would 
 both increase their pecuniary advantages, and benefit 
 the establishment. If any of them, when old enough 
 to judge for themselves, should prefer some other oc- 
 cupation, I shall endeavour, if their conduct has been 
 satisfactory, to place them suitably. It is fully under- 
 stood by them, that no boy, who leaves the establish- 
 ment without my approbation, will have any advan- 
 tage from the money placed to his credit. 
 
 " I will now consider that very serious and import- 
 ant question, which lies at the root of the moral and 
 physical improvement of the working - classes, — viz. 
 how far manual labour promotes or hinders school 
 
104 APPENDIX. 
 
 learning and mental cultivation with children of the 
 working-classes. After the experience of several years, 
 I have no hesitation in deciding that the labour, which 
 occupies two-thirds of the children's time, does not pre- 
 vent their acquiring a sufficient knowledge of reading, 
 spelling, writing, arithmetic, together with the rudi- 
 ments of grammar, geography, geometry, and natural 
 history . Their acquaintance with Scripture is also con- 
 siderable ; and I believe their acquirements in general 
 are at least equal to those of the children of the na- 
 tional or British schools. 
 
 " We find that constant steady employment has 
 a very favourable influence upon the general con- 
 duct of the boys. Their favourite pursuit is field- 
 labour ; but when, from the state of the weather, or 
 other causes, they are more confined to school, they 
 apply to their studies with much greater interest and 
 cheerfulness than if they had had no intermission. We 
 have indeed reason to be gratified with their improve- 
 ment in every respect." 
 
 PRACTICAL DETAILS. 
 
 " The produce and prices of the following statement 
 may possibly appear to some to be excessive ; but it 
 must be recollected, that we are in those respects fa- 
 vourably situated. We have a ready sale for early 
 vegetables : Bolton and Manchester afford an extensive 
 market ; and farther to the east there is a dense popula- 
 tion, where the land is unproductive, and the crops late. 
 
 " In 1837, being the first year of the establishment, 
 potatoes averaged 362 bushels of 84 lbs. per acre. In 
 1838, owing to the unfavourable season, we got only 
 240 bushels per acre. 
 
cropper's agricultural school. 105 
 
 " In 1837, the average crops of turnips and mangel 
 wurzel were as under : 
 
 Sown turnips .... 
 
 . . 40 tons per acre 
 
 Once transplanted . . 
 
 • • 26 
 
 Twice transplanted . . 
 
 . . 16 
 
 Best sown mangel . . 
 
 . . 28 
 
 Late ditto 
 
 . • 13 
 
 " The above is the weight of the roots of mangel 
 wurzel, some of the leaves having been gathered whilst 
 growing. In 1838, the turnips produced were, some 40 
 tons per acre, some 26 ; a larger proportion 20 ; some less. 
 The season was very unfavourable for mangel wurzel ; 
 none of the land produced more than 14 tons of roots, 
 and 19 tons of leaves per acre. 
 
 " The average of vetches produced on an acre, during 
 these two years, would keep one cow 190 days ; and 
 they were cut in time to be followed by transplanted 
 Swedish turnips. 
 
 " Early potatoes, in the same time, produced from 
 20Z. to 307. per acre ; autumn-sown onions much more ; 
 cabbages and peas full as much as the potatoes ; — all 
 of which were got off in time for a good crop of trans- 
 planted Swedish turnips. 
 
 " Strawberries and raspberries have been very pro- 
 ductive. Good crops of strawberries have realised at 
 the rate of 80Z. per acre ; raspberries and black currants 
 have produced fully 50Z. per acre ; apples and pears, 
 where the trees are in full bearing, are also likely to be 
 a source of considerable profit, as well as other kinds of 
 fruit in common use ; — I should suppose about 407. 
 per acre." 
 
All the English and French publications, together 
 with some German ones, on Hofwyl, have been 
 consulted by the Author, who has also had the 
 advantage of reading several of the letters of De 
 Fellenberg, though not addressed to himself. 
 The representations contained in those various 
 works have been corrected by the observations 
 of more recent eye-witnesses. Amongst the most 
 valuable of the authorities should be named that 
 of the Rev. W. C. Woodbridge, whose articles 
 on Hofwyl, in the American " Annals of Educa- 
 tion," deserve to be republished in England. 
 
 If this little work be favourably received, the Author 
 intends to prepare for publication some details 
 of Ridolfi's Agricultural Institution, near Flo- 
 rence; of the " Colonie Agricole" at Mettray, 
 near Tours, in France ; and of some rural labour- 
 schools in England. 
 
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