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International (Êiïmmtïnn Smts 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 WILLIAM T. HARRIS, A.M., LL.D. 
 
 Volume XIV 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2011 with funding from 
 The Library of Congress 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/pestalozzihislif01guim 
 
INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES. 
 
 Edited by W. T. Harris. 
 
 It is proposed to publish, under the above title, a library for teachers 
 and school managers, and text-books for normal classes. The aim will 
 be to provide works of a useful practical character in the broadest sense. 
 The following conspectus will show the ground to be covered by the series : 
 
 I.— History of Education, (a.) Original systems as ex- 
 pounded by their founders, (b.) Critical histories which set forth the 
 customs of the past and point out their advantages and defects, explain- 
 ing the grounds of their adoption, and also of their final disuse. 
 
 II. — Educational Criticism, (a.) The noteworthy arraign- 
 ments which educational reformers have put forth against existing sys- 
 tems : these compose the classics of pedagogy, (b.) The critical histories 
 above mentioned. 
 
 III.— Systematic Treatises on the Theory of Edu- 
 cation, (a.) Works written from the historical standpoint; these, 
 for the most part, show a tendency to justify the traditional course of 
 study and to defend the prevailing methods of instruction, (b.) Works 
 written from critical standpoints, and to a greater or less degree revolu- 
 tionary in their tendency. 
 
 IV. — The Art of Education. (a.) Works on instruction 
 and discipline, and the practical details of the school-room, (b.) Works 
 on the organization and supervision of schools. 
 
 Practical insight into the educational methods in vogue can not be 
 attained without a knowledge of the process by which they have come to 
 be established. For this reason it is proposed to give special prominence 
 to the history of the systems that have prevailed. 
 
 Again, since history is incompetent to furnish the ideal of the future, 
 it is necessary to devote large space to works of educational criticism. 
 Criticism is the purifying process by which ideals are rendered clear and 
 potent, so that progress becomes possible. 
 
 History and criticism combined make possible a theory of the whole. 
 For, with an ideal toward which the entire movement tends, and an ac- 
 count of the phases that have appeared in time, the connected develop- 
 ment of the whole can be shown, and all united into one system. 
 
 Lastly, after the science, comes the practice. The art of education is 
 treated in special works devoted to the devices and technical details use- 
 ful in the school-room. 
 
 It is believed that the teacher does not need authority so much as in- 
 sight in matters of education. When he understands the theory of edu- 
 cation and the history of its growth, and has matured his own point 
 of view by careful study of the critical literature of education, then he is 
 competent to select or invent such practical devices as are best adapted 
 to his own wants. 
 
 The series will contain works from European as well as American 
 authors, and will be under the editorship of W. T. Harris, A. M., LL. D. 
 
Vol. I. The Philosophy of Education. By Johann Karl 
 
 Friedrich Rosenkranz. $1.50. 
 
 Vol. II. A History of Education. By Prof. F. V. N. Painter, 
 of Roanoke, Virginia. $1.50. 
 
 Vol. III. The Rise and Early Constitution of Univer- 
 sities. With a Survey of Mediaeval Education. By S. S. Laurie, 
 LL. D., Professor of the Institutes and History of Education in the 
 University of Edinburgh. $1.50. 
 
 Vol. IV. The Ventilation and Warming of School 
 Buildings. By Gilbert B. Morrison, Teacher of Physics and 
 Chemistry in Kansas City High School. 75 cents. 
 
 Vol. V. The Education of Man. By Friedrich Froebel. 
 Translated from the German and annotated by W. N. Hailmann, 
 Superintendent of Public Schools at La Porte, Indiana. $1.50. 
 
 Vol. VI. Elementary Psychology and Education. By 
 
 Joseph Baldwin, Principal of the Sam Houston State Normal 
 School, Huntsville, Texas. $1.50. 
 
 Vol. VII. The Senses and the Will. Observations concern- 
 ing the Mental Development of the Human Being in the First Years 
 of Life. By \V. Preyer, Professor of Physiology in Jena. Trans- 
 lated from the original German, by H. W. Brown, Teacher in the 
 State Normal School at Worcester, Mass. Part I of The Mind of 
 the Child. $1.50. 
 
 Vol. VIII. Memory. What it is and how to improve it. By David 
 Kay, F. R. G. S. $1.50. 
 
 Vol. IX. The Development of the Intellect. Observa- 
 tions concerning the Mental Development of the Human Being in 
 the First Years of Life. By W. Preyer, Professor of Physiology in 
 Jena. Translated from the original German, by H. W. Brown, 
 Teacher in the State Normal School at Worcester, Mass. Part II 
 of The Mind of the Child. $1.50. 
 
 Vol. X. HOW to Study Geography. By Francis W. Parker. 
 Prepared for the Professional Training Class of the Cook County 
 Normal School. $1.50. 
 
 Vol. XI. Education in the United States. Its History 
 from the Earliest Settlements. By Richard G. Boone, A. M., Pro- 
 fessor of Pedagogy in Indiana University. $1.50. 
 
 Vol. XII. European Schools. Or what I Saw in the Schools of 
 Germany, France, Austria, and Switzerland. By L. R. Klemm, 
 Ph. D., Author of " Chips from a Teacher's Workshop " ; and nu- 
 merous school-books. $2.00. 
 
 Vol. XIII. Practical Hints for the Teachers of Public 
 Schools. By George Howland, Superintendent of the Chicago 
 Schools. $1.00. 
 
 Vol. XIV. Pestalozzi : His Life and Work. By Roger De 
 Guimps. Authorized translation from the second French edition, 
 by J. Russell, B. A., Assistant Master in University College School, 
 London. With an Introduction by Rev. R. H. Quick, M. A. 
 
 Vol. XV. School Supervision. By J. L. Pickard, LL. D. 
 
INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES 
 
 PESTALOZZI 
 
 HIS LIFE AND WORK 
 
 / 
 
 ROGER DE GUIMPS 
 
 AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION FROM THE SECOND FRENCH EDITION 
 
 By J. EUSSELL, B. A. 
 
 ASSISTANT MASTEE IN TJNIVEESITT COLLEGE SCHOOL, LONDON 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 By Eev. E. H. QUICK, M. A. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 1890 
 
Copyright, 1890, 
 By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 
 
 A uthorized edition. 
 
6è? 
 
 ¥z~~ 
 
 EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 The name of Pestalozzi is forever dear to the hearts 
 of all men. For he is the first teacher to announce con- 
 vincingly the doctrine that all people should be educated 
 — that, in fact, education is the one good gift to give to 
 all, whether rich or poor. The fact that all human beings, 
 whether the favorites of fortune or otherwise, rejoice in 
 whatever good comes to man because of his nature and 
 independent of all accidents of birth or circumstance, 
 makes secure this affectionate regard of all men for the 
 hero of modern pedagogy. Education shall be a real 
 panacea for human ills. It alone goes at the root of hu- 
 man misery. All other giving does not help, because it 
 more or less hinders self-help. Education, intellectual 
 and moral, alone develops self-help. The weaklings of 
 society — the moral weaklings who yield to temptation 
 and become criminal, the intellectual weaklings who 
 break down before the problems of life and become im- 
 becile or insane, the weaklings in will-power who can not 
 deny themselves and save a surplus of their earnings, but 
 allow themselves to drift along on the brink of pauperism 
 — for these weaklings education will furnish a prevent- 
 ive. Their children may be educated in intellect and 
 morals and thrift. It is the paramount duty of society to 
 
v i EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 see to this education, for tlie sake of the rich as well as of 
 the poor ; just as society cares for good sewerage, and pre- 
 vents the pestilence which will begin with the slums but 
 end with the palace. Education is a sanitary precaution 
 — a spiritual sanitation. 
 
 These doctrines, adopted widely by enlightened people 
 a century ago on the appearance of Pestalozzi's Evening 
 Hour of a Hermit (1780) and his Leonard and Ger- 
 trude (1781-89), have received a new emphasis in more 
 recent times from the inevitable trend of all civilization 
 toward democracy and local self-government. If the 
 weakling is to have a vote, he will prove a negative pow- 
 er in society. He will furnish a constituency for the 
 demagogue, and corruption in politics will ever prevail in 
 proportion to the number of illiterate, immoral, and un- 
 thrifty people that exist in the state. 
 
 Pestalozzi, like St. Francis, wedded poverty,* and 
 with sublime self-sacrifice studied all its peculiarities in 
 order to discover the true and only method of alleviating 
 its miseries. 
 
 In the Philanthrojnna of Basedow experiments were 
 made in the new education as propounded by Rousseau, 
 but they were limited almost entirely to the children of 
 rank and wealth. " Pestalozzi directed education also to 
 the lower classes — to the hitherto neglected multitude 
 without property. There should be in future no dirty, 
 hungry, ignorant, awkward, thankless, and will-less mass 
 of people consigned to live a merely animal existence. 
 We can never rid ourselves of the lower classes by con- 
 tributions from the wealthy — not even were they to give 
 
 * -Dante, Para di so, xi-62. 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. v ii 
 
 their all to the poor ; the only way to cure poverty is to 
 open the possibility of intellectual culture and independ- 
 ent self-support to each and every human being, just be- 
 cause he is a human being and a citizen of the common- 
 wealth." * 
 
 This movement of Pestalozzi is a part of the greater 
 movement known as the French Revolution. As Pesta- 
 lozzi is the prophet of the new education, so Rousseau is 
 the prophet of the entire revolutionary movement. Pes- 
 talozzi in 1764, at the age of eighteen, read the Emile, 
 and received the gift of the spirit. Both these prophets 
 were of Swiss birth. 
 
 Rousseau attacked all human institutions — the family, 
 civil society, the state, the Church — in the name of " Na- 
 ture." All institutions are factitious — artificial combina- 
 tions formed by man, and invested with sacredness by a 
 sort of superstition or by something worse, a selfish de- 
 sign. "Return to a state of Nature" is therefore the 
 creed of the new evangel. Basedow founded his educa- 
 tional methods on Rousseau direct. France made experi- 
 ments in throwing off the artificial incumbrances of state 
 and Church, but ended her experiments finally by the 
 discovery that the state of nature is a state of violence 
 and estrangement from all that is human and humane. 
 She slowly returned to Bourbonism through an interme- 
 diate process of Bonapartism, astonishing the world by 
 her new departures before and since. 
 
 Rousseauism is not outgrown, however, but has fre- 
 quent survivals in the minds of all young persons who are 
 just beginning to throw off external authority and think 
 
 * Karl Rosenkranz. 
 
v iii EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 for themselves. " To go back to a state of nature " has 
 such a refreshing sound to the young enthusiast, because 
 it dispenses at once with the necessity of that tedious 
 process of learning the mass of conventionalities and ar- 
 bitrary usages — the ceremonial observances that form the 
 structure of civilization. Dispense with all this, and 
 begin the search for what is true and good and beautiful 
 once again by the light of nature. This places us all on a 
 level — the sage by the side of the inexperienced youth. 
 But its practical effect is nihilism. 
 
 Perhaps the happiest of all Rousseau's influences is 
 his effect upon Pestalozzi. The education of the people 
 as people, an education reaching all classes, owes to Pes- 
 talozzi its greatest debt, and through him to Rousseau 
 still a large obligation. All the weaklings shall be devel- 
 oped in youth in the school and made self -active and in- 
 telligent, and by this means become self -helpful. Pesta- 
 lozzi made this solution of the problem clear to all Europe. 
 The great philosopher Fichte persuaded Prussia to adopt 
 public education as a state policy, while Xapoleon had ex- 
 cused himself (1802) from adopting Pestalozzi's schemes ; 
 " He had something else besides abc's to attend to." The 
 subsequent history of Prussia as affected by this Pestaloz- 
 zian principle is the most instructive study for all who 
 consider the humanitarian doctrines of universal educa- 
 tion to be something visionary and other-worldly. At the 
 present time statesmanship looks first to the war footing 
 of the nation, and next after this, but before all else, to 
 the education of the masses. 
 
 The reader of Pestalozzi's biography — especially of 
 the present excellent work, which embodies so much 
 from his writings — will study carefully the sharp differ- 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. i x 
 
 ences which separate his ideas from Rousseau's. These 
 will appear first in his strongly religious character and 
 next in his great reverence for the sacredness of the 
 family. 
 
 His life is a succession of enthusiastic experiments, 
 each ending in a failure of some sort. These failures are 
 followed each by a period of depressing reflection, in the 
 course of which Pestalozzi seems to become conscious of 
 the personal weakness or unwisdom that had caused his 
 plans to go wrong. He puts the fruits of his experience 
 into a treatise, and is inspired to begin again a new ex- 
 periment. 
 
 His writings furnish a store-house of knowledge of 
 human nature — a store-house which yields most to the 
 wisest reader. The reader enamored of Rousseau's doc- 
 trines will not find Pestalozzi' s writings edifying. They 
 will appear exasperatingly negative, exhibiting only the 
 self-contradiction latent in their theory. 
 
 There are, moreover, many phases of Pestalozzianism 
 which remain one-sided and hurtful, though stimulating. 
 They furnish us also contradictions in Pestalozzi's own 
 practice as contrasted with his theory. 
 
 Karl von Raumer, in his excellent discussion of Pes- 
 talozzi, has best exhibited these incongruities, especially 
 in the matter of the much-famed doctrine of "things 
 rather than words" — a dictum usually followed by a 
 practice that teaches words rather than things or ideas of 
 things. The more mature reader of this book therefore 
 will watch with critical alertness the unfolding of the 
 doctrine that all primary instruction should be addressed 
 to sense-perception (the so-called Anschauungs-unterricht). 
 One will not be so unreasonable as to object to sense-per- 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 ception as a phase of education, but he will be suspicious 
 of the place given it in the Pestalozzian theory. 
 
 The question will arise whether a premature and ex- 
 clusive training of sense-perception will not produce 
 something like what is called " arrested development " of 
 the human mind at an animal plane of intelligence. 
 
 For the psychologist soon discovers that the power of 
 thinking (both analytical and synthetical) is not a con- 
 tinued and elevated sort of sense-perception, but rather a 
 reaction against it, which is negative toward the impres- 
 sions and images of sense. 
 
 The element of thought is generalization, and this 
 deals with definitions rather than with images or pictures 
 of sense. Instead of reproducing the things of experi- 
 ence, the thinking activity has to do with the forces, 
 energies, or causes which produce things and likewise 
 annul and remove things by the continual process of 
 change. 
 
 In other words, thought deals with the dynamic ele- 
 ment of experience rather than with mere things, which 
 are only static results. 
 
 Pursuing this line of inquiry, the reader will every- 
 where find Pestalozzi's experiments and writings of a 
 stimulating character, suggesting far more than they re- 
 veal, and pointing significantly toward the great educa- 
 tional process that is active in our time. 
 
 The memory, which was at one time almost the only 
 intellectual activity known to the pedagogue, has now 
 been happily placed in the rank assigned to it by its well- 
 known limits. The time is coming when the limits of 
 sense-perception will be discovered and seen quite as 
 clearly. Then we shall hear more of the proper develop- 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. x j 
 
 ment of the thinking activity. For it is the thinking 
 activity that assimilates the results of observation and 
 brings them to fruitage. It is the same thinking activity 
 that assimilates also the stored-np knowledge of the expe- 
 rience and reflection of the race which the school offers 
 to the pupil. Without his painstaking thought, neither 
 personal observation nor book-learning will avail him 
 much. 
 
 W. T. Harris. 
 Washington, D. C, May, 1890. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 " I bead your essay on Pestalozzi," said to me one of 
 the three Commissioners who were some twenty years 
 ago empowered to remodel our endowed schools ; "I 
 read your essay on Pestalozzi, whom they are always 
 talking about on the Continent, and I found there was 
 nothing whatever in him." This might have been a 
 very effective sarcasm, but I have reason to think that 
 it was not so intended. It was only an expression of 
 our insular ignorance, and of our inability to measure 
 the effect of ideas. Since then we have seen France 
 prostrate before Germany ; and not a few, both of the 
 Germans and the French, have attributed the German 
 triumph to the influence of Pestalozzi. So perhaps 
 there was something in him after all. 
 
 But what was there in these ideas of Pestalozzi 
 which can be supposed to have so profoundly affected 
 the education of the Germans ? Let us go back a little 
 'pour mieux sauter. 
 
 Europe was indebted to the Renascence for the con- 
 ception of " a learned education." The key to all 
 wisdom seemed to have been found in the classical 
 Languages, and the highest display of the human in- 
 tellect was seen in imitating the ancient writings. So 
 education was for the few ; the many might do as best 
 they could without it. 
 
xiv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 This sixteenth - century devotion to the classical 
 literatures met with many adversaries in the centuries 
 following ; but the notion had got so firmly fixed that 
 education consisted in learning, that the only question 
 it seemed possible to raise was, In learning what ? 
 
 A great advance was made by our philosopher 
 Locke, when he treated of education under the four 
 heads: (1) Virtue; (2) Wisdom; (3) Manners; (4) 
 Learning ; and declared that learning was least and 
 last. But according to him, the education of the 
 gentleman was the only thing to be cared for. " If," 
 says he, " those of that rank are by their education 
 once set right, they will quickly bring all the rest into 
 order." {Ejpistle Bed. to " Thoughts c. Educ.") 
 
 Then came Rousseau. From the circumstances of 
 his life he had no class prejudices, and he had a genius 
 for thinking himself free from all conventions. He it 
 was who first severed entirely education and learning, 
 and brought up his ideal Emile without any regard 
 to the requirements of " Society." 
 
 Pestalozzi was, like Rousseau, a citizen of the Swiss 
 Republic, and little fettered by class distinctions. He 
 read Rousseau with enthusiasm, and saw what a force 
 education might become. His great object in life was 
 the elevation of the people, and the consequence was, 
 he became " a schoolmaster." 
 
 But his notions of the schoolmaster's function were 
 based on conceptions which then for the first time 
 came clearly into consciousness. 
 
 First, as to the aim of education, he announces that 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 every "human being is entitled to the development of the 
 faculties he was bom with. 
 
 Then as to the nature of the educator's task, he says 
 that it consists in a continual benevolent superinten- 
 dence, with the object of drawing out those faculties. 
 
 There is a strange contrast between the men Rous- 
 seau and Pestalozzi. Rousseau was a voice, and 
 nothing else. Everything that he did tended to lessen 
 the influence of everything that he wrote. But Pesta- 
 lozzi taught mainly by action. In him the most 
 interesting thing is his life. 
 
 One of the best authorities we have had on educa- 
 tion, my friend Professor Joseph Payne, drew my 
 attention to the excellent biography of Pestalozzi by 
 the Baron de Guimps. Professor Payne has now been 
 taken from us more than thirteen years, and I have 
 been hoping all those years to find as good a translator 
 as my friend would have wished for this valuable 
 book. At last such a translator has been found in a 
 Cambridge friend, Mr. Russell, who was a pupil of mine 
 more than twenty years ago, and who has since become 
 familiar with French educational life and speech as 
 a master in a Lycée. The completion of his task has 
 been delayed by his waiting for the new edition ; but 
 now the work has a suitable English dress, I trust we 
 shall find a large increase in the number of English- 
 men and Englishwomen who can discern that there 
 is something in Pestalozzi. 
 
 R. H. QUICK. 
 
 Redhill. 
 
AUTHOR'S PKEFACE TO THE SECOND 
 EDITION [1888]. 
 
 " In half a century from now every social stay will be shaken." 
 These words were spoken eighty-three years ago by a man who, 
 to save the poor had made himself poor ; who had lived as a 
 pauper with paupers to teach paupers to live like men ; and who, 
 after having sounded all the depths of the moral and intellectual 
 poverty hidden beneath the brilliant civilization of his time, had 
 come out of the experience terrified for the future of society, but 
 bringing it a means of salvation. This man, whose prediction 
 we now see fulfilled, was Henry Pestalozzi. 
 
 It is important to have complete knowledge of a man who, 
 throughout a long life, sacrificed himself for what was, perhaps, 
 the most fertile idea of modern times — the regeneration of nations 
 by elementary education ; a man who, passionately loving the 
 people in spite of their ignorance and vices, sought to teach and 
 raise them even before they had made themselves feared ; a man 
 who, in his ardent desire to help humanity, became, in turn, 
 theologian, lawyer, agriculturist, manufacturer, author, journa- 
 list, and schoolmaster ; a man who, amid flattery from kings 
 and people, never swerved a moment from his course ; a man, 
 finally, whose bold and original genius was, to the very last, com- 
 bined with the openness, simplicity, and absolute trust of a child. 
 
 Such was Pestalozzi. In another age and in other circum- 
 stances he would have been a saint. The Catholic Church has 
 few greater or purer. 
 
 The life of this man offers strange contrasts. It will seem full 
 of eccentricities, blunders, and even follies, unless we are guided 
 by a perfect knowledge of his character and of the idea which 
 was the mainspring of all his actions. 
 
 His child-like trust, which prevented him from thoroughly 
 understanding the men of his time, led him into many an error, 
 and caused the failure of his undertakings, and the world, that 
 believes only in success, condemned Pestalozzi. 
 
 But posterity has been fairer to him, 1 and to-day his memory 
 is venerated and his devotion admired. We see that it is to him 
 
 1 Tbe town of Yverdun is just about to honour the memory of the famous 
 man who lived there for so long, a bronze statue of Pestalozzi with two poor 
 children being almost ready for inauguration. 
 

 PREFACE. xvii 
 
 we owe the reform of elementary education, a reform, however, 
 which, notwithstanding the progress already made, is still far 
 from complete. 
 
 And yet Pestalozzi is still very little known, and not at all 
 understood, even those who have heard of him having but a 
 vague idea of the principles that guided him, and of the end 
 that, in spite of disappointment and failure, he steadily pursued 
 for so long. 
 
 Throughout his life Pestalozzi had always the same object in 
 view ; and though the idea which animated him developed with 
 age and experience, it never really changed. As the illusions 
 of his youth vanished, his work appeared more holy and more 
 beautiful, and the means he had employed more and more in- 
 sufficient. And so he never ceased in his efforts to perfect and 
 complete them. No man was ever less satisfied with himself ; 
 no man was ever so quick to learn from experience. In one thing 
 alone did he refuse to listen to its teaching : ingratitude never 
 lessened his kindness, nor deceit his trust. 
 
 A history of Pestalozzi must, above all, be a history of the 
 development of the great idea which, in its successive stages, 
 he sought to put into practice in the various enterprises of his 
 life. In this way alone can it be true, clear, and complete. 
 
 Such is the task we have set ourselves in writing this book, in 
 which all who wish to understand Pestalozzi's work will find its 
 true results, and, we hope, some practical help for the improve- 
 ment of education. 
 
 Pestalozzi, like other men, had his faults and his weaknesses, 
 which it would be unfair to the public and to him to hide. To 
 the public, the historian's duty is to hide nothing of the truth; 
 to Pestalozzi, to show him as he himself has chosen to appear in 
 his appeal to posterity (Song of the Swan) in which, in an excess 
 of humility and forbearance, he has even gone so far as to say 
 that his faults alone were the cause of his misfortunes, con- 
 demning himself that he might save the beneficent idea he was 
 bequeathing to humanity. His glory will lose nothing if we 
 respect this last wish. 
 
 Pestalozzi's great and beautiful character is like no other ; the 
 eagle and the dove, the lion and the lamb are there, the woman 
 and the child, perhaps, more than the man. Its originality, to be 
 fully understood, must be studied from its very earliest growth, 
 and hence the importance of every detail we have been able to 
 collect concerning the childhood of a man who has already had 
 so many biographers, but the history of whose life is still so full 
 of error and defects. 
 
 Amongst the innumerable works on Pestalozzi, we must par- 
 ticularly notice PompeVs, which was published in Paris in 1850, 
 under the auspices of the Academy of Moral and Political Science. 
 
xviii PREFACE. 
 
 He gives certain facts which are generally wanting in the Swiss 
 and German biographers, and which we have made use of in the 
 present work. He draws, too, a very true and lively picture of the 
 man and his life of devotion ; but the account of the fall of the 
 Yverdun Institute is so full of strange errors and mistaken views, 
 that it would seem that the author must have drawn from a source 
 which was not entirely trustworthy. It is this, undoubtedly, that 
 has made him unfair to many of Pestalozzi's friends and fellow- 
 workers. 
 
 Before finishing this work, on which we have been long en- 
 gaged, we were fortunately able to profit by the many German 
 publications which, for some years past, have been throwing new 
 light on the life and work of Pestalozzi. 
 
 Two in particular have been very useful to us : — 
 
 First, that of Mr. Morf, at one time head of the Training 
 College in Canton Berne, and then Director of the Orphanage at 
 Winterthur, entitled, Documents for the Biography of Henry 
 Pestalozzi. Mr. Morf has gone through public records, private 
 letters, family papers, and indeed anything that was likely to 
 throw light on the life of his hero, with indefatigable zeal, and 
 judges the work of the educational reformer with much peda- 
 gogical penetration. 1 
 
 'i'he second is that of Mr. Seyffarth, of Luckenwalde, 
 near Brandenburg, who, between 1870 and 1873, published in 
 eighteen volumes the first really complete edition of Pestalozzi's 
 works. Cotta's edition, in 18*26, included many books which 
 were not written by the master, but by his assistants, whilst 
 several of Pestalozzi's most important works were wanting. 
 Mr. Seyffarth has further enriched his collection by the addition 
 of several interesting and characteristic smaller works which 
 had remained unpublished, and by prefacing each of the bigger 
 works with a well-written introduction. 
 
 How is it that so much has been talked and written about 
 Pestalozzi in Germany lately ? Because she knows her present 
 greatness is owing, in a large measure, to him. 
 
 After Jena, when Napoleon persisted in rejecting the principles 
 of the Swiss Beformer, Germany, on the contrary, adopted them, 
 and, reorganizing her public education in this spirit, produced a 
 generation of men who were not only instructed but educated. 
 Afterwards, however, she gradually neglected Pestalozzi's doc- 
 trine, especially from the moral point of view, and the Prussian 
 schools degenerated. To-day, for instance, they would be in- 
 capable of forming men like those the country still possesses 
 in the flower of their age. All the best minds are well aware of 
 
 1 He lias lately published a second book, entitled, Leaves from the Story 
 of Pestalozzi's Life and Sorrows. 
 
PREFACE. xix 
 
 this, and an effort is being made to restore to his old honourable 
 position the man whose educational doctrine was one of the 
 chief means of raising Prussia when she had fallen so low. 
 
 At Easter, 1872, there was a Congress in Berlin of delegates 
 from the Societies of Elementary Teachers in Brandenburg, 
 Saxony, Hanoyer, and Hesse-Nassau. The Congress represented 
 more than ten thousand teachers, and decided upon the creation 
 of a [National Society of German Elementary Teachers, the head- 
 quarters of which should be in Berlin. 
 
 On the 4th of April, Dr. Falk, the Minister of Beligion and 
 Education, received a deputation of delegates, who made three 
 requests in the name of the Congress. 
 
 According to the Hanover Courier the third request ran 
 thus :— 
 
 " The extension of the programme of study for elementary 
 teachers, and the organization of training schools in accordance 
 with the pedagogic principles of Pestalozzi, which, thanks to the 
 protection of Queen Louisa, Stein, William Humboldt, Fichte, 
 etc., formerly enjoyed so much favour in Prussia and so visibly 
 contributed to the regeneration of the country." 
 
 In France, the first attempts at educational reform in the 
 spirit of Pestalozzi were owing to the efforts of men like Cochin 
 and Pompée ; not however that the full value of the labours of 
 the Swiss pedagogue was not recognized at the outset by a large 
 number of distinguished men of all shades of opinion. It will 
 be enough to mention Maine de Biran, de Yailly, Georges Cuvier, 
 de Gérando, de Lasteyrie, Madame de Staël, de Clermont- 
 Tonnerre, de Dreux-Brézé, Bourbon-Busset, Biot, Geoff roi- Saint- 
 Hilaire, Sébastiani, de Laborde, Gaultier, Jomard, Choron, 
 Ordinaire, Matter, Delessert, de Broglie, Casimir Perrier, and 
 Victor Cousin. But it is since the labours of Madame Pape- 
 Carpentier, and especially since the conferences on sense-impress- 
 ing 1 teaching in the Exhibition of 1878, that we may say that every 
 intelligent teacher in France has sought to reduce elementary 
 education to the principles laid down by Pestalozzi. The 
 pedagogical works published during the last ten or fifteen years 
 are all animated by the same spirit ; and if they do not all ex- 
 plicitly recommend the Pestalozzian method, they at least obey 
 the tendency. May the book we are now publishing contribute 
 to the success of their efforts ! 
 
 1 This word — or sense-impressed — I have used through out for intuitif 
 (anschaulich) . For intuition (Anschaulichkeit) I have said sense-impression. 
 [Translator.] 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAG3 
 
 Introduction . . . . iii 
 
 Author's Preface . . vi 
 
 CHAP. I. — Pestalozzi the Child 1 
 
 II — Pestalozzi the Student 8 
 
 III. — Pestalozzi the Agriculturist .... 22 
 
 IV. — Pestalozzi the Father . . . .36 
 
 V. — Pestalozzi the Philanthropist .... 52 
 
 VI. — Pestalozzi the Writer 73 
 
 VII. — Pestalozzi's Doctrine before 1798 . . . 117 
 
 VIII. — Pestalozzi at Stanz 125 
 
 IX. — Pestalozzi at Burgdorf 173 
 
 X. — Krusi, Pestalozzi's First Fellow- worker . . 190 
 
 XI. — Pestalozzi's Institute at Burgdorf . . . 201 
 
 XII. — Pestalozzi's Books and Method at Burgdorf . 227 
 
 XIII. — First Years at Yverdun ..... 251 
 
 XIV. — Decline of the Institute ..... 275 
 
 XV. — Death-Agony of the Institute .... 321 
 
 XVI. — Pestalozzi's Last Years 359 
 
 XVII. — Pestalozzi's Last Writings .... 368 
 
 XVIII. — Personal Eecollections of the Author . . 388 
 
 XIX. — Pestalozzi's Beligion 399 
 
 XX. — Pestalozzi's Philosophy 406 
 
 XXI.— Pestalozzi's Elementary Method . . , 412 
 
 APPENDIX I. — Niederer's Literary Collaboration 
 ,, II. — List of Pestalozzi's Works 
 
 III. — Books to Consult on Pestalozzi 
 
 425 
 433 
 
 435 
 
Pestalozzi: His Life and Work. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PESTALOZZI THE CHILD. 
 
 Influence of home on his character ; influence of school and of 
 a visit to the country. To help the poor, he decides to be 
 a village pastor. 
 
 In 1567, Antony Pestalozzi, a Protestant refugee from 
 Chiavenna, and his wife Madeline de Murait, of Locarno, 
 also an exile from her country through having adopted the 
 reformed faith, found refuge in the town of Zurich. Prom 
 them was descended Andrew Pestalozzi, who was a pastor 
 at Hôngg near Zurich, and the grandfather of the subject of 
 this biography. 1 
 
 Andrew's son, John Baptist, was a surgeon of good standing 
 in Zurich, and had acquired some reputation as an oculist ; 
 he had married Susanna Hotz, of Richterswyl, a beautiful 
 village on the edge of the lake of Zurich. Susanna was a 
 sister of the well-known Dr. Hotz, and the niece of the 
 General Hotz who was killed at Schœnnis in 1799. 
 
 Henry, the subject of this biography, was the son of John 
 Baptist Pestalozzi, and was born on the 12th of January, 
 1746. His early home and the circumstances of his child- 
 hood had so great an influence on his character that we 
 must give some account of them. 
 
 In the middle of the town of Zurich stands a large bridge, 
 used as a market for flowers, fruit, and vegetables, and con- 
 
 1 The parish registers of Hongg afford evidence of the mistake of those 
 biographers who call this pastor Hotz and make him the maternal grand- 
 father of Pestalozzi. 
 
2 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 necting a small square on the left bank of the Limmat with 
 the square in which the Town Hall stands on the opposite 
 side. Not far from the latter building and the quay there 
 is a small, old-fashioned square called Rtidenplatz, leading, 
 on the south, into a very narrow street. The corner house 
 fronting the street is the house where Pestalozzi was born. 
 It is numbered five, and bears the date 1691 ; the ground-floor, 
 which is now used as a warehouse, was probably in 1746 the 
 shop where, according to the custom of the time, the chirur- 
 geon John Pestalozzi sold his simples and his drugs. 
 
 It was an old custom in Zurich for every house to have a 
 name and sign ; that in which Pestalozzi's parents lived was 
 called The Black Horn} 
 
 Henry was only just five years old when his father died, 
 leaving a widow and three children (two boys and a girl), 
 but very little fortune. Baptist, the eldest boy, died young ; 
 the girl, Barbara, eventually married a Mr. Gross, a mer- 
 chant in Leipsic, and corresponded all her life with her 
 brother Hemy, to whom she was very much attached. 
 
 Susanna Pestalozzi was a gifted woman and an admirable 
 mother. Having been well brought up herself, she now 
 thought of nothing but her duty to her children, and it was 
 undoubtedly the educational advantages of Zurich that 
 made her prefer this town to the pleasanter and easier life 
 she might have led near her brother at Richterswyl. She 
 must, however, have succumbed under the difficulties of the 
 task she had set herself, had it not been for the devotion of 
 a faithful servant. But here we will quote from Pestalozzi's 
 own account of his early education : — 
 
 " My mother devoted herself to the education of her three 
 children with the most complete abnegation, foregoing 
 everything that could have given her pleasure. In this 
 noble sacrifice she was supported by a poor young servant 
 whom I can never forget. During the few months she had 
 
 1 Some have maintained that Pestalozzi was born at the Bed Lattice, 
 23, Munsterstrasse, a house which bears the inscription, Honour to God 
 alone, 1664, and which is a little lower down than the one occupied by 
 his friend Lavater. This is a mistake, for it is contradicted not only by 
 local tradition but by Pestalozzi's own statements, as we shall see. It 
 is true, however, that at the age of eighteen Pestalozzi lived with his 
 mother at the lied Lattice. 
 
PESTAL0ZZ1 THE CHILD. 
 
 been in onr service, my father had been struck by her rare 
 fidelity and unusual quickness. On his deathbed, agonized 
 at the thought of what the consequence of his death might 
 be for his family that he was leaving almost penniless, he 
 sent for her, and said : ' Babeli, for the love of God and all 
 His mercies, do not forsake my wife ! What will become 
 of her after my death? My children will fall into the 
 hands of strangers and their lot will be hard. Without 
 your help she cannot possibly keep her children with her.' 
 Her noble, simple heart was touched, and her soul accepted 
 the sacrifice. ' If you die,' she said, 1 1 will not forsake your 
 wife, but I will remain with her, if needs be, till death.' 
 Her words soothed my poor father, a gleam of joy shone in 
 his eyes, and he died happily. 
 
 " She kept her word, for she stayed with my mother till 
 she died, helping her to bring up her three children under 
 the most difficult and painful circumstances imaginable, and 
 showing in this work of patient devotion a tact and delicacy 
 which were the more astonishing, seeing that she was entirely 
 without education and had left her native village only a few 
 months before to try and find a situation in Zurich. 
 
 " Her fidelity and dignity of manner were a result of her 
 piety and simple faith. However painful the conscientious 
 fulfilment of her promise may sometimes have been, it never 
 once occurred to her that she might break it. 
 
 " My mother's position as a widow necessitated the most 
 careful economy, and the trouble that Babeli took to do 
 what was almost impossible, is hardly credible. To save a 
 farthing or two in the purchase of vegetables or fruit, she 
 would go two or three times to the market, waiting for the 
 moment when the peasants would be anxious to get rid 
 of their goods for the sake of returning home. The same 
 careful economy was applied to everything, otherwise my 
 mother's slender means would not have sufficed for our 
 housekeeping expenses. When we children wanted to be 
 off somewhere and there was no particular reason for us to 
 go, Babeli would stop us, saying : * Why do you want to go 
 and spoil your clothes and shoes to no purpose ? See how 
 your mother goes without everything for your sakes, how 
 she never leaves the house for months together, how she is 
 saving every farthing for your education.' But of herself, 
 of what she did for us, of her continual sacrifices, the noble 
 
4 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 girl never spoke. The economy in the house was not 
 allowed to interfere in any way with the family traditions, 
 and the money devoted to alms, gratuities, and new year's 
 gifts was out of all proportion to our personal expenses. 
 Although these extra disbursements always troubled my 
 mother and Babeli, they never hesitated to make them. My 
 brother, my sister and myself had all fine Sunday clothes, 
 but we wore them very little, always taking them off as 
 soon as we got indoors, in order that they might last the 
 longer. When my mother expected visitors, no pains were 
 spared to make our one room fit to receive them." ] 
 
 This economy did not prevent the children from occasion- 
 ally having a little pocket-money. One day, when little 
 Henry had a few pence in his pocket, he was tempted by the 
 good things in a confectioner's window near his home and 
 went in to buy something. The house, which was in the 
 square and has since been restored, was called The Plough. 
 The shopkeeper's name was Schulthess, and inside Henry 
 found little Anna Schulthess minding the shop. The girl 
 was only seven years older than he was, but she refused to 
 sell him anything and advised him to keep his money till he 
 could make a better use of it. She who now gave him this 
 excellent piece of advice afterwards became his wife, and 
 remained his good angel till her death. 
 
 Thus Pestalozzi passed his childhood in an atmosphere 
 of love, devotion, and peace, of rigid economy and of noble 
 generosity. It was this, undoubtedly, that made him trust- 
 ful, self-forgetful, calm, and affectionate, and gave him that 
 gentle, sincere, and active piety which finds pleasure even 
 in renunciation and privation. At the same time his 
 imagination did not remain dormant, indeed its development 
 seemed to make up in a measure for his lack of physical 
 activity. The little fellow, nearly always shut up at home, 
 listened eagerly to tales and readings, of which he never 
 forgot a word. On the contrary, he turned them over and 
 over in his mind, putting himself in the place of his heroes 
 and making them act differently with different results. 
 Already he was busy with thoughts which took him far 
 away from the realities of his life. 
 
 1 Letter from Pestalozzi to Professor Ith, 1802. 
 
PESTALOZZI THE CHILD. 5 
 
 The education Pestalozzi received from his mother left 
 ineffaceable memories in his heart. Mothers, to him, were 
 the ideal educators ; it was to them he addressed his ad- 
 vice and exhortations, and on them that he relied for the 
 regeneration of the people. And is not he himself an 
 example of how much a man's childhood may be influenced 
 by the care, love, and devotion of a good mother ? And may 
 we not think that if Rousseau had been brought up by a good 
 mother, his genius might have been entirely beneficent ? 
 
 But however excellent Pestalozzi's early education may 
 have been in all the most important points, and especially 
 in the development of his affections, it was bound to be 
 incomplete. The boy, puny from his birth, always indoors, 
 brought up entirely by women, deprived of a father's in- 
 fluence, of all contact with boys of his own age, and of out- 
 door games and interests, remained all his life small and 
 weak, shy and awkward, changeable and impressionable. 
 As Niederer, who afterwards became his friend and helper, 
 once said : " In Pestalozzi there was as much of the woman 
 as of the man." 
 
 The springs of young Pestalozzi's life were in the heart 
 and imagination alone ; his thought, swift to perceive the 
 relations between things, and often turned in on itself, left 
 him absent-minded, inattentive, and careless about mere 
 formalities, and, as a general rule, about the material con- 
 ditions of life. He was unaware of the exceptional charac- 
 ter of the family-life he had enjoyed, and ignorant of what 
 the society of men in general was like. It is easy to judge 
 from this how many bitter disappointments were in store 
 for him. 
 
 They commenced as soon as he went to school. Although 
 he often gave proof of penetration, he was unsuccessful with 
 most of his work ; indeed, he wrote and spelt so badly that 
 his master judged him to be utterly incapable. His com- 
 panions liked him for his good disposition and obliging 
 nature, but they took advantage of his good qualities to 
 make a butt of him. Pestalozzi speaks of himself at this 
 period of his life as follows : — 
 
 "The failures which would have sadly troubled other 
 children hardly affected me. However much I might have 
 desired or dreaded anything, when it was once over, and I 
 
6 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 had had two or three nights of good sleep after it, if it con- 
 cerned me alone, it was just as though it had never been. 
 From my childhood I have been everybody's plaything. 
 My education, which gave food to all the dreams of my 
 fancy, left me alike incapable of doing what everybody 
 does, and of enjoying what everybody enjoys. From the 
 very first, little children, my schoolfellows, sent me where 
 they would rather not go, and I went ; in short I did all 
 they wanted. The day of the earthquake at Zurich, 1 when 
 masters and boys rushed pell-mell downstairs, and nobody 
 would venture back into the class-room, it was I who went 
 to fetch the caps and books. But, in spite of all this, 
 there was no intimacy between my companions and myself. 
 Although I worked hard, and learned some things well, I 
 had none of their ability for the ordinary lessons, and so I 
 could not take it amiss that they dubbed me Harry Oddity 
 of Foolborough. 2 
 
 " More than any other child, I was always running my 
 head against the wall for mere trifles ; but it did not trouble 
 me. I thought I could do many things which were quite 
 beyond me ; I measured the whole world by my mother's 
 house and my schoolroom, and the ordinary life of men was 
 almost as unknown to me as if I had lived in another world." 3 
 
 From the time that he was nine years old, young Pesta- 
 lozzi was invited every summer to spend a few weeks with 
 his grandfather, Andrew Pestalozzi, the pastor at Hôngg, a 
 village about three miles from Zurich. 
 
 This village is magnificently situated ; the hills on which 
 it lies, on the right bank of the Limmat, slope rapidly on 
 the south to the river, on the other side of which the ground 
 is lower and covered with houses. The land at Hôngg is 
 rich and divided into fields, vineyards, and large orchards. 
 The parsonage, which is close to the church, is still the 
 same as a hundred years ago, though parts of it have been 
 restored and modernized. The gardens which surround it 
 were formerly narrow terraces built on the side of the hill. 
 The dining-room, which is in the south-east corner of the 
 
 1 The 19th of December, 1755. 
 
 2 As Mr. Quick has well put it. [Tr.] 
 
 3 Letter to Ith, already que ted. 
 
PESTALOZZI THE CHILD. 
 
 building, and has large windows looking east and south 
 commanding a beautiful view of the basin of the Limmat, is 
 unchanged, save that a small stove, in white porcelain, has 
 replaced the enormous green structure that formerly stood 
 there. 
 
 It was in this place that Pestalozzi, the schoolboy, passed 
 his happy holidays ; here that he learned to love Nature and 
 the work of the fields ; and here that he first conceived the 
 noble idea to which he was destined to devote his whole 
 life. 
 
 Already at that time the peasants of this canton had begun 
 to combine industry with agriculture. As yet there were 
 neither factories nor machinery, it is true, but in every family 
 there was a certain amount of spinning done by hand. 
 
 By accompanying his grandfather on his daily visits to 
 the schools, the sick and the poor of his parish, the child 
 was initiated into the realities of the life of the people ; and 
 although this was his first acquaintance with their suffer- 
 ings, he was touched with profound compassion for them, 
 and from that moment there burned in his heart an un- 
 quenchable desire to find some remedy for the evil. 
 
 A village pastor has a sublime task, but a very difficult 
 one; his duties are innumerable and unceasing. Obliged 
 to be for ever fighting, and often single-handed, against the 
 material, intellectual, and moral poverty that surrounds 
 him, and which, in spite of all his efforts, seems ever the 
 same, he would lose heart and courage if he were not sup- 
 ported by a sure and well-tried faith. Young Pestalozzi's 
 grandfather was one of those men who devote their whole 
 energy to the office they have chosen. His faith, which was 
 simple and sincere, living and active, naturally made a strong 
 impression on his grandchild, who used to say afterwards : 
 
 M The best way for a child to learn to fear God is to see 
 and hear a real Christian." 
 
 At the same time, this life of active charity and sacrifice, 
 corresponding with the boy's deeper feelings, and appealing 
 strongly to his emotional nature, soon became his ideal and 
 his ambition ; and he made up his mind to be a pastor like 
 his grandfather. It was therefore decided that he should 
 study theology. 
 
CHAPTER IL 
 
 PESTALOZZI THE STUE»3NT. 
 
 Splendour of the University of Zurich in the middle of the 
 eighteenth century ; the spirit which reigned there, and its 
 influence on Pestalozzi ; he abandons theology for law in 
 order to reform abuses; he is condemned as a revolu- 
 tionary ; he abandons law, and burns his manuscripts. All 
 that remains of his first writings : "Agis." Carried away 
 by the agricultural Utopias of the time, he becomes an 
 agriculturist in order to help the people. 
 
 In the middle of the last century, higher education in the 
 town of Zurich had made remarkable progress, and was 
 distinguished by a loftiness and originality which deserve 
 to be better known. The philosophy of Wolff, who preached 
 a return to Nature in everything, had stirred in the students 
 a triple enthusiasm : for simple manners, for the revival of 
 German literature, and for political liberty. It was this 
 enthusiasm which impelled Pestalozzi to the enterprises of 
 his youth, those first unfortunate attempts which only de- 
 layed the moment when he was to find his real vocation 
 and become the reformer of education. 
 
 At that time, theology, medicine, and law were studied 
 in Zurich in the Collegium humanitatis, which was open 
 to students of fifteen years of age, and which three dis- 
 tinguished professors had brought into great repute. These 
 men were Zimmerman, Professor of Theology (1736) ; 
 Breitinger, Professor of Greek and Hebrew (1745) ; and 
 Bodmer, Professor of History and Politics (1730). They 
 had succeeded in arousing a burning zeal amongst the 
 students, and in imparting to their work a particular 
 tendency, some explanation of which will be necessary to 
 the proper understanding of this history. 
 
 Zimmerman was firmly and sincerely religious, without 
 being intolerant ; he was quick, open, and calm, a friend of 
 
PESTALOZZI THE STUDENT. 
 
 mankind and a friend of truth. He had changed the old 
 system of formality and severity at the Academy by making 
 the relations between master and pupil kindly and pleasant. 
 When Pestalozzi began his higher studies, however, Zimmer- 
 man had already been called to another post ; but the in- 
 fluence of his past activity continued to make itself felt 
 during the professorship of his successor, 
 
 Breitinger used to speak of Greek literature as being a 
 source of wisdom for all other nations. He taught it in 
 this spirit with remarkable power, and succeeded in making 
 his pupils understand and appreciate it, and find not only 
 keen pleasure in it, but valuable instruction. He loved his 
 pupils as his own children, and looked after them in- 
 dividually with such care that they all loved and respected 
 him as a father. 
 
 Bodmer was a Professor at Zurich for nearly fifty years, 
 and it is to him particularly that the town owes the many 
 talented men it has produced. His teaching was more 
 especially concerned with the history and institutions of 
 Switzerland, and its effect was to inspire his hearers with 
 a passionate love for justice and liberty. His view was 
 that the manners and social organization of the day were 
 degenerating, and that a struggle must be made to bring 
 back the old virtues. He taught that desires must be 
 limited, and praised the simple joys of domestic life. We 
 can form some opinion of his teaching from the following 
 passage of his Dialogues of the Dead : 
 
 "What did you do on earth? — I sought for happiness. 
 Did you find it ? — Alas ! much too late. Where did you 
 seek it ? — In Persia, in India, in Japan, at the ends of the 
 earth. Where did you find it ? — It had been in my own 
 village, in my father's house, whilst I had been seeking it 
 thousands of miles away ; and when at last, after many 
 dangers, I returned home, I found it there. My father, who 
 had taken no step to find it, carried it in his heart. I just 
 caught a glimpse of it and died." 
 
 But Bodmer was not content with teaching history and 
 politics ; he introduced his pupils to the masterpieces of 
 modern literature, especially English. To him and Breit- 
 inger, Zurich owes the honour of having been, with Leipsic, 
 3 
 
io PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 the starting-point of the movement which has given Germany 
 her admirable modern literature. 
 
 Soon after Klopstock had published his Messiah, he came 
 to Zurich to stay with Bodmer, who had been one of the first 
 to appreciate the value of his work. He was soon followed 
 by Wieland and Kleist, so that gradually the little Swiss 
 town became quite a centre of literary activity. Kleist 
 wro te to Gleim : 
 
 " Zurich is really one of the finest places in the world, 
 not only on account of its magnificent position, but on 
 account of the men to be found there. Whereas in great 
 Berlin there are not more than three or four men of taste 
 and genius, in little Zurich there are twenty or thirty." 
 
 So great was the influence of these professors on their 
 pupils, that the latter came to despise wealth, luxury, and 
 material comfort, and cared for nothing but the pleasures of 
 the mind and soul, and the unceasing pursuit of justice and 
 truth. For a long time Pestalozzi and his friends slept on 
 the bare ground, with no other covering but their clothes, 
 and ate nothing but bread and vegetables. 
 
 Such was the spirit which reigned in the University of 
 Zurich about 176U, seven or eight years after Klopstock's 
 visit to his friend Bodmer. It was at this time that young 
 Pestalozzi arrived there. His previous studies in a humble 
 school had not prepared him in any way for the University, 
 but this lofty teaching suited his character, and, acting 
 powerfully on his impressionable nature, furnished his facul- 
 ties with the stimulus and food they lacked. As a schoolboy, 
 he had not shown much power, but now he rapidly became 
 a distinguished scholar. He was still little more than a boy, 
 when the University honoured him by printing a translation 
 he had made of a speech of Demosthenes. 
 
 He afterwards referred to his academical studies in these 
 words : 
 
 "The spirit of the public teaching in my native town, 
 though eminently scientific, was calculated to make us lose 
 sight of the realities of life, and lead us into the land of 
 dreams. All the best of us, Lavater not excepted, were mere 
 dreamers. We had decided to live for nothing but indepen- 
 
PESTAL0ZZ1 THE STUDENT. n 
 
 dence, well-doing, sacrifice, and love of country, but we were 
 without the practical knowledge necessary for reaching these 
 ends. We were taught to despise the external advantages 
 of wealth, honour, and consideration, and to believe that by 
 economy and moderation, it is possible to do without most 
 of the things considered essential by ordinary middle-class 
 people. We were beguiled by a dream, to wit, the possibility 
 of enjoying independence and domestic happiness with- 
 out having either the power or the means of acquiring that 
 position which alone can give them. These dreams had all 
 the more power over us because it was to our best feelings 
 that they appealed when they incited us to make a stand 
 against the decay of the old Swiss spirit, that spirit of sim- 
 plicity, dignity, and fidelity, which had once been the glory 
 of our country, bat which at that time was already slowly 
 disappearing from amongst us." 
 
 No man was ever a greater victim than Pestalozzi himself 
 of this illusion which he calls a dream, this ideal which he 
 pursued with so much self-forgetfulness ; and yet is it not 
 just because he reached so high a point in this high path, 
 that he made the discoveries which have rendered his 
 memory immortal ? 
 
 We have seen that young Pestalozzi wanted to be a pastor, 
 like his grandfather. He accordingly studied theology, but 
 after having brought his studies to a successful close, he 
 discovered that he could not preach. It is even said that 
 in the middle of his trial-sermon an uncontrollable fit of 
 laughter seized him and obliged him to stop. So he gave 
 up the ministry to study law. But this change was not en- 
 tirely the result of his inability to preach, for his thoughts 
 had long been taking another direction, and slowly leading 
 him to another sphere of activity. 
 
 Already, as a child at school, Pestalozzi had had a horror 
 of injustice and oppression, and had always been the cham- 
 pion of those who were wronged. One day he had taken to 
 task a worthless under-master who had been guilty of some 
 injustice, and, to the amazement of the whole class, his 
 energy had carried the day. Later, in an anonymous letter 
 addressed to the educational authorities, he had disclosed 
 the vices which were secretly undermining a public educa- 
 tional institution ; this letter had excited some very angry 
 
12 PESTAL0ZZ1; HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 feeling, and on its authorship being discovered, Pestalozzi, 
 although an inquiry had proved the truth of his statements, 
 had been threatened with severe punishment, and had been 
 obliged to escape to Hongg to his grandfather. 
 
 There he had heard the peasants complain how the bur- 
 gesses of Zurich lorded it over them, monopolized the trade 
 in the town, and refused to sell them the right of citizenship. 
 Often, too, he had stayed with his uncle Hotz at Bichters- 
 wyl, the inhabitants of which village made the same com- 
 plaints as those of Hongg. The doctor used to speak with 
 great bitterness of the "gracious lords of Zurich," and one 
 day, when his nephew was boasting of the liberty of the 
 Swiss peasants, he replied sharply, "Don't talk so much 
 about their liberty ; they are no more free here than in 
 Livonia." 
 
 The impressions thus made on young Pestalozzi by his 
 visits to the country were all the keener and deeper for 
 being associated with the memory of happy days spent 
 amongst a class of people who always made him welcome, 
 and in a place where he was able to enjoy a freer and more 
 active life than he had ever enjoyed in Zurich. 
 
 At that time, the village pastors of the canton were for 
 ever repeating the old adage about evil coming from the 
 town. Young Henry felt this too. " When I am big," he 
 used to say, " I shall support the peasants ; they ought to 
 have the same rights as the townspeople." 
 
 At the university, too, where Bodmer's teaching had 
 directed his attention to the political state of his country, 
 he was one of the most ardent amongst those young men 
 who were anxious to reform everything in Zurich, and 
 whose actions in the pursuit of liberty and justice occa- 
 sionally caused their parents so much embarrassment, anxiety, 
 and trouble. 
 
 In the middle of the last century, the country districts in 
 most of the Swiss cantons were dominated by the towns, 
 which were themselves governed by a certain number of 
 privileged families, whose government was generally mild 
 and kind, though the people had no right to take part in it. 
 In Zurich, some thirteen trade-guilds monopolized all the 
 industry and commerce of the place. 
 
 The desire for greater liberty showed itself first amongst 
 the students, and was caused to a very great extent by the 
 
PESTALOZZI THE STUDENT. 
 
 example of the people of Geneva, who had for a long time 
 been complaining of the domination of the patrician families, 
 who had gradually robbed the people of all their ancient 
 rights. In 1738, France and the cantons of Berne and 
 Zurich, appealed to by the Genevan Government, had in- 
 duced the people and the magistrates to accept their media- 
 tion, and had obtained for the former the right of remonstrance 
 and veto in all measures which affected the constitution. 
 And so, in 1762, when the Government, following in the 
 steps of the Paris Parliament, condemned the author of Emile 
 and The Social Contract, the people espoused Rousseau's 
 side very warmly, and addressed a remonstrance to the 
 magistrates, asking that the decree should be repealed 
 as being in every way unjust and ill-advised. But the 
 petitioners were civilly dismissed, and their petition dis- 
 regarded. 
 
 These doings made a great stir in Zurich, and caused 
 great excitement amongst the patriotic students, who ex- 
 pressed their entire sympathy with the people of Geneva 
 and for a time almost worshipped Rousseau, in whose writ- 
 ings they found so many eloquent passages in praise of 
 Nature, simple manners and country life, that were entirely 
 in harmony with their own views. 
 
 These young Liberals, several of whom afterwards became 
 famous, now undertook a crusade against the abuses and in- 
 justices of the time. During the years 1763, 1764, and 1765 
 they formally complained of three high functionaries ; and an 
 inquiry having proved the truth of the facts they alleged, 
 the guilty persons were dismissed. The magistrates, how- 
 ever, alarmed at the spirit which was animating these young 
 men, blamed their action, and punished them with one or 
 two days' confinement in the Town Hall. 
 
 In the spring of 1765, Bodmer had founded a Helvetian 
 Society, which used to meet every week to hear and discuss 
 essays by its members on questions of history, education, 
 politics, or ethics, and which contributed in no small degree 
 to spread liberal ideas amongst the students. 
 
 Of this society Pestalozzi was one of the most enthusiastic 
 members. 
 
 The same year, the students started a weekly local paper 
 called the Memorial. As its aim was purely moral, politics 
 were not touched on ; indeed, at that time, the discussion of 
 
14 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 politics in a public paper was forbidden. The editors were 
 Lavater and Fiissli ; but Pestalozzi was one of the chief 
 contributors, and it is interesting to see the sort of thoughts 
 that occupied him at the age of nineteen. The following are 
 a few extracts from his articles : — 
 
 " I am told nearly every day that a young man who occu- 
 pies such a very unimportant position in his country as I do, 
 should attempt neither to criticise nor to make things better; 
 that both are beyond his province. I may, however, be 
 allowed to express my wishes ; this at least nobody can 
 either forbid or find fault with. I propose, then, to formu- 
 late my wishes and print them for everybody to read. As 
 for those who may make fun of me, I can only hope that they 
 will soon learn to know better." 
 
 u I would have no great mind too indolent, or too proud of 
 its own greatness to labour for the public good with courage 
 and perseverance; I would have no one despise the very 
 humblest of his fellow-creatures when they are honest and 
 industrious." 
 
 " I would have parents exercise more care in choosing 
 companions for their children. For who does not know what 
 a powerful influence good or bad companionship has on 
 young souls ? " 
 
 u I would have people as eager to speak of a man's progress 
 and good qualities as they are to tell his faults. Do we 
 not owe this justice to our neighbour who is trying to be 
 better ? " 
 
 " I would that one of our doctors would make an abstract 
 of Tissot's excellent book, and that by the self-denial of a 
 few rich people this abstract might be sold to every 
 peasant for a half or third of its price." 
 
 This wish suggests another : 
 
 " I would that some one would draw up in a simple manner 
 a few principles of education intelligible to everybody ; that 
 some generous people would then share the expense of print- 
 ing, so that the pamphlet might be given to the public for 
 
PESTALOZZI THE STUDENT. 15 
 
 nothing, or next to nothing. I would then have clergj^men 
 distribute it to all fathers and mothers, so that they might 
 bring up their children in a rational and Christian manner 
 But perhaps this is asking too much at a time." 
 
 " I would have all who work with their hands, all whose 
 lives are industrious, frugal, and independent, looked upor 
 as the pillars of our liberty, and held more in honour amongsl 
 
 '- 1 would that all my fellow-citizens could study the history 
 of Switzerland and the laws of the canton, and that the new 
 Helvetian Society would furnish them with the means." 
 
 Meanwhile the irritation caused at Geneva by the con- 
 demnation of Rousseau had resulted in differences between 
 the magistrates and the people, which were becoming more 
 and more pronounced and threatening, and in 1766, the 
 government again asked for the mediation of Zurich, Berne, 
 and France, " to save the country." The deputies from these 
 three States met at Geneva in March, and proposed an 
 arrangement which suited the magistrates, but did not 
 satisfy the people, who rejected it by a great majority on 
 the 15th of December. 
 
 A rumour having reached Zurich that troops were to be 
 sent to Geneva to force the people to accept the proposal 
 made by the deputies, the town was thrown into a great 
 state of excitement, and nothing else was talked about, 
 nearly everybody approving of the step. The young 
 patriots however were violently opposed to it, and debated 
 whether it would not be possible to put the whole matter 
 before the people of Zurich in such a way that they would 
 refuse to become an instrument of injustice. 
 
 A young theologian, C. H. Muller, made the attempt, by 
 drawing up a short statement in the form of a dialogue 
 between peasants. The conclusions which he put into the 
 mouth of one of the interlocutors were as follows : 
 
 " The townspeople of Geneva have a right to make what 
 laws they please ; for the liberty of a people consists in its 
 being able to organize its government as it likes. Besides, 
 it was formally stipulated that the people should be free to 
 
i6 PESTALOZZI; HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 adopt or reject the various constitutional measures, and now 
 that they have rejected this mediation by a great majority, 
 are we to go and force them to accept it? Such a pro- 
 ceeding would be treasonable, shameful, infamous, and a 
 government that insisted, on it would no longer deserve our 
 confidence. Come what may, then, I for one shall not go." 
 
 Muller, saying the paper had been given him by some one, 
 read it privately to a few friends, and then locked it up in 
 his desk. But he afterwards allowed a student named 
 Wolff to take a copy, and Wolff distributed it amongst the 
 other students. 
 
 It was not till the 24th of January, 1767, that the magis- 
 trates heard of it. Their patience was now exhausted, and 
 they were furious ; they even suspected a conspirac} 7 , and 
 appointed a special commission to discover the author of 
 the pamphlet and have him arrested. 
 
 This was on a Saturday. That same evening, PestalozzL 
 on the advice of Lavater and other friends, went to Muller 
 to urge him to confess to the magistrates that he had 
 written the pamphlet. Muller promised to do so ; but on 
 going to his house the next day, Pestalozzi found that he had 
 fled in the night. Pestalozzi thereupon hastened to consult 
 his friends Lavater, Fiissli, and Vogel, and it was agreed 
 that if Muller had really run away, they should tell the 
 magistrates all they knew of the matter. But others had 
 been before them, and Muller had been already denounced 
 by several citizens. Their readiness to do this is explained 
 by the fact that all the townspeople were bound by an oath 
 to tell the authorities everything which affected the State. 
 But in this matter, most of them acted without regret, and 
 were certainly not actuated by a sense of duty merely, for 
 nearly everybody was just as indignant as the magistrates 
 themselves. The latter indeed received many addresses, of 
 which the following may be given as a specimen : 
 
 " The faithful citizens, in assuring their gracious lords 
 of their devotion, humbly beg to make the following 
 request : 
 
 " Do not let your zeal in this matter grow cool, lest the 
 welfare of the State as well as your own peace and safety be 
 imperilled ; continue rather earnestly and boldly to stifle at 
 
PESTALOZZI THE STUDENT. 17 
 
 their very birth the serpents who are seeking to poison the 
 
 State." 
 
 All the young patriots who were thought to be concerned 
 in the conspiracy were examined, and some of them were 
 confined in the Town Hall. The result of the inquiries 
 showed that the pamphlet had been written without any 
 malicious intention, and that those who had distributed it 
 had done so without the authors knowledge, believing it to 
 be quite harmless. 
 
 But nothing could soothe the anger and fright of the 
 " gracious lords and their faithful subjects." They were par- 
 ticularly indignant with Pestalozzi, and confined him several 
 times, believing that it was he who had suggested flight to 
 Muller. 
 
 The burgomaster had, however, received a letter from the 
 fugitive, in which he acknowledged that he was the author 
 of the dialogue, explained how it came to be distributed 
 without his consent, and asked pardon for this boyish fault, 
 which he had committed without any malicious intention. 
 
 But the magistrates were too angry to forgive, and the 
 inquiry was conducted as if it had been a question of saving 
 the country from some great danger. 
 
 " The faithful people " did not conceal their indignation 
 either, for in the streets and on the market places the 
 students were many times threatened with death. 
 
 On Sunday, the 1st of February, 1767, a proclamation 
 by the Government was read in the whole canton, apprising 
 the astonished peasants of the existence of an abominable 
 pamphlet, which endangered the safety of the State, and 
 ordering that its author, Charles Muller, should be arrested 
 and handed over to justice by any one who should meet him. 
 
 The sentence, pronounced on the 11th of February, de- 
 clares Muller unworthy of the holy ministry, and banishes 
 him for ever from Swiss territory, 1 orders the copies of his 
 pamphlet to be publicly burned, condemns a dozen students, 
 Pestalozzi amongst them, to bear the expenses of their con- 
 finement, warns them that if they continue to speak against 
 the Government they will lose their right of citizenship, 
 
 1 Muller, afterwards a professor in Berlin, is famous for having been 
 the first to introduce the Nibelungen to the literary world. 
 
i8 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 and forbids the publication of the Memorial, A commission 
 was also appointed to control the students and to prevent 
 them from forming associations. 
 
 In the eyes of his fellow-citizens Pestalozzi was no longer 
 anything but a dangerous revolutionary. Nor did the effects 
 of the sentence cease to make themselves felt for a long 
 time ; indeed the undertakings even of his middle age 
 suffered from it. As all chance of a public appointment 
 was now gone, he had to relinquish his hope of being able 
 to improve the condition of the people by legislation. 
 
 He cared little for the harshness of the rich, but he was 
 deeply hurt by the part taken in the matter by those whom 
 he had meant to serve. 
 
 The real cause of the material poverty of the people, he 
 reasoned, is their intellectual and moral degradation. In an 
 election, after having sworn to support the best citizen, they 
 always find some good reason for electing the worst. But 
 as only those can be really helped who are in a position to 
 help themselves, the first step towards an improvement in 
 the condition of the people will be to see that they are 
 properly educated. 
 
 On abandoning his legal studies, Pestalozzi threw his 
 manuscripts into the fire, and thus all the numerous writings 
 of his early youth were lost, except one which had been 
 printed in a Review published at Lindau and Leipsic, called 
 An Account of some of the Most Remarkable Writings of 
 Our Times (1766, No. 12, pp. 346-372). His article is 
 entitled Agis, and bears the date 1765, with these 
 words : — 
 
 " This article was written by a young man of great 
 promise, not yet twenty years old, and was not originally 
 intended for publication." 
 
 This Review is not to be had now, but Agis has just 
 been included in the complete edition of Pestalozzi's works, 
 published at Brandenburg by L. W. Seyffarth. It is the 
 earliest of Pestalozzi's productions that we possess, and is 
 far too remarkable to be dismissed without further mention. 
 
 It will be remembered that our author, when still a 
 student and a very poor Greek scholar, shocked by the 
 literary defects in a translation of Demosthenes published 
 
PESTALOZZI THE STUDENT. 19 
 
 by his professor of Greek, liad himself translated a part of 
 the third speech to the Athenian people, and in such a way 
 as to excite universal admiration. This translation serves 
 as a preface to the history of Agis, and is intended to show 
 how in the times which preceded the Macedonian invasion, 
 the Greeks had forsaken the old simplicity of life and the 
 old virtues that had so long contributed to their strength 
 and happiness. The picture of this decadence has such a 
 striking resemblance to the state of Switzerland in the last 
 century, that the translator, in a footnote, and with a touch 
 of irony, reminds those readers who might fancy they had 
 detected allusions to the present time that the Athenians 
 only are in question, and that it is Demosthenes who is 
 speaking. 
 
 Then follows the history of Agis, that king of Sparta, who 
 at a time when the laws of Lycurgus had fallen into neglect, 
 had undertaken to revive them. Although brought up in 
 luxury and idleness, he had resisted their seductions, and 
 now lived with severe simplicity, trying to make the rich 
 follow his example, and endeavouring to bring about a new 
 division of land for the -purpose of restoring the old condi- 
 tions of equality. The attempt, however, failed, and Agis 
 paid for it with his life. 
 
 From beginning to end of the sketch Pestalozzi eloquently 
 preaches the cause of the reform undertaken by Agis, and 
 one cannot help thinking that he sought in that way to pre- 
 pare a new era for his country, in which- the Utopian schemes 
 that then filled the thoughts of all the most generous-minded 
 students in Zurich might be realized. But hj burning all 
 he had written, Pestalozzi now seemed to be acknowledging 
 that he had been moving in the wrong direction, and to be 
 condemning the system by which he had been led away. 
 
 According to several of his biographers, it was at this 
 period of his life that he said: "I will be a schoolmaster." 
 But this is a mistake; for he did not find his true vocation 
 till later, when, having become a father, he gave all his best 
 thought and care to the education of his child. 
 
 On leaving the law Pestalozzi turned to agriculture. 
 
 To follow this new direction of his thought, and to 
 understand how it was that he saw in this fresh sphere 
 of activity yet another way of raising the people, we must 
 first know something of the many Utopian schemes for the 
 
2o PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 improvement of agriculture which at that time found ac- 
 ceptance with the younger generation in Zurich. 
 
 The cultivation of the soil was making marked progress 
 in different countries, and was held in great honour by 
 moralists and philosophers. Stimulated by Bodmer's teach- 
 ing and Rousseau's writings, the young men of Zurich saw 
 in the improvement of this important art the salvation of 
 the poor and a remedy for every evil. Schulthess, of Zurich, 
 who had seen Rousseau in Geneva, used to relate that the 
 philosopher had said to him: " Agriculture is the best and 
 happiest of all occupations. In countries which are not 
 free, men are compelled to become mechanics, but in free 
 countries it is better to be an agriculturist." 
 
 In the autumn of 17G5, Bodmer wrote as follows to Sulzer 
 at Winterthur : 
 
 " The love of the country is very strong in Fiissli, and still 
 stronger in his friend Meiss, the son of the colonel, who is 
 anxious to be a thoroughly capable farmer, and already 
 knows more than the peasants. It is surprising how many 
 of our best students have taken a fancy to farm-work ; they 
 have already learned to mow, and to bear heat and rain like 
 the peasants. I am only afraid that they have begun too 
 late. Their young friend Van Hausen began earlier, and his 
 skill in field-work has been much admired." 
 
 To this Sulzer replied : 
 
 "My wish for Winterthur, as well as for Zurich, would be 
 that only a small number of the leading magistrates, mer- 
 chants and manufacturers should remain in the town, and 
 that the rest of the citizens should settle in the country on 
 small holdings, where they would live by their work on the 
 land and lead a life, not indeed like that of our peasants, 
 but still simple and unpretend ing. I think those parents 
 who are so perplexed to know what to do with their sons, 
 would do well to buy for each of them a small quantity of 
 land in the country, and let them live by cultivating it. I 
 am sorry not to have set the example myself when I was 
 able ; I think I may safely say that in a few years I should 
 have beon in a very good position." 1 
 
 1 Were not these wild schemes suggested by a vague feeling of danger ? 
 
PESTALOZZI THE STUDENT, 2 i 
 
 Such were the ideas that were current amongst the 
 students of Zurichjwhen Pestalozzi gave up the study of law 
 and turned his attention to agriculture. His hope was that 
 by setting an example of an improved method to the Swiss 
 peasants, he would enable them not only to live in comfort, 
 but provide for their children that intellectual and moral 
 training which is so necessary for the citizens of a re- 
 public. 
 
 Already in the manufacturing districts, the peasants, tempted by the 
 prospect of larger wages, were flocking to the towns and joining that 
 large class of workers who have no direct interest in the land of the 
 country, who have nothing to fall back upon when work is slack, and 
 who from their rapid increase have been called the proletariat. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 PESTALOZZI THE AGRICULTURIST. 
 
 Engaged to Anna Schulthess ; after studying agriculture with 
 Tschiffeli, he buys land near Birr ; during the building of 
 his house at Birr he lives at Muligen ; his marriage ; birth 
 of his son; he settles in his new house: JSeuhof. Failure 
 of his enterprise. 
 
 At the time that Pestalozzi turned his attention to agri- 
 culture, he was engaged to be married ; and it is in his 
 correspondence with his future wife that we find the most 
 valuable information as to the thoughts and plans that now 
 occupied him. The reader will not have forgotten the young 
 Anna Schulthess, who gave such good advice to Pestalozzi, 
 when, as a child, he wanted to buy sweetmeats in the shop 
 adjoining his mother's house. The girl had great natural 
 intelligence, and had received an unusually good education. 
 
 When her father, J. J. Schulthess, started in business at 
 the sign of The Plough, he had already travelled much and 
 observed much, and had everywhere sought the society of 
 educated people. In spite of his commercial pursuits, his 
 devotion to art and literature remained unchanged, and his 
 house became one of the favourite resorts of men of taste 
 and learning. The poet Klopstock himself was his guest 
 during his visit to Zurich. 
 
 Though Anna was only a child, all this made a lasting 
 impression on her, for at a very early age she had under- 
 stood and enjoyed both the intellectual and emotional pleasure 
 of the study of literature and the fine arts. Her diary, from 
 which we shall often have occasion to quote, and which, like 
 her father, she kept all her life, is a proof of the nobleness of 
 her nature. She was both musician and poet, and even in 
 her old age retained her freshness of imagination. Some 
 verses that she wrote when quite an old woman in imitation 
 of Wordsworth's " We are seven " have been preserved. 
 
 Among the men of taste and education who frequented 
 
PESTALOZZI THE AGRICULTURIST. 23 
 
 Schulthess's house, there was an intimate friend of Pesta- 
 lozzi' s called Bluntschly, a young man of remarkable intelli- 
 gence and high character. Only four years older than 
 Pestalozzi, he was in the last stage of consumption, and 
 knew, as everybody else knew, that he must soon die. This 
 circumstance lent a strange seriousness and sadness to the 
 literary friendship which had sprung up between him and 
 the young Anna. She afterwards spoke of him as follows : 
 
 "Before I can forget him I must forget nryself; I can 
 indeed never forget the charm and energy of his conversa- 
 tion ; I did nothing without consulting him ; he was gay, 
 gentle and kind. We were in the habit of talking over the 
 best ways of helping the poor. . . . One day I asked his 
 opinion of some ribbons I had to choose from. ' They are 
 beautiful,' he said, ' but so long as your poor neighbour 
 has more need of a few shillings than you of those ribbons 
 
 ' And at once I decided to do without the ribbons and 
 
 everything that was not really necessary." 
 
 Pestalozzi and Bluntschly had the same ideas and feelings 
 and the same projects. But Bluntschly had a better know- 
 ledge of men and things; he was more prudent, his mind 
 was more matured, and he saw how little his friend was 
 suited for practical life. When he felt his end drawing 
 near, he called Pestalozzi to him and said : 
 
 " I am going and you will be left alone. Avoid any career 
 in which j t ou might become the victim of your own goodness 
 and trust, and choose some quiet life in which you will run 
 no risk. Above all, do not take part in any important under- 
 taking without having at your side a man who, by his cool 
 judgment, knowledge of men and things, and unshakable 
 fidelity, may be able to protect you from the dangers to which 
 you will be exposed. " 
 
 Bluntschly died on the 24th of May, 1767, leaving Pesta- 
 lozzi and Anna in deep grief. The friend they had just lost 
 had already taught these two young people to appreciate 
 each other, and now their common grief brought them nearer. 
 A warm-hearted eulogy of Bluntschly that Pestalozzi wrote 
 and offered to Anna touched her deeply and filled her with 
 gratitude. It was by meeting every day and comparing 
 
2 4 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 sorrowful memories, that they at last came to love each 
 other, so that it was in a certain sense to Bluntschly that 
 Pestalozzi owed the admirable and devoted wife who was 
 his support for forty-six years. 
 
 Pestalozzi was small and ugly. His health, never good, 
 had been broken by work and study, and the doctors had 
 advised him to take a long rest in the country. He was 
 entirely careless of his appearance and was, indeed, incapable 
 of dressing properly ; he was clumsy and awkward in every- 
 thing he did, and in his absent-mindedness often forgot part 
 of his dress. He was, in short, without any of those quali- 
 ties which are supposed to inspire a woman with liking for 
 a man. But Anna saw deeper. " Such nobleness," she said, 
 " such elevation of character, reach my very soul." Their 
 hearts were one then, and they exchanged vows. 
 
 As scon as they were formally affianced, they began a 
 correspondence, and from the end of the summer of 17G7 to 
 the autumn of 1769, when they were married, exchanged 
 frequent letters. Of these letters nearly three hundred of 
 Pestalozzi's and two hundred of Anna's have been preserved. 
 
 The celebrated letter that has been quoted in so many 
 biographies is missing from this collection, but the young 
 girl's answer is there, and this answer seems to prove that 
 the letter as quoted does not exactly agree with the original. 
 At any rate, it was not in this letter that he asked her to 
 marry him. 
 
 The most striking and authentic part of this letter, which 
 was published for the first time in 1828, in a German news- 
 paper, runs as follows : 
 
 M I will not speak to you of my carelessness in dress and 
 manner ; it is indeed great, and is but too well known. I 
 am reproached with having too many subjects of distraction. 
 I have friends everywhere, it is true, and subjects which 
 interest me, but I have only given attention to them in the 
 hope of making nvyself useful. I also know and appreciate 
 the sweets of solitude, the peace of the domestic fireside ; it 
 will be my happiness to enjoy it more in the future. I no 
 longer want a large circle of friends, but I do not regret the 
 years I have given to social intercourse. I have learned to 
 know my countrymen, and this knowledge will be useful to 
 me by and by. As my health is not very good, I think it 
 
PESTALOZZI THE AGRICULTURIST. 25 
 
 more than probable you will survive me, though my doctor 
 assures me there is at present no cause for anxiety ; but I 
 do not think my life will pass without important and 
 dangerous undertakings." 
 
 In one of Anna's letters we read : 
 
 " You might perhaps say that Nature had done little for 
 you, if she had not given you those large dark eyes, which tell 
 of all the goodness of your heart and breadth of your mind." 
 
 There was indeed an inexpressible tenderness in Pesta- 
 lozzi's look, which was sometimes flashing with intelligence 
 and energy, sometimes meditative almost to sadness. 
 
 The following letter shows that Anna approved of Pesta- 
 lozzi's plans for a country life, and also that he was anxious 
 to make this life a basis for some scheme of patriotic philan- 
 thropy. 
 
 " I am glad to find that you too think life in a town un- 
 suited to the sort of education we think best. My cottage 
 must certainly be far from such a centre of vice and misery. 
 I shall be able to do more for my country in a solitary hut 
 than in the tumult of the city. "When I am in the country 
 and see that one of my neighbours who is in want has a 
 child of great promise, I shall take this child by the hand 
 and make a good citizen of him ; he will work, he will have 
 enough to eat, and will be happy. And should this young 
 man do a noble action and incur the scorn of those who fear 
 men only, he will find food in my house as long as I have 
 any. I shall take pleasure in drinking nothing but water to 
 give him the milk I prefer, that he may see how much I 
 esteem the nobleness of his character. And then, my beloved, 
 you will be content to see me drinking water only. Is it not 
 true that to help our neighbours we are willing to limit our 
 needs so far as is reasonably possible ? How much more I 
 could say about this happy outlook, the joy of having chil- 
 dren, the unexpected visits of friends ! But I must stop and 
 will only say one thing more : circumstances may some day 
 take me from our fireside ; I shall never fail in w T hat a loyal 
 citizen owes to his country. But I know, my beloved, that 
 the fulfilment of any duty is a delight to you." 
 
 Anna's parents did not approve of this union ; her mother 
 4 
 
26 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 particularly dreaded the consequences that the enterprising 
 and eager nature of a young man with so little prudence 
 and knowledge of the world might have for her daughter's 
 happiness. 
 
 Much as he loved Anna, however, our young reformer 
 would not give up his agricultural projects. Furnished with 
 a letter of introduction from his friend Lavater, he went to 
 Tschiffeli, at Kirchberg, near Berne, who at that time had 
 made a great reputation by his manner of cultivating his 
 land and by the tempting innovations he had introduced, 
 one of the most important of which was madder-growing. 
 
 Almost immediately after his arrival, Pestalozzi wrote to 
 Anna thus : 
 
 " I am at last settled, and am happier than I ever expected 
 to be. It is the happiest household you can imagine. 
 Tschiffeli, the great agriculturist, is the kindest of fathers. 
 I shall learn farming in all its branches and in all its latest 
 developments. I shall certainly become independent of the 
 whole world." 
 
 And a little later : 
 
 " Tschiffeli makes up for the loss of all my friends. This 
 profession that I have chosen will enable me to make our 
 home very comfortable, for Tschiffeli, who really makes a 
 great deal of money by his farming, is teaching me his 
 whole system most thoroughly, so that I feel sure of being 
 able to do exactly as he is doing." 
 
 Anna Schulthess had four brothers younger than herself ; 
 the second, Gaspard, had been intimate with Pestalozzi, and 
 had always known and approved of his love for his sister. 
 Just at this time he was appointed to a pastor's post at Neu- 
 châtel, whither Anna went with him to see him comfortably 
 established in his new home. They passed by Kirchberg to 
 see Pestalozzi, who was of course happy to see Anna again 
 and accompanied them to Neuchâtel. In the course of this 
 journey,the brother and sister introduced their friend to several 
 of their acquaintances, doing their best to make them appre- 
 ciate his worth ; but so unfavourable was the first impres- 
 sion produced by Pestalozzi's appearance, and by the strange- 
 ness of his manners, that their trouble was thrown away. 
 
PESTALOZZI THE AGRICULTURIST. 27 
 
 Pestalozzi spent a whole year at Kirckberg, where he was 
 very happy. He took part in all the work of the farm, and 
 was proud of showing his visitors his horny hands and Sun- 
 browned face. His zeal at that time for the improvement of 
 agriculture, was one of those youthful enthusiasms that are 
 always so fruitful of illusions. If the question of making 
 money entered into his thoughts, it was only because it was 
 necessary for him to reassure Anna's parents about his 
 future position. 
 
 He had formed plans for a method of cultivation which he 
 expected would be very profitable. Indeed, so confident 
 was he of success that no shadow of doubt ever crossed his 
 mind. He gives Anna all the details of these plans in a 
 letter which is too long to be given in full : 
 
 " I shall cultivate nothing but madder and vegetables. 
 Tschiifeli has fifteen acres down in madder and gets won- 
 derful crops. The expenses of growing it will not be higher 
 near Zurich than here, and the soil is much more favour- 
 able. 
 
 " As madder takes sixteen months to ripen, I shall begin 
 by planting fifteen acres of poor land, which I shall endea- 
 vour to improve the first year. If I buy twenty acres of 
 waste land, my third crop of madder ought to repay the 
 purchase money ; and then sixteen months later I shall have 
 another crop, and so on. But as I shall have to wait for the 
 madder, I must grow something else for a living in the 
 meantime. 
 
 "The best way of getting anything out of the land the first 
 year is to grow vegetables. The method of growing vege- 
 tables has undergone improvements of which people in 
 Zurich know nothing, but which I have had explained to me 
 by a very clever gardener here. I have seeds of much 
 better quality than those to be had in our markets, and I 
 have learned how to keep vegetables through the winter so 
 as to be able to sell them in the spring when they are worth 
 twice the money. I shall make good use, too, of the manure 
 that is at present wasted in Zurich, and in this way I shall 
 soon fertilize the very worst land in the district." 
 
 After speaking of growing cabbages, cauliflower, broccoli, 
 asparagus, artichokes, etc., and calculating how many plants 
 
28 PESTALOZZl ; HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 will go to the acre, and what yield he will have for the 
 market, Pestalozzi continues : 
 
 "I shall limit myself to these two things; I shall have 
 neither meadows, fields, vines nor cattle, nothing but madder 
 and vegetables. 
 
 " My one thought, my one occupation all day long, is to fit 
 myself for this work I have chosen. Now you know what 
 my plans are. In forming them I have been helped by the 
 eminent agriculturist with whom I am living. Do you not 
 think, beloved, I am right to say that by putting all my 
 strength, all my intelligence and zeal, into this work, I shall 
 be quite able to supply the modest wants of a family living 
 in the country, and living principally on the produce of its 
 own land. But my master and I go farther; we think 
 that in this way I shall not only be able to provide what is 
 absolutely necessary for my family, but be certain of making 
 them a very comfortable home. 
 
 "Examine what I have said with the greatest care, beloved, 
 to see whether it is clear and reasonable. In all my plans I 
 have been guided, as }^ou know, by the experience of the 
 great agriculturist Tschiffeli. How happy I shall be if they 
 please you, and satisfy your revered parents ! " 
 
 Anna was both trustful and hopeful, but her parents' 
 doubts and fears were as strong as ever. 
 
 Early in the autumn of 1768, Pestalozzi, full of courage and 
 confidence, came back to Zurich, to find land suitable for 
 his purpose. His choice fell on Letten, in the western part 
 of the plain called Birrfeld, in Aargau. He there purchased, 
 for twenty-three pounds, some fifteen acres of land at the foot 
 of the hill on which Braunegg Castle stands, and between 
 this hill and the village of Birr. This small quantity of land 
 he gradually increased by buying up the neighbouring fields 
 from their peasant owners, till he found himself the master 
 of about a hundred acres ; and a Zurich banker having joined 
 in the undertaking and advanced him fifteen hundred pounds, 
 he was at last in a position to put his projects into execu- 
 tion. 
 
 As there was no house on the land, he settled temporarily 
 at Muligen, a small village on the left bank of the Heuss, 
 about two miles to the west of Letten. The house he occu- 
 
PESTALOZZI THE AGRICULTURIST. 29 
 
 pied was an old mansion, said to have been the ancestral 
 home of some noble family of the district ; it now belonged, 
 however, to Mr. Proehlich, of Bragg, a friend of Pestalozzi's, 
 who let him house, barns, and garden, for an almost nominal 
 sum. 
 
 His good mother, who divided her attentions between her 
 son and her father-in-law, helped him to get his house in 
 order. The old pastor was still living at Hôngg, but had 
 become very infirm. Pestalozzi had once said, speaking of his 
 mother : " If you could only see what she does at Hongg, 
 how she denies herself, and what she bears for our sakes 
 . . . " Anna also contributed, though in secret, towards 
 the wants of the new household. 
 
 The faithful Babeli had remained in Zurich, and Anna 
 had written about her to Pestalozzi as follows : 
 
 " I cannot look upon our good Babeli as a servant, but as 
 a friend. Our first care must be to ensure her a peaceful 
 old age. I chatted with her for an hour, and we paid a 
 visit together to grandpapa. It is astonishing how careful 
 and sensible she is in everything." 
 
 Pestalozzi describes his new establishment thus : 
 
 " The place I am living in has many charms. My rooms, 
 newly plastered and whitewashed, are pleasant, and will do 
 well enough for the present. The house stands by itself 
 at some little distance from the road, and is very quiet. 
 Our three rooms get the sun at noon and at evening, and 
 the sweetest music from the birds every morning. The 
 water is so pure that there is said to be none like it within 
 thirty miles, and the air is the finest in the world. We are 
 at the foot of a low hill, from the top of which you can see 
 across eighteen miles of plain. The Reuss, very useful 
 for the transport of madder, flows quite near the village. 
 There is a pleasant garden adjoining the house, and even 
 our yard is shaded by fine trees. ... So much for 
 comfort. What is more important is the advantage that 
 such a position will be to my undertaking ; the low price 
 of land, for instance, its suitability for madder-growing, 
 and the ease with which it may be broken up into fields. 
 The whole district is poor, so that labour will be cheap. 
 Indeed, in every respect, I shall have the advantage of 
 
3o PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 TschifFeli. My neighbours now seem very friendly, so that 
 my fears of the first few days on this score have entirely 
 disappeared. If they did not receive me very well at first, 
 it was not that they felt any ill-will against me, but that 
 they were angry with some friends who had stupidly 
 exerted their authority in my favour. Two days later they 
 were all glad that I had come here, and I felt it my duty to 
 reward their friendliness with something to drink." 
 
 The house that Pestalozzi lived in at Muligen has under- 
 gone few alterations. It is a one-storied house, facing west, 
 the hamlet lying a little below among the trees. The front 
 has six windows, with a door in the middle. The wall 
 which enclosed the yard is gone, but the trees which shaded 
 it are still flourishing. The old lattice windows have been 
 replaced by large panes, and the iron bars which protected 
 them have been removed. The old green earthenware 
 stoves are still there. The barn is close to the house on the 
 north side, and on the east is the garden. Muligen is close 
 to the river Reuss, which flows swiftly between high banks, 
 and can only be crossed by boat, as there is no bridge near. 
 The village of Birmensdorf, so celebrated for its mineral 
 waters, is not far off on the other side of the river, and can 
 be seen from the hamlet. 
 
 Whilst he was alone at Muligen, Pestalozzi once had the 
 pleasure of seeing Anna, on the occasion of a visit she paid 
 to a friend in the neighbouring town of Brugg. 
 
 But, on the whole, he had no lack of pleasant society, for 
 he was well received by many of the inhabitants of the 
 district, and had besides many visitors. In spite of all this, 
 however, he soon began to suffer from his isolation, so that 
 Anna had to cheer him and exhort him "not to be always so 
 sad." To this his only answer was to beg that their marriage 
 should be no longer delayed. Anna's parents, however, 
 still withheld their consent, and it was as much as Pesta- 
 lozzi's friends, Lavater, Fussli, Hotz, and others could do 
 to make them promise that they would not forcibly restrain 
 their daughter from doing as she liked. 
 
 With a sad heart, then, but with perfect confidence in 
 Pestalozzi, Anna left her father's house. Her mother's words 
 to her on leaving were : " You will have to be satisfied with 
 bread and water." Her father's diary shows that she had 
 
PESTALOZZI THE AGRICULTURIST. 31 
 
 no dowry beyond her personal effects and her piano. The 
 marriage took place in the presence of a few friends on the 
 30th of September, 17G9, in the church at Grebistorf, Pesta- 
 lozzi being twenty-three years old and Anna thirty. 
 
 Immediately after her marriage, Anna commenced a 
 diary, which she kept most regularly, and in which her 
 husband himself often wrote. This diary will henceforth 
 be one of our most valuable sources of information. 1 
 
 Notwithstanding what we have said, Anna's parents were 
 soon reconciled to their daughter's marriage. Only ten 
 weeks afterwards, we find both Anna and Pestalozzi staying 
 at The Plough on a visit, which was to be for three days 
 only, but which lasted for three happy weeks. The young 
 couple helped to make the New Year's bonbons, and wrote 
 many a joke on the subject in their diary. They also visited 
 all their relations and friends, chief amongst whom was 
 Pestalozzi's good mother. They left Zurich on the 28th 
 of December, taking with them the friendship and blessings 
 " of both families." That day they " dined twice," and then 
 " taking boat," arrived, " thanks to the Almighty," safely at 
 Muligen. 
 
 The very next day Pestalozzi was back on his land, busy 
 with plans for the future, and eager to begin the building 
 of a dwelling-house and barn. Meanwhile he had sown his 
 fields with sainfoin. 
 
 On St. Sylvester's Day they baked a small batch of bread 
 for the poor, and were well rewarded for their pains by the 
 joy of the recipients. On the 1st of January they went to 
 church at Birmensdorf. 
 
 So happy were they in their love for each other, that for 
 the greater part of that year everything seemed to prosper, 
 and success seemed certain. Anna's parents often came 
 to see them, sometimes bringing money to support the new 
 venture, and Pestalozzi and she paid many visits to their 
 friends in the neighbourhood. 
 
 At the same time Pestalozzi worked exceedingly hard 
 with both head and hands, exposing himself to all weathers, 
 and walking the three or four miles that separated his 
 
 1 In 1874 this diary was still in the possession of a lady in Zurich, 
 who was good enough to lend it to Mr. Morf, for his important book on 
 Pestalozzi. 
 
3 2 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 home from his land at all hours, and often many times in tho 
 
 Meanwhile he was pleased to see his sainfoin growing, 
 and took keen delight in every addition to his buildings, 
 which were to be in the Italian style, and which he 
 hurried on with impatient eagerness. Unfortunately, how- 
 ever, he had chosen for his steward and foreman a most 
 unsuitable man, called Merki, in whom nobody in the neigh- 
 bourhood had any confidence, and who gravely compromised 
 his master's interests. Indeed unpleasant rumours had 
 already reached banker Schulthess' ears, and filled him with 
 uneasiness as to the fate of his money. 
 
 Some extracts from the diary will give a clearer idea of 
 the state of affairs in the spring of 177U : 
 
 " bth March (Anna). — I have been to see the land with 
 my husband and my brother the doctor. Tor the first time 
 I have heard an adverse judgment on my dear one's under- 
 takings. The pastor of Birr doubts our success. This 
 troubled me somewhat, but has not made me very uneasy." 
 
 " 2hth April. — Arrival of Schulthess, the banker, with 
 his two sons. This visit has kept me employed all day. It 
 would have terminated pleasantly for us all if a wretched 
 servant had not talked despairingly of my dear husband's 
 projects. I hope the latter will not hear of it." 
 
 " 3rd May (Pestalozzi). — At nine o'clock a letter from 
 Schulthess sajdng that he considers my undertaking to have 
 failed. My dear wife comforts and encourages me. I 
 rejoice with her at the kindness of her good parents who 
 have to-day sent us another ten pounds." 
 
 " 10th May (Anna). — To-day I have made up my house- 
 keeping accounts. I find our expenses are greater than I 
 expected for such a simple life as ours. For seven months 
 they come to thirty pounds. Tor eight weeks, however, we 
 were not alone, and have had as many as forty people 
 staying with us, so this large amount is not very sur- 
 prising. Our guests were all relations or true friends, and 
 not one of them but was very dear to us and very wel 
 come." 
 
 " 12th May. — Meis and Schinz (two friends of Pestalozzi's) 
 arrived to make a careful survey of the land. They came 
 back in the evening, having found things in a better state 
 
PESTALOZZI THE AGRICULTURIST. 33 
 
 than they expected. The next morning they went through the 
 accounts with my husband. In the evening we were very 
 sad, for we could not help thinking that Schulthess meant 
 to forsake us. The chief cause of his distrust is that mis- 
 chievous servant, who put everything before him in the 
 worst light." 
 
 " 11th May. — Letter from Schulthess announcing the dis- 
 solution of partnership. "We shed tears when we thought 
 that this might lead to our own separation, which would be 
 worse ; for by the banker's withdrawal we must inevitably 
 lose credit. I thank God for supporting me at this time, 
 and enabling me to console my dear husband, who was in 
 despair at the thought of having to leave me in poverty 
 now that I am expecting to become a mother." 
 
 The husband and wife now went to Zurich, where, with 
 the help of their relations and friends, they succeeded in 
 persuading Schulthess to reconsider his decision. The part- 
 nership therefore continued. 
 
 The most important event of this year, and the one that 
 brought the greatest joy to the family at Muligen, was the 
 birth of Pestalozzi's son, the only child he ever had. 
 
 A few days previously, Anna, thinking she might not live 
 wrote to her parents : 
 
 "I should have regret, even in my grave, if I did not 
 leave my dear parents a few lines saying how deeply grate- 
 ful I have always felt to them, especially since my marriage. 
 My dear parents, it is certain that the happiest days of my 
 life have been passed with my husband, and it is certain 
 that he deserves all your love." 
 
 Pestalozzi's mother came and nursed her daughter-in-law 
 at the critical moment. Then Anna's mother arrived, and 
 soon afterwards Pestalozzi's sister also came and stayed 
 with them, devoting all her attention to the baby, who was 
 overwhelmed with small presents from his grandparents 
 and godparents. Anna wrote in her diary : 
 
 " We have never all been so happy together as during 
 this gathering; we have shed many tears of joy." 
 
 In the spring of 1771, Pestalozzi went and settled with 
 his family in his new house at Letten, called Neuhof, or 
 
34 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 New Farm. Only the ground floor was as yet finished, cir- 
 cumstances being against the completion of the rest of the 
 original plan. 
 
 The front, which had six windows and four rooms, looked 
 south on to the garden. The house was burned down in 
 1842; but though the walls and roof have since been restored, 
 the interior has remained empty, and is now used as a store- 
 house. On the east side of the house runs a road, on the 
 right of which, a few steps south of the house, is the site of 
 the farm-buildings, which have also been destroyed by fire. 
 In front of the farm was a well, and on the other side of 
 the road a manure-heap and a pond. These buildings 
 formed as it were the centre of a large extent of meadows 
 and fields, with a few vines at the foot of the hill, and a 
 belt .of trees above. 
 
 i '"^But the land was not at all fertile, a few days' rain 
 sufficing to lay bare a thin bed of sand, and so Pestalozzi's 
 agriculture did not prosper. 
 
 The buildings, too, had absorbed all the funds necessary 
 for working the land, and Pestalozzi's steward, Merki, had 
 been guilty of breaches of trust. Accordingly Schulthess, 
 the banker, with some slight loss, now finally withdrew 
 from the undertaking. 
 
 Pestalozzi, reduced to his own slender resources, again 
 found in his wife's devotion* the comfort and encouragement 
 he so much needed. She induced her brothers to advance 
 her some of the money to which she would be entitled at 
 her father's death, and with this money she paid some of 
 Pestalozzi's debts. Pestalozzi's mother also sent him what 
 help she could. He, meanwhile, had discovered the existence 
 of marl near Birr, and used it to improve his land ; he sup- 
 plemented his unremunerative farming-operations by the 
 manufacture of cotton-stuffs, and spun and wove the raw 
 material supplied him by his brothers-in-law. 
 
 But in spite of all his efforts, things grew worse every 
 day, his debts continued to increase, and at last, in 1775, 
 he himself was obliged to recognise that his undertaking 
 had failed. 
 
 " The dream of my life," he says, " the hope of making my 
 house the centre of a wide sphere of benevolent activity, 
 was gone." 
 
PESTALOZZI THE AGRICULTURIST. 35 
 
 This failure is hardly to be wondered at ; and yet ex- 
 perience has since confirmed the truth and value of the ideas 
 on which his experiment was based : the advantage, for in- 
 stance, of large market-gardens in the neighbourhood of 
 towns, the great waste of manure in populous cities, and the 
 possibility of enormously increasing the productive power of 
 land by improved methods of cultivation. And what Pesta- 
 lozzi could not accomplish then, others have accomplished 
 since ; for when we visited Muligen and Neuhof in 1869, we 
 found this very same land in a state of most rich and varied 
 cultivation, and producing several crops in the year. Pesta- 
 lozzi's dream, then, of a hundred years ago has to-day been 
 realized. It must not be forgotten, however, that this 
 agricultural experiment at Neuhof was by no means in 
 accordance with the plans prepared at Kirchberg, since 
 Pestalozzi had not been able to combine all the conditions 
 on which he had counted, of which nearness to Zurich was 
 one of the most important. But his confidence and impatient 
 ardour brooked no delay, and he set about putting his plan 
 into execution long before he had made sure of all the 
 means necessary for its success. This, unfortunately, is not 
 the only occasion on which he had to suffer for this charac- 
 teristic tendency of his nature. 
 
 For a man in his position, the owner of Neuhof now took 
 a most unaccountable step. His agricultural operations 
 having failed, and what little money he had started with 
 being as good as lost, he decided to turn his house into a 
 refuge for poor children. 
 
 It has been said that had this not been an act of such 
 monstrous folly, it would have been an instance of the most 
 sublime self-sacrifice. As a matter of fact, it was nothing 
 more than the natural effect of a reaction which had taken 
 place in his thought and conscience since he had become a 
 father, a reaction which we must now endeavour to trace 
 from its very beginning, since it resulted in Pestalozzi's 
 finding his true vocation, and becoming the benefactor of 
 humanity. 
 
CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 PESTALOZZI THE FATHER. 
 
 lie reproaches himself ivith no longer thinking of anything 
 but the temporal interests of his family. The birth of his 
 son fills him with religious remorse. He tries to bring up 
 his child according to the principles of "Emile." Obliged at 
 every step to correct Rousseau, he discovers the essential 
 principles of his own method ; value of this experiment for 
 humanity ; sad fate of the child who was the subject of it. 
 
 In the lives of young men there is often a period, more or 
 or less transient, of passion and illusion, that carries them 
 into paths from which disappointments and the experience 
 of the realities of life compel them, sooner or later, to turn 
 aside. It was in this way that Pestalozzi first threw him- 
 self into politics as a revolutionary, and then into agriculture 
 as an innovator. 
 
 This latter step was indeed the chief folly of his youth. 
 
 Carried away, in the first place, by the Utopian ideas in 
 vogue in university circles at Zurich, and by the hope of 
 finding in agricultural reform a means of improving the con- 
 dition of the people, and afterwards by his love for Anna, 
 and his desire to reassure her parents by preparing her a 
 comfortable home, he gradually allowed a sordid ambition to 
 take the place of the noble philanthropic enthusiasm which 
 had hitherto filled his heart. 
 
 But this eclipse of his great thought of self-sacrifice did 
 not last very long. He soon found himself ill at ease in this 
 atmosphere of material interests and reproached himself 
 bitterly with having forsaken his former ideal. He was, in 
 short, tormented by religious remorse. 
 
 The disappointments caused by the failure of his agri- 
 cultural experiments undoubtedly helped to bring about this 
 moral regeneration, though they were not the primary cause 
 of it. Indeed, the extracts we are about to give from his 
 
PESTALOZZI THE FATHER. yj 
 
 diary show that the crisis began at a time when Pestalozzi 
 had as yet no reason to doubt the success of his enterprise. 
 Already, on the 9th of January, 1770, he wrote : 
 
 " Why do I no longer take pleasure in speculative science? 
 Why am I so little interested in the search for truths of the 
 greatest importance ? Can it be because the vainglory and 
 examples that stimulated me in the town are now lacking to 
 me ? But I am resolved to attend earnestly to the develop- 
 ment of my faculties, in spite of the distractions necessarily 
 resulting from the work my position involves. God, 
 strengthen me in this resolution ! " 
 
 And in another place : 
 
 "We rose late, and urgent letters absorbed the time set 
 apart for our prayers, with which we ought to allow nothing 
 to interfere. I have been very busy all day, and have been 
 happier than on those days when I have less to do. I am 
 ashamed to confess this ; it shows that I am incapable of 
 giving proper attention to my own character. After writing 
 the foregoing, I set to work to amuse myself; but I soon 
 stopped, ashamed of my levity. Where will it lead me ? 
 What will it bring me to in a few years ? " 
 
 Shortly after this his wife writes : 
 
 " I am taking advantage of my dear husband's absence to 
 look back over my life, which has been but ill employed for 
 some time past. I am hoping to become a mother. If it 
 should please God to let my child and me live, what an 
 awful duty is before me ! But if I am to die . . . Oh, 
 merciful Father ! shed Thy grace and blessing upon us, 
 strengthen and purify our hearts by Thy presence. . . . 
 At last my husband came home. He asked me if I had 
 prayed, and I was glad to see how happy it made him to 
 hear how I had spent the day." 
 
 These few quotations will suffice to show that only a few 
 months after their marriage, Pestalozzi and his wife were 
 already blaming themselves for allowing material interests 
 to shape their lives, and praying for help in their efforts 
 after moral improvement. 
 
 When Pestalozzi became a father, this moral crisis took 
 
3 8 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 the form of deep religious remorse. Paternity, with its 
 cares, duties, and responsibilities, places men in a new 
 position, a position particularly calculated to make them 
 examine their lives, and to bring about a complete moral 
 and religious regeneration. Though a man may have been 
 careless about himself, he will be anxious to keep his child 
 from sin, knowing well enough the misery it produces ; and 
 he will feel the need of making himself hoty, that he may 
 be able to teach holiness to the one he holds so dear. 
 
 Pestalozzi's entry in his wife's diary soon after the birth 
 of his son, is as follows : 
 
 " Ah, God ! I saw the time of gravest anxiety approach- 
 ing, yet I could neither pray nor weep ; I did not lift up my 
 heart to God, nor did I fall on my knees to bewail my faults, 
 to ask pity, to pray the Lord not to take my beloved from 
 me because of my sins, nor my son because of my transgres- 
 sions. My heart is hardened, alas ! I have no desire to be 
 better, my soul is full of wickedness ! " 
 
 He goes on for a long time like this, then concludes with 
 St. Paul's cry : " Who shall deliver me from the body of 
 this death ? " 
 
 Farther on he says again : 
 
 " I was alwaj^s busied with the things of no importance, 
 and took no trouble to make my soul worthy of the happiest 
 day of my life. Alas ! I forgot my Lord and my God, and 
 in my soul's anxiety addressed no prayer to Him who forms 
 us all in our mothers' wombs, and who gives us breath and 
 life. Forgive me, my Father, I am not w T orthy to be called 
 Thy son. 
 
 " Thou hast surrounded me with blessings beyond measure ; 
 Thou hast preserved my wife's life and strength ; Thou hast 
 made me the father of an immortal soul. Ah ! if I could 
 only show my gratitude for Thy goodness by my repentance, 
 repentance for a long life of sin from which I have never 
 once turned aside ! . . . Send me Thy Spirit from on 
 high ! Give me now new strength, create in me a new 
 heart, fresh zeal ! Oh, my son, my son ! Horrible thought ! 
 If I were to fail in my duty to thee, if I were to lead thee 
 astray from thy proper path, thou mightest some day before 
 the Judge be the accuser of thy father, of him whose duty 
 
PESTALOZZI THE FATHER. 39 
 
 it was to lead thee aright ! It would be better for me never 
 to have seen thy face, and to have been cast into the bottom 
 of the sea. God preserve me, my dear child, from ever sug- 
 gesting any wickedness to thy soul." 
 
 What a noble sense of virtue and duty breathes through 
 these words ! How sensitive is this man's conscience, how 
 sincere and thoroughly religious his soul ! And yet in these 
 most secret outpourings of a man who but recently was on 
 the point of becoming a minister of the Gospel, there is no 
 mention of Jesus, the Saviour of men, and refuge of despair- 
 ing souls ! The Christian doctrine of the Redemption seems 
 indeed, to find no place in this soul, filled, nevertheless, 
 with the most Christian love and repentance. It is clear 
 that Pestalozzi had felt the influence of the age of incred- 
 ulity in which he lived, and that the innocent faith of his 
 childhood and early youth had suffered somewhat from the 
 sophisms of Rousseau. 
 
 But it is also clear that a reaction has set in and that it 
 has already made good progress. From Jean- Jacques to 
 Pestalozzi, what a distance ! The former always satisfied 
 with himself, • and excusing even his greatest errors : the 
 latter bitterly reproaching himself the very moment that he 
 becomes like other men, and gives his family's temporal in- 
 terests the first place in his activity and his affections. 
 
 This new religious feeling, the first symptoms of which 
 we have already called attention to, became much more 
 marked after the birth of Pestalozzi's son ; we shall now see 
 it grow still more with his efforts to bring up his child pro- 
 perly, and finally develop into a most admirable example of 
 Christian self-sacrifice. 
 
 In her book, Progressive Education, Madame Necker de 
 Saussure expresses surprise that amongst the number of 
 people who make notes on all sorts of subjects, no father 
 should ever have thought of making notes on his child's 
 progress. She did not know that sixty years before, this 
 had already been done by the reformer of education. Some 
 parts of the journal in which Pestalozzi wrote his observa- 
 tions on his child have been preserved in ISTiederer's Notes 
 on Pestalozzi published at Aix-la- Chapelle in 1828. 
 
 This journal is as important as it is interesting, for it 
 shows us a man who, starting with the intention of apply- 
 
40 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 ing Rousseau's ideas to the education of his son and working 
 for this object with the most scrupulous and unwavering 
 care, is compelled at every step to stop and fall back on his 
 own observations and on the memory of his mother's teach- 
 ing. When we reflect that Rousseau had neither a son to 
 educate nor a mother to remember, his mistakes will no 
 longer surprise us. 
 
 The journal also shows us the gradual development of 
 some of the most important principles of Pestalozzi's educa- 
 tional method, principles which were chiefly the result of his 
 own experiments and reflections, but which also depended to 
 some extent on the reaction which was taking place in him 
 against Rousseau's theories. 
 
 The name of Pestalozzi's son was Jacob, but in German 
 fashion he was generally called Jacobli. When the follow- 
 ing notes were written, he was about three and a half years 
 old. It must not be forgotten that at this time Pestalozzi 
 was at Neuhof, and still busy with his agricultural opera- 
 tions. 
 
 " January 21th, 1774. — I called his attention to some 
 running water. He was delighted, and, as I walked on 
 down the hill, followed me, saying to the water : ' Wait a 
 moment ; I shall be back directly.' Presently I took him to 
 the side of the same stream again. ' Look,' he cried, ' the 
 water comes down too ; it runs from up there and goes lower 
 and lower.' As we followed the course of the stream, I re- 
 peated several times : ' Water flows down hill.' 
 
 " I told him. the names of a few animals, saying : ' The 
 dog, the cat, etc., are animals, but your uncle, John, Nicholas, 
 are men.' I then asked him : ' What is a cow, a sheep, the 
 minister, a goat, your cousin, etc ? ' and he answered cor- 
 rectly nearly every time, his wrong answers being accom- 
 panied by a sort of smile which seemed to say that he did 
 not mean to answer properly. I think behind this fun there 
 must be a desire to see how far his will is independent of 
 mine ? " 
 
 " January 29th. — I succeeded in making him sit for a long 
 time at his lessons, after having first made him run and play 
 out of doors in the cold. I can see that a man must be 
 robust himself if he is to concern himself with his pupil's 
 open-air games." 
 
PESTALOZZI THE FATHER. 41 
 
 " January 30th. — He was soon tired of learning to read, 
 bnt as I had decided that he should work at it regularly 
 every day, whether he liked it or not, I determined to make 
 him feel the necessity of doing so, from the very first, by 
 showing him there was no choice between this work and my 
 displeasure, which I made him feel by keeping him in. It 
 was only after having been punished in this way three times 
 that he at last conquered his impatience. From that time 
 he did his work willingly and cheerfully. 
 
 " I showed him that wood swims in water and that stones 
 sink." 
 
 "February 1st. — I taught him the Latin names for the 
 different parts of the head. By figures and examples, I 
 taught him the meaning of such words as inside, outside, 
 below, above, amid, beside, etc. I showed him how snow 
 became water when brought indoors. 
 
 " I found that teaching was made easier by changes of the 
 voice, that is, by speaking sometimes loud, sometimes soft, 
 and by constantly varying the expression. But to what 
 might this not lead? 
 
 " The other day he saw the butcher kill some pigs, and in 
 a spirit of imitation arranged some pieces of wood and pre- 
 pared to do the same. At this moment his mother called 
 'Jacobli.' * No, no,' he replied, 'you should call me 
 Butcher now ! ' " 
 
 "February 2nd. — I tried to make him understand the 
 meaning of numbers. At present he only knows their names, 
 which he says by heart without attaching any precise mean- 
 ing to them. To have a knowledge of words with no dis- 
 tinct idea of the things they represent enormously increases 
 the difficulty of getting at the ..truth. The most ignorant 
 man would have been struck by this fact if he had been 
 present at our lesson. The child has been in the habit of 
 associating no difference of meaning with the various names 
 of numbers he pronounces, and this habit has made him so 
 careless and inattentive that I could make absolutely no im- 
 pression on him to-day. 
 
 " Why have I been so foolish as to let him pronounce 
 important words without taking care at the same time to 
 give him a clear idea of their meaning ? Would it not have 
 been more natural not to teach him to say ' three ' till he 
 thoroughly understood the meaning of ' two ', and is it not 
 5 
 
42 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 in this way that children should be taught to count ? Ah ! 
 how far I have erred from Nature's paths in trying to im- 
 prove on her teaching ! May I never lose sight of these 
 truths, so important for wisdom and virtue ! 
 
 "Let yourself be governed by the child's love of imita- 
 tion! You have a stove in your room; draw it for him. 
 Even if he should not succeed in a whole year in reproduc- 
 ing it exactly, he will at any rate have learned to sit still 
 and work. There is instruction too, and, indeed, amusement 
 in the comparison of mathematical figures and magnitudes. 
 And again, to have one's own garden and grow all sorts of 
 plants ; to collect butterflies and insects, and classify them 
 with exactitude and perseverance. . . . What a pre- 
 paration for social life ! What a safeguard against idleness 
 and stupidity ! And how far all this is from our ordinary 
 education which is so little suited to children, who should 
 learn to read first in the book of Nature ! 
 
 " I could only get him to read with difficult}' ; he has a 
 thousand ways of getting out of it, and never loses an oppor- 
 tunity of doing something else. When he wants something 
 he cannot get, he very cleverly pretends that what he wants 
 would help him in his lessons, or in his reading. I have 
 been much struck by these tricks for some days past ; it is 
 clearly my duty to watch them with the greatest care." 
 
 " February 3rd. — I felt again to-day, no less strongly than 
 yesterday, what a vicious system ours is for teaching a child 
 to count. All words learned without thinking produce 
 almost hopeless confusion in our minds, but how clear our 
 knowledge would be, if we could receive the truth without 
 alloy ! God ! who art my Father and the Father of my 
 child, teach me to understand the holy natural laws by 
 which Thou preparest us slowly by means of an innumer- 
 able variety of impressions for conceiving exact and complete 
 ideas, of which words are but the signs. 
 
 " When the child knows the signs before learning to 
 know the things they represent, and especially when he 
 connects false ideas with them, our daily lessons and con- 
 versation do but fortify and increase his error and push 
 him the further along a wrong path without our even sus- 
 pecting it. How difficult it then is to correct the evil, 
 whereas, by proceeding slowly from truth to truth, we should 
 be following the luminous path of Nature." 
 
PESTALOZZI THE FATHER, 43 
 
 " February 4th. — Since j^esterday Jacobli has not been 
 well. To-day feverish symptoms frightened us, and we sent 
 for the doctor. We had much difficulty to get the child to 
 take any medicine. The doctor suggested that we should 
 occasionally make him drink something unpleasant, but 
 harmless, when quite well, in order that he might get so 
 accustomed to it that when really ill he would no longer 
 mind it. At first sight this seems to me a good idea, and 
 I should be inclined to extend it to apply to education 
 generally." 
 
 " February ISth. — Our care of Jacobli during his illness 
 has made him more self-willed. I took a nut from him to 
 crack it ; he thought I was going to eat it and yelled with 
 anger. I looked at him coldly, and then, without a word, 
 took a second nut and ate them both before his eyes. He 
 did not stop crying ; I held him a looking-glass ; he rushed 
 off to hide himself. 
 
 " I have often admired the simple wisdom of our servant 
 Nicholas. In the matter of education I am usually very 
 anxious to learn the ideas of people who have been brought 
 up quite naturally and without restraint, who have been 
 taught by life itself and not by lessons. ' Nicholas,' I said, 
 ' don't you think Jacobli has a good memory ? ' l Yes,' he 
 said ; ' but you overload it.' This was just what I had often 
 been afraid of. ' But,' I said, ' if the child were over- 
 burdened, I think we should notice it ; he would lose heart 
 and become timid and restless, at the very first symptoms of 
 which I should of course stop.' ' Ah, J said Nicholas, ' then 
 you really are anxious about the boy's spirit and happiness ? 
 That is just what I was afraid you would overlook.' Right, 
 Nicholas ! No education would be worth a jot that resulted 
 in a loss of manliness and lightness of heart. So long as 
 there is joy in the child's face, ardour and enthusiasm in all 
 his games, so long as happiness accompanies most of his 
 impressions, there is nothing to fear. Short moments of 
 self-subjugation quickly followed by new interests and new 
 joys do not dishearten. 
 
 "To see peace and happiness resulting from habits of 
 order and obedience is the true preparation for social life. 
 
 "Father or schoolmaster, avoid, above all things, hurry 
 and excitement ; let your work be done quietly and in 
 order. The greatest joys are often the result of long and 
 
44 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 patient investigation. Do not let your own knowledge 
 weigh too heavily on the child, rather let truth itself speak 
 to him ; never tire of placing before his eyes whatever is 
 likely to instruct him or assist his development. Train his 
 eyes and ears, but seldom ask him for an opinion. As a 
 general rule, do not ask him to judge of things of which he 
 is not in immediate need, but ask him for his judgment only 
 as Nature asks you for yours. She does not ask you to judge 
 of the breadth of the ditch at the side of which you are 
 walking, she only shows it you ; but what she does ask you 
 to judge of is the breadth of the ditch which is in your way 
 and which you have to cross. Thus, then, whenever you have 
 an opportunity of making your child apply what he says, it 
 is natural and useful to ask his opinion." 
 
 " February 14th. — To-day I was pleased ; he was quite 
 willing to learn. I played with him, — was horseman, butcher, 
 everything he wished. 
 
 "I drew a few straight lines for him to copy. Ftissli, the 
 painter, said to me : ' Let everything you do be complete ; 
 do not pass from A to B, for instance, till A is perfectly 
 known.' 
 
 " Be in no hurry to get on, but make the first step sound 
 before moving ; in this way you will avoid confusion and 
 waste. Order, exactness, completion ; alas, not thus was my 
 character formed. And in the case of my own child in 
 particular, I am in great danger of being blinded by his 
 quickness, and rapid progress, and, dazzled by the unusual 
 extent of his knowledge, of forgetting how much ignor- 
 ance lurks behind this apparent development, and how much 
 has yet to be done before we can go farther. Complete- 
 ness, orderliness, absence of confusion. . . . What 
 important points ! 
 
 " Since Nature gives us our first language, might she not 
 give us ten others in the same way ? I am beginning to see 
 that I am not following her method closely enough in teach- 
 ing Latin ; I must try to get into the way of always 
 speaking it. But in this respect I am satisfied with 
 Jacobli's progress.*' 
 
 "February loth. — I have noticed to-day that my child has 
 a habit which shows his cleverness, but which I must watch 
 most carefully. When he asks for anything, he always 
 begins either by answering objections which he thinks 
 
PESTALOZZI THE FATHER. 45 
 
 likely to be made, or by giving reasons why the request 
 should be granted. l Mamma, I won't break it ; I only want 
 to look at it ; I will use it in my lessons ; I only want one.' 
 We must take care that this trick does not succeed. An 
 open, straightforward request is what we should like. When 
 he asks in this roundabout way, we ought to insist on his 
 making his request again in a simple manner. It would 
 perhaps be well to refuse what he does not ask for 
 properly. 
 
 " Lead your child out into Nature, teach him on the hill- 
 tops and in the valleys. There he will listen better, and the 
 sense of freedom will give him more strength to overcome 
 difficulties. But in these hours of freedom let him be 
 taught by Nature rather than by you. Let him fully realize 
 that she is the real teacher and that you, with your art, do 
 nothing more than walk quietly at her side. Should a bird 
 sing or an insect hum on a leaf, at once stop your talk ; bird 
 and insect are teaching him ; you may be silent. 
 
 " But in those few hours of study devoted to the steady 
 acquirement of necessary knowledge, you must suffer no 
 interruption. Let such hours be few, but let them be 
 inviolable. The least irregularity in this respect must be- 
 immediately corrected. Make it impossible for the child to 
 have the faintest hope of being able to escape this duty. 
 Such a hope would encourage restlessness, whereas the cer- 
 tainty that there is no escape will cause even the desire to 
 escape to be forgotten. In this case, indeed, Nature must no 
 longer be listened to, and the child's desire for freedom must 
 be resisted. 
 
 " A father who guides wisely and blames justly must be 
 obeyed by his child, but no unnecessary command must be 
 given. Never let your orders be the result of caprice, or 
 vanity, or a partiality for knowledge which is not essential. 
 To ensure obedience it is most important that children should 
 know exactly what is forbidden. Nothing produces so much 
 bitter feeling as the punishment of ignorance as a fault. 
 If you punish an innocent child you lose your hold on his 
 heart. We must not imagine that a child knows by instinct 
 what is harmful and what things are held to be important. 
 
 " Plenty of joy and liberty, with a few periods of restraint, 
 during which the child has to fight against and subdue his 
 natural desires, will give strength and the power of endur- 
 
4 6 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 ance. Too much restraint would have a disheartening 
 effect, and joys coming more rarely would no longer have 
 the same hapjDy influence. The character is formed by the 
 strongest and most frequent impressions, all others are com- 
 paratively powerless. That is why it is possible for 
 education to correct defects, and why the maxim is no 
 less false than discouraging which says that a few chance 
 impressions suffice to undo the work of the most careful 
 educator. 
 
 " Jacobli has been self-willed and violent; I have been 
 obliged to punish him several times to-day." 
 
 " February 16th and 11th. — To cure his stubbornness and 
 avoid the daily renewal of the same rebukes, which, un- 
 fortunately, is beginning to be necessary, I must be more 
 careful to alternate his lessons with his games, and not 
 curtail his liberty unnecessarily ; I must also decide defi- 
 nitely exactly how much time is to be set apart for actiial 
 study, so that nothing he learns at other times may seem 
 like work. 
 
 " I have taught him to hold his pencil. Although this is 
 a very small matter, I will never let him hold it badly 
 again." 
 
 " February ISth. — To-day I have been walking with him 
 a great deal. How little I am yet able to take advantage 
 of circumstances which might help to teach some useful 
 lesson ! 
 
 " My wife met the carpenter and asked for the payment 
 of a debt. ' Mamma,' cried Jacobli, ' don't vex the car- 
 penter.' " 
 
 " February 10th. — I find myself sometimes embarrassed 
 through having given up, with all other pedantries, the 
 master's tone of authority. Where shall I draw the line be- 
 tween liberty and obedience, that social life so soon compels 
 us to draw ? 
 
 "Reasons for Liberty. 
 
 " It is impossible to curtail a child's liberty without, to 
 some extent, incurring his dislike. 
 
 " Experience proves that children who have been too 
 much under restraint, make up for it later by excesses in 
 the opposite direction. 
 
 11 Restraint excites various passions. 
 
PESTALOZZI THE FATHER. 47 
 
 " À wise liberty induces the child to keep his eyes and 
 ears open, and makes him contented, happy, and even- 
 tempered. 
 
 " But this complete liberty supposes a preliminary edu- 
 cation, which has taught the child submission to the nature 
 of things, though not to the will of man. 
 
 "Reasons for Obedience. 
 
 " Without it there is no education possible. There are 
 crises, indeed, when the child would be rained by being 
 allowed his liberty. Even under the most favourable cir- 
 cumstances it is impossible not to thwart his will occasion- 
 ally. 
 
 " Liberty does not stifle the passions, it only delays their 
 development. It is vanity, for instance, that makes Emile 
 tremble in his desire to excel the juggler. And does not 
 Rousseau himself recognise the state of dependence in which 
 society places us, when he says that there are some men of 
 such passionate natures that they would certainly have to 
 be subjected to restraint in their youth, if their childhood 
 had been left entirely free. 
 
 " Social life demands such talents and habits as it is not 
 possible to form without restraining the child's liberty. 
 
 " Which of these is the true position and which the false ? 
 Liberty is good, and so is obedience. We must reconcile 
 what Rousseau separated when, struck by the evils of the 
 unwise restraint that only tends to degrade humanity, he 
 advocated unbounded liberty. 
 
 " Let us endeavour to see how far he was right, and profit 
 by his wisdom. 
 
 " I would say to the teacher : Be thoroughly convinced of 
 the immense value of liberty ; do not let vanity make you 
 anxious to see your efforts producing premature fruit ; let 
 your child be as free as possible, and- seek diligently for 
 every means of ensuring his liberty, peace of mind, and 
 good humour. Teach him absolutely nothing by words that 
 3 r ou can teach him by the things themselves ; let him see 
 for himself, hear, find out, fall, pick himself up, make mis- 
 takes ; no word, in short, when action is possible. W r hat 
 he can do for himself, let him do it ; let him be always 
 occupied, always active, and let the time you leave him to 
 
48 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 himself represent by far the greatest part of his childhood. 
 You will then see that Nature teaches him better than men. 
 
 " But when you see the necessity of accustoming him to 
 obedience, prepare yourself with the greatest care for this 
 duty, the most difficult of all in such an education as we 
 are considering. Remember that if restraint robs you of 
 your pupil's confidence, all your labour is lost. Make sure, 
 then, of his heart, and let him feel that you are necessary to 
 him. Be merrier and pleasanter than any of his companions ; 
 in his games let him prefer you to all the rest. 
 
 11 He must trust you. If he often asks for something you 
 do not think good, tell him what the consequences will be, 
 and leave him his liberty. But you must take care that the 
 consequences are such as he will not easily forget, Always 
 show him the right way. Should he leave it -and fall into 
 the mire, go to his rescue, but do not shield him from the 
 unpleasant results of having enjoyed complete liberty, and 
 of not having listened to your warnings. In this way his 
 trust in you will be so great that it will not be shaken even 
 when you have to thwart him. He must obey the wise 
 teacher or the father he has learned to respect ; but only in 
 cases of necessity must an order be given." 
 
 We have quoted from the journal at this length, because 
 it has such direct bearing on the history of that great edu- 
 cational reform which began a hundred years ago, and which, 
 partly in accordance with Rousseau's ideas, partly in oppo- 
 sition to them, is still going on. 
 
 In the extracts we have given, we see Pestalozzi not only 
 finding out the defects of Rousseau's system, but discovering 
 some of the principles which he was afterwards to develop 
 for the good of humanity. 
 
 And yet this gentle and clear-sighted father, always 
 under the charm of the eloquent author of Emile, often 
 forgets his own principles and falls back into the very 
 errors he condemns. 
 
 The poor child, who was the subject of all these experi- 
 ments, and to whom we perhaps owe the Pestalozzian method, 
 paid dearly for them. The system of the Genevan Philoso- 
 pher continued to predominate in his education till the year 
 1775, but after that time his teaching became subordinate 
 to the needs of a new enterprise which absorbed all his 
 
PESTALOZZI THE FATHER. 49 
 
 father's time and strength, and for the next five years he 
 was simply the companion of the little ragged children, of 
 whom we shall read in the next chapter. 
 
 In 1782, in a periodical he was then editing, Pestalozzi 
 wrote as follows : 
 
 " My son is more than eleven years old and cannot yet 
 read or write ; but this does not at all trouble me. 
 
 " The other day when he was playing alone near his 
 mother, she said to him : ' To-morrow is papa's birthday ; 
 wouldn't you like to do something for him ? ' ' Yes, if I 
 could write,' answered the child. l If you will say some- 
 thing, I will write it for you,' said his mother. Whereupon 
 he began to think, running up and down the room and mut- 
 tering, almost singing, to himself what he wanted to say. 
 Before very long he came and smiled at his mother. l What 
 do you want, my dear child ? ' ' Ah, you know very well.' 
 ' Have you something to say to me for papa ? ' ' Yes, if you 
 will write it down.' 
 
 His mother then wrote down word for word the following 
 lines, which the child dictated in a chanting voice, explaining 
 that it was poetry : 
 
 My wish, dear papa, for your birthday to-day, 
 
 Is that you may live a long, long time ; 
 
 I thank you a thousand times for all your kindnesses, 
 
 I thank you for having brought me up tenderly and happily, 
 
 I thank you again a thousand times for the kindnesses 
 
 Which I have received from you all the days of my life. 
 
 Thank you a thousand, thousand times ! 
 
 I don't know how often I should like to thank you ! 
 
 Now I will tell you what is in my heart : 
 
 I shall rejoice, I shall rejoice terribly 
 
 When you can say : I have brought up my son in happiness ; 
 
 I shall rejoice, I shall rejoice with my whole heart 
 
 When I can say : I am his joy and his happiness. 
 
 Then only shall I be able to thank you 
 
 For all you have done for me during my life. 
 
 You will be glad as well as I, 
 
 The day I can say it. 
 
 Then we will be happy together all our lives, 
 
 Then we will pray to God together, 
 
 And dear mamma will also pray with us. 
 
 Then we will work together like lambs, 
 
 That we may live with God and with honour, 
 
 And that we may be content with what Gbd gives us. 
 
5o PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 Now dear papa is coming ; 
 
 We shall love and kiss each other, 
 
 And mamma too. 
 
 I want to put my arms round their two necks at once. 
 
 This child, whose emotional side, in spite of Rousseau, 
 was so highly developed, but who had received so little 
 preparation for practical life, was, at the age of fourteen, 
 placed in a school at Colmar. His father's first letter to 
 him, dated January 16th, 1784, runs as follows : 
 
 " We now send you, nry dear Jacobli, what we had ready ; 
 you shall have more in a few days. We are not troubled by 
 your going away, for both mamma and I pray God that you 
 may become worthy of all the goodness and affection that 
 have been shown to you. 
 
 " In God's name, Jacobli, pray and work. Be diligent, 
 thoughtful, quiet, clean, and obedient. Forget the coarse 
 manners of the peasants, and learn to do everything properly. 
 You have the opportunity now, and you must take advantage 
 of it, for it will never return. But I hope God will not let 
 you sadden by your disobedience those to whom you owe 
 so much. 
 
 " My child, you are all I have in the world ; it is for you 
 alone that I care to live ; it is for you that I have suffered 
 more, so to speak, than I could bear. It is in your hands 
 now either to reward me with the deepest joy, or to render 
 my life for ever unhappy. For that is what will certainly 
 happen if you do not diligently and zealously prepare for 
 some suitable career, if you do not show the good effects of 
 the kindness and consideration with which I have always 
 treated you, if you are not better than boys brought up with 
 restraint and severity." 
 
 Jacobli was afterwards apprenticed to a commercial firm 
 in Basle, the head of the firm being Felix Battier, who 
 was a friend of Pestalozzi's, and to whom, in 1787, he dedi- 
 cated the fourth part of Leonard and Gertrude. But the 
 boy did not succeed either in his studies or his apprentice- 
 ship. At Basle, moreover, symptoms of ill-health began to 
 show themselves, and in 1790 he returned to Neuhof, where, 
 in 1791, he married Anna Madeline Froehlich, of Brugg, the 
 daughter of the owner of Muligen. Their three first child- 
 
PESTALOZZI THE FATHER. 51 
 
 ren died in infancy, but Gottlieb, born in 1797, lived till 
 1863, and was the lather of Colonel Pestalozzi, who is now 
 a professor in the Polytechnic School at Zurich. 
 
 After his return to Neuhof, Jacobli suffered severely from 
 rheumatism, his condition in 1797 becoming so grave that 
 it was thought he was dying. He lingered on till 1800 how- 
 ever, in great pain, and with one side entirety paralysed, 
 his wife and parents and the faithful Elizabeth 1 doing their 
 utmost to alleviate his sufferings. His mother, who hap- 
 pened not to be with him when he died, made the following 
 entry in her diary : 
 
 " It pleased God to take him to Himself by a painless death. 
 May God's peace be on him in the grave, and may the Divine 
 pity welcome his soul. May God grant you, good and dear 
 child, a rich compensation for all the pain you have endured, 
 and may we, who have loved you so well, not be long before 
 we join you. . . . Yet God granted me the joy of seeing 
 him once more at rest. As he lay in death the beautiful 
 expression of his mouth showed that he had been received 
 like an angel into heaven. Are not our prayers and eternal 
 gratitude owing to God for His goodness ? " 
 
 In the happy days of his childhood, Jacobli had planted a 
 lime-tree near the south-west corner of the house, and for 
 many years after his death his parents tended it with loving 
 care. It has now been long neglected, but it is a big, thriv- 
 ing tree, that the visitor to Neuhof loves to contemplate in 
 memory of the poor child at whose expense the experiment 
 was made which has conferred such benefits upon humanity. 
 
 1 An account of this heroic woman will be found at the end of the next 
 chapter. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 PESTALOZZI THE PHILANTHROPIST. 
 
 He receives into his house twenty-five poor children ; great 
 success of his first attempt. Iselin makes his enterprise 
 known, and recommends it to the public. Donations en- 
 able him to increase the number of children to eighty. 
 Troubles caused by the unreasonableness of the parents ; 
 great losses, followed by complete ruin. In ill-health, and 
 entirely icithout resources, he is saved by the devotion of a 
 poor servant. 
 
 We have seen how Pestalozzi, on becoming a father, was 
 filled with remorse for having forgotten the cause of the 
 people in his care for the material interests of his own 
 family, and how he made up his mind afresh to devote 
 himself to that work of patriotic philanthropy which had 
 so forcibly appealed to him when he was still but a youth. 
 We have seen, too, how his thoughtful experiments with 
 his son had suggested new ideas and new principles of 
 education which seemed to him to be particularly fitted for 
 the regeneration of poor children. 
 
 Struck by the child's natural need of continual activity, 
 and by the abundance and versatility of its physical, intel- 
 lectual and moral faculties, it occurred to him that by 
 guiding all these powers aright, and by varying work in 
 such a way as to prevent fatigue, it would be possible not 
 only to teach children to earn their bread, but to cultivate 
 their intellectual and moral nature at the same time. He 
 thought, too, that a country life, in which the cultivation 
 of the land was combined with some sort of handicraft, 
 would provide the best means for teaching the poorest chil- 
 dren that by their own strength, and with God's help, they 
 are capable not only of satisfying their own wants, but 
 of contributing to the happiness of their family and country. 
 
PESTALOZZI THE PHILANTHROPIST. . 53 
 
 " It is not enough," lie would say, " for them to repeat 
 by heart that man was created in (rod's image, and that 
 he must live and die as a child of Grod, but they must feel 
 this truth in their hearts with such divine force as to rise 
 not merely above the ox that ploughs, but above the man 
 clothed in silk and purple who lives unworthily of his high 
 destiny." 
 
 In his eyes, this was the only way of relieving the distress 
 of the people ; in all charitable institutions, which accustom 
 the poor to eat bread they have not earned, he saw nothing 
 but temporary remedies, which, in the end, do but aggravate 
 the evil. 
 
 He held these convictions so strongly, and his desire to 
 improve the condition of the people was so real, that he 
 decided to carry out an experiment in his own house and on 
 his own land, hoping in this way to make Neuhof the model 
 and centre of this great work of regeneration. 
 
 Having failed in his attempts to grow madder, and also 
 in his attempts to establish a cheese-dairy, for which purpose 
 he had laid down a considerable quantity of pasture-land, 
 he had found it necessary to conduct his operations on a scale 
 more consistent with his reduced means. But he still owed 
 some four hundred pounds of the purchase money, and had 
 not only to complete his buildings, but to carry out the 
 various improvements he had begun on the land. 
 
 He had tried the system of paid workmen, but with very 
 unsatisfactory results; he found that, they seldom worked 
 with a will, that they nearly always had inveterate vices, 
 and hopelessly bad methods ; he hoped more, however, from 
 the children, who, brought up under his own roof, would 
 owe him everything. 
 
 He was determined then, at all costs, to undertake this 
 new work. Many years afterwards, in the Song of the Sivan, 
 he spoke of his determination in these words : 
 
 " Our position entailed much suffering on my wife, but 
 nothing could shake us in our resolve to devote our time, 
 strength, and remaining fortune to the simplification of the 
 instruction and domestic education of the people." 
 
 In the winter of 1774 the experiment began, and several 
 
54 PESTAL0ZZ1: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 children, some from the neighbouring villages, some mere 
 vagrants from the roadside, went to live at Neukof with 
 Pestalozzi, who clothed them, fed them, and treated them 
 in every way as his own. They were always with him, 
 sharing in the work of the garden, the fields, and the house, 
 and in bad weather spinning cotton in a large out-house. 
 Very little time was given to actual lessons ; indeed the chil- 
 dren were often taught while working with their hands, 
 Pestalozzi being in no hurry to teach them to read and write, 
 convinced as he was that this is only useful for those who 
 have learned to talk. He gave them constant practice in 
 conversation, however, on subjects taken from their everyday 
 life, and made them repeat passages from the Bible till they 
 knew them by heart. 
 
 This first experiment, which was made with not more than 
 twenty children, was apparently a complete success. In a 
 few months the appearance of the poor little creatures had 
 entirely changed ; notwithstanding the extreme simplicity 
 of their fare, they looked strong and robust, and their faces 
 wore an expression of cheerfulness, frankness, and intelli- 
 gence, which, when they first arrived, had been entirely 
 wanting. They made considerable progress with their 
 manual work, as well as with the lessons that were joined 
 to it, taking great pleasure in both. All they did and said, 
 moreover, seemed to express their appreciation of their bene- 
 factor's kind care for them. 
 
 In this way the year 1775 passed. But the experiment, 
 modest as it was, was far beyond Pestalozzi's means, nor 
 did the work of the children in any way suffice for the proper 
 cultivation of his land. Many more were anxious to come, 
 it is true, and Pestalozzi longed to receive them, but he 
 could not do so without new domestic arrangements and 
 increased expense. 
 
 This experiment at Neuhof had been talked of far and 
 wide, and had excited the interest and admiration of all such 
 men as w*ere capable of appreciating the beautiful and noble 
 thought that had suggested it. Money was offered to Pesta- 
 lozzi to carry it on with, and he was advised to appeal to the 
 friends of humanity for help to extend his undertaking, and 
 so make it a complete success. 
 
 This advice he was not slow to follow, and in the begin- 
 ning of 1776 his appeal appeared in the weekly paper, pub- 
 

 PESTALOZZI THE PHILANTHROPIST. 55 
 
 lished by Iselin of Basle, entitled, Ephemerides of Humanity 
 (p. 293). It ran thus : 
 
 Appeal to the friends and benefactors of humanity to 
 support an institution intended to provide education 
 and work for poor country children. 
 
 11 1 appeal to the friends and benefactors of humanity to 
 help me to maintain an institution which I can no longer 
 maintain alone. 
 
 " I have for a long time thought it probable that, under 
 favourable circumstances, young children might be able to 
 earn their own living without undue labour, provided that 
 enough capital were advanced to organize an establishment, 
 in which they would not only live, but at the same time re- 
 ceive a certain elementary education. I consider that any 
 careful experiment in this direction would be of the highest 
 importance for humanity. 
 
 "In the poor district in which I live, I have been struck 
 by the misery of children placed with peasants by the parish. 
 I have seen them crushed by hard selfishness, and left for the 
 most part without spirit or energy, I might almost say with- 
 out life in body or soul, and I have seen them grow up 
 entirely devoid of those feelings and powers that make useful 
 and upright men. As the situation of my property near 
 Koenigsfelden seemed favourable for the purpose, I felt irre- 
 sistibly impelled to put my idea into execution. I thought 
 at first that my means would be sufficient, but I find now 
 that they are not. Still, more than a year's experiment has 
 convinced me that now that the first difficulties have been 
 surmounted, there is nothing to prevent my plan being 
 carried to a successful issue. 
 
 " I have proved that children will thrive and grow on the 
 very simplest diet, if properly varied ; such, for instance, as 
 potatoes or other vegetables, and a little bread. 
 
 " I have proved that it is not regxilar work that stops the 
 development of so many poor children, but thé turmoil and 
 irregularity of their lives, the privations they endure, the 
 excesses they indulge in when the opportunity offers, the 
 wild rebellious passions so seldom restrained, and the hope- 
 lessness to which they are so often a prey. 
 
 "I have proved that children, after having lost health, 
 strength, and courage in a life of idleness and mendicity, 
 
56 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 have, when once set to regular work, quickly recovered their 
 health and spirits, and grown rapidly. Such is the effect 
 of altered circumstances, and the absence of disquieting 
 influences. 
 
 " I have found that when taken out of their abject con- 
 dition, they soon become kindly, trustful, and sympathetic ; 
 that even the most degraded of them are touched by kindness, 
 and that the eyes of -the child who has been steeped in 
 misery, grow bright with pleasure and surprise, when, after 
 years of hardship, he sees a gentle friendly hand stretched out 
 to help him ; and I am convinced that when a child's heart 
 is thus touched, his whole moral nature is the better for it. 
 
 "I have found, too, that living together in a well-managed 
 house not only lessens the expense of supporting these 
 children, but increases their zeal for work, and encourages 
 their proper development. 
 
 " Had I but had the necessary means, I do not doubt but 
 that I should have succeeded in my object and attained these 
 two great and useful results: instruction adapted to the 
 limited needs of ordinary workmen, and the rescue of chil- 
 dren from the very lowest conditions of humanity. The boy 
 who only grows up into a vagabond, perhaps a criminal ; 
 the girl, who, without guide or support, prepares for herself 
 a life of misery and dishonour; all, in short, who would 
 almost inevitably be lost both for themselves and their 
 country, these are they whom I was anxious to save, and 
 whom I wished to prepare by education for a useful and 
 active life. 
 
 " From an economical point of view, and in many other 
 respects, the position of my house and land seems admirably 
 adapted for the purpose ; but to this simple and feasible 
 scheme of agricultural education I unfortunately joined 
 a great industrial and commercial experiment, and with 
 culpable thoughtlessness, entered on paths entirely unknown 
 to me, and engaged in undertakings of too varied and com- 
 plicated a character. These experiments did not answer 
 my expectations, and I found myself suddenly deprived of 
 resources on which I had thought I could depend, and in 
 imminent danger of ruin. I had therefore to abandon com- 
 merce and industry, and return, not too late I hope, to my 
 original idea of simply educating children. 
 
 " But to-day I can no longer do even that without help, 
 
PESTALOZZI THE PHILANTHROPIST. 57 
 
 and I accordingly submit my plan to the friends and bene- 
 factors of humanity. 
 
 " My prayer is that they will advance me a small sum 
 yearly, for six years. After the tenth year, the money will 
 be paid back in yearly instalments from the earnings of the 
 workmen I have trained. 
 
 " I promise that if I succeed in getting this help, I will 
 abandon every other occupation, and devote my whole time 
 and strength to the education of poor friendless children. I 
 promise that the number of the children shall be regulated 
 by the financial support I receive. I promise to teach them 
 all to read, write, and cipher ; I promise to give all the boys, 
 so far as my position and knowledge will allow me, practical 
 instruction in the most profitable methods of cultivating small 
 plots of land, to teach them to lay down pasture-land, to 
 understand the use and value of manures, to know the differ- 
 ent sorts of grasses, and the importance of mixing them ; the 
 nature and use of marl ; the effect, still disputed, of the 
 repeated application of lime ; the management of fruit-trees, 
 and perhaps of a few forest trees. All this will come naturally 
 out of the work connected with the actual needs of the house, 
 and will not be a special study calling for increased expense. 
 It will be the household needs, too, that will give the girls 
 an opportunity of learning gardening, domestic duties, and 
 needlework. 
 
 "The chief occupation in bad weather will be cotton- 
 spinning. 
 
 " I undertake to furnish all these children with suitable 
 food, clothing, and lodging, and have already made many of 
 the necessary alterations and arrangements in my house. 
 
 "I promise to give the most conscientious attention to their 
 religious instruction, and to do all I can to put gentleness and 
 purity into their hearts. 
 
 " I have still to add that in support of my views I can 
 point to the twenty children who are now living and working 
 with me. They are in perfect health, and their happiness, in 
 spite of hard work, has surpassed my expectations. Their 
 general cheerfulness and courage, and the delicate feeling and 
 affection of which several of them have given proof, fill me 
 with great hopes for the future. The care and expense of 
 these children will continue to be mine alone." 
 
58 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 Pestalozzi then promises to give a yearly account of the 
 progress of his work, and asks to have it inspected, so that 
 no money may be given unless his promises are found to have 
 been faithfully performed. He then mentions a few names 
 of prominent men who have already expressed approval of his 
 plan, and are prepared to give the necessary information to 
 any who desire it. The appeal closes with these words : 
 
 " Friends of humanity, notwithstanding all my mistakes 
 and the injury I have done myself by my precipitation, will 
 you still give me your confidence, and support an undertaking 
 which, though it is beset with dangers, is likely to have the 
 happiest results, my past errors having taught me many 
 lessons. 
 
 " Neuhof, Koenigsfelden, December 9th, 1775, 
 
 " J. H. Pestaloz." 1 
 
 Amongst the men of talent and influence who approved of 
 the enterprise, none supported it with more zeal than Iselin, 
 of Basle, the editor of the Ephemeridcs, a high-souled and 
 noble-minded man of whom his country should be proud. Soon 
 after Pestalozzi's appeal had been made public, Iselin made 
 the following announcement in his paper : 
 
 " We are happy to state that Mr. Pestaloz has not ap- 
 pealed for help in vain. The Council of Commerce of the 
 Berne Republic, together with many private individuals, 
 have promised to support him, so that there is a reasonable 
 hope of his work being continued. In further explanation of 
 his views, we hope shortly to publish some letters from Mr. 
 Pestaloz, in which will be found many excellent ideas on 
 the rural education of poor children." 
 
 The letters thus announced by Iselin, together with notices 
 of the establishment at Neuhof and evidence as to its work- 
 ing, were collected from the Epliemerides, and published by 
 Seyffarth in his complete edition of Pestalozzi's works (vol. 
 viii.). These various documents throw a new light on this 
 attempt to regenerate the working classes, regeneration no 
 
 1 Pestalozzi's family often signed Pestaloz or Pestaluz, probably to give 
 their Italian name a termination more in keeping with the language of 
 Zurich. 
 
PESTALOZZI THE PHILANTHROPIST. 59 
 
 less needed in many countries to-day. As their length un- 
 fortunately does not allow us to give them in full, a short 
 summary must suffice. 
 
 First letter to N. E. T. {Undated.) 
 
 Pestalozzi points out that the defect of ordinary institutions 
 for the education of poor children is that the children are not 
 brought up consistently with the position that they will pro- 
 bably occupy in after life ; they contract habits which they 
 will afterwards have to give up ; they do not learn to be 
 satisfied with merely having their most pressing wants sup- 
 plied ; they form no habits of steady application or frugality, 
 because they know that whatever they may do, they cannot 
 want for anything. 
 
 Second letter, to the same, January 10th, 1777. 
 
 Poor children must be brought up in private establishments 
 where agriculture and industry are combined, and where the 
 living is of the very simplest; they must learn to work 
 steadily and carefully with their hands, the chief part of 
 their time being devoted to this manual work, and their 
 instruction and education being associated with it. 
 
 The work of the children must pay for their keep ; in this 
 way they will be working for themselves, and their style of 
 living will depend on the success of their work. 
 
 But is it possible for children's work to pay for their keep, 
 and if so, under what conditions ? Pestalozzi examines this 
 question with the greatest care. 
 
 He supposes an establishment receiving children at the 
 age of eight or nine years and keeping them for six years. 
 The first year he would admit twenty-five, the second fifteen, 
 the third fifteen, and so on each year till the total number of 
 a hundred pupils was reached. Then he calculates for each 
 year, on the one hand, the earnings of each child at cotton- 
 spinning according to his age, on the other, the expenses of 
 the establishment, and from this calculation it results that 
 after the sixth year the establishment would have paid all its 
 expenses and would be making a clear profit. 
 
 Pestalozzi then goes on to say that in his district, agri- 
 culture alone will not support all the inhabitants, and has to 
 be supplemented by some form of industry, adapted to the 
 particular conditions of the place. As to agriculture, very 
 
6o PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 expensive operations are, of course, not possible for the poor ; 
 all they can hope for is to have a small piece of land to culti- 
 vate, the produce of which will provide for their household 
 wants, and perhaps leave them something to sell. He there- 
 fore teaches his children hardly anything but the cultivation 
 of vegetables, in which he finds that they take a great 
 interest ; afterwards, having seen how much can be got out 
 of the land by steady and intelligent labour, they will be 
 eager to have some of their own. 
 
 Pestalozzi then comes to the religious question. We will 
 here give his own words : 
 
 " What a terrible responsibility for the director, who, 
 should he let the children forget their God, their Father, 
 their Saviour, or fail to implant in them the faith in God's 
 revelation, which is our only support in trouble and the hope 
 of the eternal life to which we are called, will surely be made 
 to account for his neglect of these young souls ! The director 
 should be, as it were, a father to the children ; their progress 
 in application and in wisdom should cause him a father's 
 joy ; the daily improvement in their powers, their minds and 
 hearts should raise his own character, and so be his reward ; 
 if this were not so, the work would not be worth his trouble 
 and would profit him nothing." 
 
 Third letter, to the same. 
 
 Neuhofj March 19th, 1777. 
 
 Pestalozzi here gives an account of the results of his 
 experiment for the past three years; from which he concludes 
 that success in his enterprise is not at all impossible. For 
 instance, it is possible to make the work of the children pay 
 for their maintenance ; for the amount both of earnings and 
 expenses has entirely justified his calculations. 
 
 It is possible to encourage their growth and keep them 
 strong and well on a very plain and inexpensive diet, for they 
 eat hardly anything but vegetable food ; and though they 
 work hard, they are very robust ; the strongest go about in 
 summer bareheaded and without shoes or stockings. ( Jacobli, 
 the director's only son, is treated in the same way.) 
 
 It is possible in a very short time not only to make them 
 moderately good workers, but at the same time to teach them 
 all that it is most necessary for them to know. 
 
PESTALOZZI THE PHILANTHROPIST. 61 
 
 But there have been unforeseen difficulties : 
 
 1st. There are some children so accustomed to a vagrant 
 life that they cannot be induced to give it up. 
 
 2nd. There are some parents so ungrateful and unnatural 
 that they will sacrifice the welfare and future of their children 
 for the smallest immediate advantage ; they come to Neuhof 
 and entice them away the very moment they see that they 
 are clean, in good health, well clothed, and in a position to 
 earn something. 
 
 The past year has been a hard one for the establishment ; 
 Mrs. Pestalozzi has been seriously ill nearly the whole time. 
 In spite of the greatest attention to cleanliness, several 
 children have suffered from an infectious skin disease. There 
 have also been twenty-four cases of measles in the house, all 
 ending happily, however. Finally the crops have suffered 
 three times from hail storms. 
 
 But Pestalozzi is not discouraged ; he will never forsake 
 the work, nor will his wife. But he thinks it can never 
 prosper, or meet with complete success, unless, by formal 
 agreements with the parents and by the help of the authori- 
 ties, it is made impossible for any child to be taken away 
 from the establishment before his full time is up. 
 
 A few words on the most degraded portion of humanity. 
 An appeal to the charitable to come to its assistance. 
 
 Neuhof, September 18th, 1777. 
 
 In this paper Pestalozzi gives a detailed account of a dozen 
 of these poor children. They came to him in a state of such 
 degradation as to excite almost as much fear as compassion ; 
 they seemed absolutely incapable of doing anything but 
 harm either to society, their families, or themselves. 
 
 Many of them, however, were very intelligent, and nearly 
 all have improved very much already, and are beginning to 
 work well enough to earn their own living. Judging from 
 his experience, Pestalozzi thinks that even the weakest and 
 most feeble-minded ones may be saved. 
 
 But the director must be a father to them, no other re- 
 lationship being really efficacious and salutary in this sort of 
 education. 
 
 The children must remain in the establishment five or six 
 years, and must be kept from the influence of their real 
 
62 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 parents, whenever such influence is unmistakably pernicious. 
 Pestalozzi has now thirty-six children in his house ; this 
 number will be increased next spring, and the financial 
 position of the establishment will be thereby improved. 
 
 Educational Establishment for poor children at Neuhof 
 in Aargau. {Undated.) 
 
 This is a report addressed by Pestalozzi to the supporters 
 of his undertaking, in which he explains his plans and the 
 difficulties that are still to be overcome, and begs them to 
 continue their support, and to have the establishment in- 
 spected by competent persons. 
 
 The household numbers fifty, including the masters, work- 
 men, and servants necessary for the proper education and 
 training of the children and the proper cultivation of the land. 
 
 The experience gained at Neuhof shows clearly that it is 
 absolutely necessary to attach some conditions to the ad- 
 mission of pupils, and Pestalozzi feels compelled to say that 
 in future he will receive no child without a formal agreement 
 with the parents. Town children he will not admit at all, 
 unless very young, for they are a constant source of trouble. 
 
 Pestalozzi ends by repeating his determination to devote 
 himself entirely to this work. 
 
 Then follows a statement by the Berne Agricultural So- 
 ciety, in which the Society declares that, having had the 
 establishment at Neuhof examined by well-known and com- 
 petent men, it has every confidence that Pestalozzi will make 
 it succeed, and is glad to be able to commend it to the atten- 
 tion of the public. 
 
 Then comes a note by Iselin, who corroborates the Society's 
 statement, and offers to receive any donations for the Neuhof 
 establishment, and forward them to Pestalozzi. 
 
 Authentic account of Mr. PestalozzVs Educational Estab- 
 lishment for poor children at Neuhof near Birr, in 
 the year 1778. 
 
 This was a pamphlet published by the before-mentioned 
 Society, containing first a preface by the Society, which 
 is almost word for word the same as the statement we have 
 just summarized, and then an account by Pestalozzi himself, 
 signed : " J. H. Pestalozze, Neuhof, February 26th, 1778." 
 

 PESTALOZZI THE PHILANTHROPIST. 63 
 
 This new account is little more than a repetition of the 
 others. At the end, Pestalozzi announces that he has received 
 some sixty pounds in donations, thanks his benefactors, and 
 begs the public to continue their support. 
 
 But the special interest of this pamphlet is that it contains 
 a detailed account of each of the thirty-seven pupils. As 
 these details take us to the heart of the matter, and teach us 
 more than any number of generalizations, we shall give them 
 word for word : 
 
 " I have to-day in my establishment the following chil- 
 dren : 
 
 " 1. Barbara Brunner, of Esch (Zurich), 17 ; admitted 
 three years ago in a state of utter ignorance, but very in- 
 telligent. Now she spins, reads, and writes fairly well, likes 
 singing, is principally engaged in the kitchen. 
 " 2. Frena Hirt, 15 ; ) , . . n ™ 7 . ,. -, 
 « 3. Maria Hirt| 11 ; J two sisters ' from Wmdisch. 
 " Frena has a weak chest ; she spins well, is beginning to 
 sew and write nicely. I am pleased with her character. 
 Maria is younger and stronger, is quick at everything, 
 especially figures, and spins remarkably well ; she is quite 
 strong enough for any work suited to her age. 
 
 " 4. Anna Vogt, 19 ; 7 x - x. x -nr 1 i 
 " 5. Lisbeth Vogt, 11 ; \ two sisters ' from Ma * dac "- 
 " They came to me three years ago, terribly neglected in 
 body and mind ; they had spent their lives in begging. We 
 have had enormous trouble to make them in the least degree 
 orderly, truthful, and active. The ignorance of the elder, and 
 the depth of degradation to which she had sunk are scarcely 
 credible. She is still idle, but her heart seems to have been 
 touched. She still feels the effect of her miserable childhood, 
 and suffers from swollen feet and other ailments ; she is ab- 
 solutely incapable of out-door work. 
 
 " The younger sister is intelligent and robust, but I tremble 
 at her determined opposition to all good influences. Lately, 
 however, I have seen, I fancy, some very slight traces of 
 improvement. She spins fairly well, and can do any sort of 
 work either in the house or the fields. 
 
 "6. Henri Vogt, of Mandach, 11; has been here three 
 years ; can weave, is beginning to write, works hard at French 
 and arithmetic, is exact and careful in all he does ; but he 
 
64 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 seems cunning and deceitful, suspicious and greedy ; has good 
 health. 
 
 " 7. Anneli Vogt, of Mandach, 11, daughter of Jacob Vogt ; 
 likes work, spins well, sings prettily, is apt at figures, is 
 strong and useful out of doors as well as in the house ; has 
 been here three years. 
 
 " 8. Jacob Vogt, her brother, 9 ; here three years. He is 
 subject to occasional attacks of colic, one of the results of 
 his wretched childhood. He is stubborn and very idle. 
 
 "9. Jacob Eichemberger, of Brunegg, 13; was induced to 
 run away six months ago, but came back after a long absence. 
 He seems to have a good disposition ; he is intelligent, strong 
 and useful in the fields ; he is attentive, a good weaver, and 
 is beginning to write fairly well. 
 
 " 10. Lisbeth Renold, of Brunegg, 10 ; when admitted a 
 year and a half ago she was so weak from want of proper food 
 that she could hardly walk ; has made great progress ; enjoys 
 good health now, and is very intelligent, but there is little 
 hope of her ever being strong enough for work in the fields. 
 She spins well and diligently. 
 
 " 11. David Rudolf, of Zurzach, 15; here a year and a half ; 
 weaves well, has a good disposition, writes well, and takes 
 pains with arithmetic and French. 
 
 " 12. Leonzi Hediger, of Endingen, near Baden (Aargau), 
 14 ; has been here three years. He is a healthy boy, strong 
 and accustomed to working in the fields ; the best weaver in 
 the house ; is beginning to write a little, and likes French. 
 He is quick at everything, but ill-mannered and uncouth. 
 
 " 13. Francisca Hediger, his sister, 16 ; here three years ; 
 
 she spins, sews, and cooks equally well; she has all the 
 
 qualities of a thoughtful, obedient, intelligent, and honest 
 
 servant. 
 
 « 1 a ivr • tt v ") two sisters ; both healthy, active 
 
 "14. Marianne Hediger, { -, \, , , J1 -, 
 
 i, 1R \r • tu- r an( i capable oi house-work or 
 
 "15. Maria Hediger, j fieM -wJrk. 
 
 "16. Friedly Mynth, of Bussy, near Aubonne, lived after- 
 wards at Worblauffen, 10 ; has been here six months ; she is 
 very weak, and incapable of real work, but is clever in 
 drawing, and has very artistic tastes. Inclined to fun ; does 
 nothing but draw. 
 
 11 17. Susan Mynth, her sister, 9 : healthy, very diligent 
 and active, takes pleasure in her studies. 
 
PESTAL0ZZ1 THE PHILANTHROPIST. 65 
 
 " 18. Marianne Mynth, their sister, 8 ; a pretty child, in- 
 telligent, very sensitive, and as whimsical and self-willed as 
 her sisters ; she is not strong enough for heavy work. 
 
 " 19. Babeli Baechli, 17 ; has been here three years ; she is 
 very inattentive and thoughtless, and only useful for running 
 errands ; of very little intelligence, but strong and healthy. 
 
 " 20. Jacob Baechli, her brother, 15 ; here three years ; is 
 also inattentive and thoughtless ; spent his childhood in beg- 
 ging and idleness ; weaves fairly well, and is beginning to 
 write, but has no taste for French ; discontented and hard to 
 satisfy. 
 
 "21. Hudi Baechli, 10; here three years; remarkable for 
 his taste for figures, good-nature, and calm earnestness in his 
 religious duties. 
 
 " 22. Maria Baechli, his sister, 8 ; weak both in mind and 
 body. But it will be very interesting for humanity to see 
 that imbecile children, who, badly brought up, would have 
 had nothing but the madhouse before them, may by tender 
 care be saved from this sad end, and taught to earn a modest 
 and independent livelihood. 
 
 " 23. Greorge Vogt, of Mandach, 11 ; here two years ; a very 
 promising boy ; takes pains with everything ; kind, intelligent, 
 lively, healthy, and useful in the fields and in the house. 
 
 " 24. Henri Fuchsli, of Bragg, 7 ; has only been here a few 
 weeks ; seems intelligent. 
 
 " 25. Jean Maurer, of Stettlen, 15 ; here six months ; strong, 
 and very useful in the fields, weaves well, is fairly diligent, 
 and has some power; but I am sometimes afraid that his 
 simplicity and amiability are only a pretence. 
 
 " 26. Anni Maurer, his sister, 12 ; of most uncouth man- 
 ners, especially at meals ; very slow and lazy, lies most un- 
 blushingly ; spins well, but slowly and with much labour ; is 
 strong and healthy. 
 
 " 27. Louis Schroeter, 15 ; very able boy, but unfortunately 
 very deceitful ; as he writes well, and has made great pro- 
 gress with arithmetic and French, he is very useful to me ; 
 has an exceptionally good ear for music. 
 
 " 28. Babette Schroeter, his sister, 14 ; sews, spins, and 
 reads fairly well, is beginning to write. 
 
 " 29. Nanette Henri, 9:1 , .* nnA • ; „ 
 
 "30. GattonHenri,8; j brotlier and Slsten 
 
 " These children have lately been sent to me from Schenken- 
 
66 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 berg by the head of the French colony, who generously pro- 
 vided them with many necessaries. They are well-behaved 
 and good-tempered ; Gat ton is very capable and vivacious, 
 Nanette less so. They have never been accustomed to do any- 
 thing, and their open and affectionate natures make it hard 
 to set them to steady work so soon. But I am quite sure 
 they will get on well, especially Gatton. 
 
 " 31. Suzanne Dattwyler, of Elhngen, 10; her unfortunate 
 father is in prison ; she came to me half dead from want and 
 trouble, but her bodily strength is returning in a surprising 
 manner. She spins well ; is very quick, especially at singing. 
 
 "32. Suzanne de Tallheim, 10 ; natural child ; has been in 
 the habit of running away ; is intelligent, but deceitful and 
 capricious. Likes singing, spins well, has good health. 
 
 "33. Conrad Meyer, 10;} 
 
 " 34. Lisbeth Meyer, 9 ; > of Rohrdorf, near Baden. 
 
 " 35. Maurice Meyer, 4 ; ) 
 
 " Came to me quite recently after a life of vagrancy. Con- 
 rad is healthy ; Lisbeth's nature promises well ; Maurice was 
 in a terrible condition from want, but is beginning to regain 
 strength. He seems intelligent. 
 
 " 36. George Hediger, 4 ; this child and the one last men- 
 tioned are the only two children in the house who are still 
 too young to earn anything by their work. 
 
 " 37. Henry Hirsbrunner, of Sumiswald, 12 ; this boy is 
 very clever and attentive. I expect very much from him, if 
 only, after having been a servant in the town, he can reconcile 
 himself to our mode of life. He makes rapid progress, and 
 has learned to write better in a few days than others who 
 have been learning for months. 
 
 " In the management of the establishment and care of the 
 children, I get very valuable help from Miss Madelon Spind- 
 ler, of Strasburg, who is both highly gifted and of un- 
 tiring activity. I have, besides, a master to teach weaving, 
 and two skilled weavers ; a mistress to teach spinning, and 
 two good spinners ; a man who winds for the weavers and 
 teaches reading at the same time; and two men and two 
 women who are almost always employed on the land." 
 
 These quotations give an exact and complete idea of what 
 the establishment at Neuhof was like till the spring of 1778, 
 when Pestalozzi considerably increased the number of his 
 
PESTALOZZI THE PHILANTHROPIST. 67 
 
 children, hoping in that way to improve the financial con- 
 dition of his undertaking. But the step had jùst the contrary- 
 effect, or rather, it had no effect in stopping the ruin which 
 was already imminent. 
 
 At this time, the grave evil that Pestalozzi was attempting 
 to cure was very widespread in the district, as is evident 
 from the large number of children brought to him (at one 
 time he had as many as eighty), and from the utter demoraliza- 
 tion of both children and parents. 
 
 To many of the children their vagrant, idle life had be- 
 come more than a habit, it had become almost a necessity ; 
 they hated the steady, hardworking life to which they were 
 now called ; nor did the simple, frugal fare make up to them 
 for the dainties that had sometimes fallen to their share, and 
 so they became rebellious and dissatisfied, and only thought 
 of escaping. 
 
 The parents, who had expected to be more than compensated 
 for the loss of what their children had been able to beg, 
 encouraged them in their discontent, and threatened to take 
 them away from Pestalozzi in order to profit by their earnings 
 themselves. 
 
 Yet these were children, who had arrived covered with 
 rags and vermin, whom Pestalozzi had made clean and tidy, 
 and with whom he shared his meals, " giving them the best 
 potatoes, and keeping the worst for himself." 
 
 "Every Sunday," he said, "my house was filled with a 
 set of beggarly parents, who, not finding their children's 
 position answer to their expectations, and as if to encourage 
 them in their discontent, treated me with such insolent 
 high-handedness as was only possible in an establishment 
 having neither official support nor imposing exterior." 
 
 To make matters worse, many children ran away, escaping 
 in the night, and carrying off the Sunday clothes that Pesta- 
 lozzi had given them. Soon, too, the complaints of the parents 
 reached the ears of the supporters of the work, subscriptions 
 fell off, and public interest in the establishment considerably 
 lessened. Pestalozzi, however, was not discouraged, but 
 worked on almost beyond his strength, daily adding sacrifice 
 to sacrifice, and in ill health and misfortune faithfully sup- 
 ported by his noble-hearted wife. But he felt at last, though 
 
68 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 too late, the absolute necessity of calling in the help of able 
 and experienced men to make up for his own deficiencies. 
 
 The heroic struggle was prolonged for two years, but at 
 last, in 1780, resources and credit being alike exhausted, an 
 enterprise, to which the husband and wife had devoted their 
 last strength and their last shilling, had to be finally aban- 
 doned. 
 
 Of the experiment which ended thus unhappily, nobody 
 will deny the importance, seeing that the sore it was in- 
 tended to cure is still open and smarting to-day. Pestalozzi's 
 work at Neuhof serves better than anything else, perhaps, 
 to show the character of the man. The idea was his own, 
 and was not only the dream of his youth, but remained 
 throughout his life the favourite subject of his thoughts ; 
 even at eighty years of age he still had hopes of renewing 
 the experiment, and carrying it to a successful issue. 
 
 How much good has the experiment done? Alas, very 
 little ! And yet there have been men in Switzerland who, 
 following the principles of the master, but avoiding his 
 mistakes, have applied his methods to the education of 
 orphans and the regeneration of vicious children, with very 
 considerable success. 
 
 The reader will not have forgotten the state of misery 
 and corruption of the country district round Neuhof, when 
 Pestalozzi opened his house to the vagrant children. When 
 in 1869 we visited the spot, still free from railways and un- 
 known to tourists, we found the land well cultivated, the 
 people hard-working and comfortable, no beggars, and good 
 schools. The immense improvement which had taken place 
 in those ninety years proves that although Pestalozzi had 
 failed in his practical attempt to raise the people, the influence 
 of his ideas, and of the principle which inspired him, had 
 not remained without result. There are some ruins whose 
 dust is fertile. 
 
 Pestalozzi was now as poor as the beggars who had excited 
 his pity ; he had absolutely nothing left. He had acted like 
 one who, without thinking whether his strength will suffice, 
 plunges into the water to save a drowning man, and sinks 
 with him. His friends, however, came to his rescue, and 
 kept his home together for him. 
 
 "We have not been able to find any trace of the arrange- 
 ment which must then have been made between the ruined 
 
PESTALOZZI THE PHILANTHROPIST, 69 
 
 philanthropist and his creditors. The bare facts are that the 
 land, with the exception of an acre or two, was let for the 
 benefit of the creditors, but that Pestalozzi still remained 
 the owner of Neuhof, and still lived in the house. His wife's 
 bad health, however, rendered her incapable of attending to 
 her household duties, and he himself, disheartened, awkward, 
 and worn out in mind and body, was hardly able to provide 
 the barest necessaries ; indeed, before very long, they were 
 without food, fuel, or money, and suffering from cold and 
 w T ant. 
 
 But while in this state of terrible distress, the sad family 
 at Neuhof happily received the most providential help, thanks 
 to ' an act of devotion that is worthy of being told in all 
 countries and in all ages. It is once more a poor servant who 
 sacrifices herself — this time, however, without having even 
 been asked for help, and for people who are almost strangers. 
 
 Elizabeth Naef, of Kappel, belonged to a family that had 
 won distinction in the religious wars, and had obtained the 
 right of citizenship in Zurich. She had known something 
 of Pestalozzi through having been in the service of one of 
 his relations, and now, her master being dead, she no sooner 
 heard of the disaster and distress at Neuhof than she hurried 
 to the assistance of the afflicted family. 
 
 At first Pestalozzi refused her offers of help, being unwill- 
 ing to involve in his own trouble a woman who, though pos- 
 sessing nothing, would easily find some light work elsewhere, 
 and be sure of a comfortable, quiet life. He was afraid, too, 
 that she would be scandalized by finding his habits in religious 
 matters somewhat different from her own, she being accus- 
 tomed to pray or sing hymns all day long, a practice with 
 which Pestalozzi had no sympathy. But he was unable to 
 shake Elizabeth's determination, and at last consented, saying, 
 " Well, you will find, after all, that God is in our house too." 
 
 The devoted woman found Neuhof in the most terrible state 
 of disorder, and lost no time in setting to work. She saw to 
 the garden, dug up a bit of land with her own hands, every- 
 where restored cleanliness, order, and productivity, and in 
 this way provided Pestalozzi and his family with the means 
 of subsistence they lacked. 
 
 It was Elizabeth who served as the type for the character 
 of the brave, active, clever, gentle and devoted woman in 
 Leonard and Gertrude. Councillor Nicolovius, of Berlin, in 
 
7o PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 an account of a visit he paid to Neuhof, in 1780, refers to her 
 in the following terms : — 
 
 " ' I should like,' said Pestalozzi, moved by his gratitude 
 and admiration, ' to give you some idea of this woman's quiet 
 activity, that you may always have a picture of her in your 
 mind. What I am going to say may perhaps seem too strong, 
 and yet I am not ashamed to say it. God's sun pursues its 
 path from morning to evening, yet your eye detects no move- 
 ment, your ear no sound. Even when it goes down, you know 
 that it will rise again, and continue to ripen the fruits of the 
 earth. Extreme as it may seem, I am not ashamed to say 
 that this is an image of Gertrude, as of every woman who 
 makes her house a temple of the living God, aud wins heaven 
 for her husband and children.' l 
 
 11 1 was anxious to see the woman to whom he owed so 
 much. As she did not appear, Pestalozzi took me to the field 
 where she was working, and asked her a few questions, that 
 I might have time to contemplate her. The same evening, 
 he said, ' Knowing all she does for us, you will not be sur- 
 prised to hear that she eats at our table. I hope you will not 
 mind her doing so to-night.' But she did not come, and was 
 so unwilling to do so that at last I went myself and begged 
 her to come so earnestly that she could not refuse. Her 
 whole being seemed aglow, if I may say so, w r ith humble 
 modesty." 
 
 Frohlich, of Brugg, who, in his Recollections of Pestalozzi, 
 also speaks of Elizabeth, tells us that the author of Leonard 
 and Gertrude had so much confidence in her judgment, that 
 he often read her passages from his writings, especially those 
 which portra} r ed character, for the sake of having her 
 opinion. 
 
 Ramsauer, 2 too, in his letter to Principal Zahn, speaks as 
 follows : 
 
 "I knew the housekeeper who was the original of Ger- 
 
 1 This passage occurs, word for word, in " Leonard and Gertrude." 
 
 2 Eamsauer was a poor orphan, who, after having been brought up by 
 Pestalozzi, at Burgdorf, became one of his most distinguished assistants. 
 He was afterwards a fervent Pietist, and the tutor of the Princesses of 
 Oldenburg. 
 
PESTALOZZI THE PHILANTHROPIST. 71 
 
 trade very well, having lived under the same roof with her 
 at Yverdun for eleven years. Pestalozzi said to me one day, 
 ' I know that after my death she will be more honoured than 
 I ; indeed, if it were not so, I should turn in my grave aiid 
 be unhappy in heaven ; for, had it not been for her, I should 
 have been dead long ago, and you, Hamsauer, would not have 
 been what you are ! ' She was certainly a remarkable woman, 
 though entirely without education." 
 
 In 1801, Elizabeth, after nursing poor Jacobli like her own 
 son throughout his long illness, married Krusi, the brother 
 of Pestalozzfs indefatigable colleague, and from 1805 filled 
 the post of housekeeper at Yverdun, where she was a general 
 favourite with the pupils. 
 
 The material distress from which Elizabeth had rescued 
 Pestalozzi was not, however, the most painful result of his 
 disaster. All hope of carrying out his generous intention 
 seemed gone for ever. He had lost the confidence of his 
 fellow citizens, and people, seeing him pass, exclaimed, as they 
 shrugged their shoulders, "Poor wretch ! He is less capable 
 than the most ignorant labourer, and yet he talks of helping 
 the people ! " Even his own friends no longer believed in 
 him; they felt, indeed, deep sorrow for him, but avoided 
 meeting him as much as possible, finding it too painful to talk 
 to a man whom they still loved, but whom they could neither 
 help nor console, and who seemed doomed to end his days 
 either in the workhouse or the madhouse. 
 
 The unfortunate man suffered still more from the thought 
 of the misery he had brought on his wife, especially when 
 he saw how uncomplaining she was, and how she sought to 
 lighten his troubles by redoubling her attentions and tender- 
 ness. On one occasion, when Anna and Jacobli had prepared 
 a surprise for him on his birthday, he cried : 
 
 " Ah, you do too much ; but I am grateful to you for think- 
 ing of me. I am deeply grieved that the mistakes of my 
 youth should have brought you to this painful position, and 
 yet I wculd say, Let us not abandon the struggle we have 
 been engaged in so long, but calmly and firmly carry it on to 
 the end. There is a God above who smooths the difficulties 
 of life for some, but chains others to their misery. How 
 can we fight against the stern decrees of fate better than by 
 
72 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 remaining upright and calm amid the storms that surround 
 us?" 
 
 Another passage that belongs to this time of misery and 
 humiliation runs thus : 
 
 "Christ teaches us by His example and doctrine to sacrifice 
 not only our possessions, but ourselves for the good of others, 
 and shows us that nothing we have received is absolutely 
 ours, but is merely entrusted to us by God to be piously em- 
 ployed in the service of charity." 
 
 It was thus that he Acted, the noble-hearted man, and 
 one cannot help wondering whether the Puritan theologians 
 who attacked him for heterodoxy were better Christians than 
 he? 
 
 It was Elizabeth who had rescued Pestalozzi and his family 
 from destitution, but it was Iselin who now inspired him with 
 fresh courage to pursue his work, that work which the world 
 thought finished, but which in reality had hardly begun. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PESTALOZZI THE WRITER. 
 
 Iselin inspires him with new courage, arid urges him to write. 
 The " Evening Hour of a Hermit.' 1 ' 1 First volume of 
 "Leonard and Gertrude" " The Education of Children in 
 the Home." The continuation of "Leonard and Gertrude." 
 Relations with Leopold of Tuscany and Joseph II. of 
 Austria. " The Sumptuary Laws." " Christopher and 
 Eliza." " On Legislation and Infanticide." " The Swiss 
 News." Obliged to work on his land for a living. His un- 
 published manuscript on " The Causes of the French Revo- 
 lution." Correspondence with Nicolovius and Fellenberg ; 
 relations with Fichte. " An Inquiry into the Course of 
 Nature in the Development of the Human Race." Merit as 
 a writer. 
 
 The failure of the undertaking at Neuhof had not changed 
 Pestalozzi's belief in the possibility of raising the people by- 
 education, but it had for the time deprived him of all means 
 of putting his ideas into execution. His dejection was so 
 great as to affect his health, and almost to endanger his 
 life. 
 
 But although the experiment had not succeeded, Iselin 
 still believed in the excellence of the idea which had prompted 
 it. He accordingly came to Pestalozzi, and sought to rouse 
 him from his despair by offering to help him bring before 
 the public the views he had been unable to carry out. 
 
 After Iselin's death, Pestalozzi thus expressed his admira- 
 tion and gratitude for his lost benefactor : 
 
 " He was a man to the end ; whatever was human attracted 
 him, and he had moreover a wonderful faculty for finding it 
 out, wherever and under whatever mask it lay concealed. 
 It was in this way that, at the end of his life, he discovered 
 me, bringing me warm-hearted encouragement at a time when 
 others shrugged their shoulders as I passed, and those who 
 7 
 
74 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 loved me could but groan at the mention of my name. It 
 was then that this man came to me with smiles and comfort, 
 this man who was at once my father, master, helper and 
 deliverer." 
 
 Pestalozzi's experiments, which had now lasted five years, 
 had taught him much ; always in contact with the children 
 of the people he wanted to save, he had seen them just as 
 they were ; by his steady work, varied experiences, and per- 
 sistent efforts, he had got to the heart of the question he 
 wanted to solve ; his very errors, by bringing new light, had 
 only strengthened him in his convictions. As he himself 
 says: 
 
 " Even while I was the sport of men who condemned me, 
 I never lost sight for a moment of the object I had in view, 
 which was the removal of the causes of the misery that I 
 saw on all sides of me. My strength, too, kept on increasing, 
 and my own misfortunes taught me valuable truths. I knew 
 the people as no one else did. "What deceived no one else 
 always deceived me, but what deceived everybody else de- 
 ceived me no longer. . . . 
 
 " I say to-day, with deep gratitude to God, that it is my 
 own sufferings that have enabled me to understand the suf- 
 ferings of the people and their causes, as no man without 
 suffering can understand them. I suffered what the people 
 suffered, and saw them as no one else saw them, and, strange 
 as it may seem, I was never more profoundly convinced of 
 the fundamental truths on which I had based my undertaking 
 than when I saw that I had failed ! " 1 
 
 The speedy and complete ruin of his work at Neuhof, 
 though sad in many ways, was on the whole a good thing 
 both for Pestalozzi and the world. For if it had been at all 
 successful, this man, in his efforts to be a father to the 
 fatherless, would have worn himself out in a sphere of 
 activity which was not his true vocation, and for which he 
 had little capacity, and education perhaps would still be 
 awaiting its reformer. 
 
 Not being in a position to make any more practical experi- 
 ments, but being very anxious to put his ideas before the 
 
 1 Letter to Gessner, dated Burgdorf, 1801. 
 
PESTALOZZI THE WRITER. 75 
 
 public, Pestalozzi, in 1780, wrote the Evening Hour of a 
 Hermit. This was his first educational work, and is by no 
 means one of the least important, but it is very little known, 
 and, like many others, is wanting in Cotta's edition of his 
 writings. Published first by Iselin, in his Ephemerides, it 
 was afterwards reprinted by Pestalozzi in a weekly edu- 
 cational paper he published, in 1807, and is to be found 
 in Seyffarth's complete edition of his works. 
 
 The Evening Hour of a Hermit is a collection of short, 
 pithy aphorisms, all bearing on the same subject, and form- 
 ing, as a whole, a complete statement of the author's views 
 as to the raising of the people by education. There are a 
 hundred and eight of them, but we shall only quote those 
 which seem to us the most important, taking advantage of 
 the numbers prefixed by Seyffarth, to show their relative 
 position in the work. 
 
 Evening Hour of a Hermit. 
 
 1. " Man, whether on a throne or in a cottage, is by nature 
 always the same ; but what is he ? Why do not wise men 
 tell us ? Why do not the best minds find out what their 
 own race really is? Does the peasant use oxen without 
 learning to understand them ? Does not the shepherd con- 
 cern himself with the nature of his sheep ? 
 
 2. " And you who employ men, who say that you govern 
 them, and lead them, will you not take as much pains as the 
 peasant for his oxen, the shepherd for his sheep ? Is your 
 wisdom the knowledge of your race ? Is your goodness the 
 enlightened goodness of shepherds of the people ? 
 
 3. " What man is, what he needs, what raises or degrades 
 him, what strengthens or weakens him, that should be known 
 alike by the leaders of the people, and by the inmates of the 
 humblest cottage. 
 
 8. " All the pure and beneficent powers of humanity are 
 neither the products of art nor the results of chance. They 
 are really a natural possession of every man. Their develop- 
 ment is a universal human need. 
 
 10. " The infant whose hunger has been satisfied learns in 
 this way the relations between its mother and itself; love 
 and gratitude are awakened in its heart before their names 
 strike its ear ; the son who eats his father's bread, and warms 
 
76 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 himself at his father's hearth, acquires in this natural manner 
 the salutary knowledge of his filial duties. 
 
 12. " Man ! in thyself, in the inward consciousness of thine 
 own strength, is the instrument intended by Nature for thy 
 development. 
 
 21. " The path of Nature, which develops the forces of 
 humanity, must be easy and open to all ; education, which 
 brings true wisdom and peace of mind, must be simple and 
 within everybody's reach. 
 
 22. " Nature develops all the forces of humanity by exer- 
 cising them ; they increase with use. 
 
 23. " The exercise of a man's faculties aud talents, to be 
 profitable, must follow the course laid down by Nature for the 
 education of humanity. 
 
 24. "This is why the man who, in simplicity and inno- 
 cence, exercises his forces and faculties with order, calmness, 
 and steady application, is naturally led to true human wis- 
 dom ; whereas he who subverts the order of Nature, and thus 
 breaks the due connection between the different branches of 
 his knowledge, destroys in himself not only the true basis 
 of knowledge, but the very need of such a basis, and becomes 
 incapable of appreciating the advantages of truth. 
 
 25. " Thou who wouldst be a father to thy child, do not 
 expect too much of him till his mind has been strengthened 
 by practice in the things he can understand ; and beware of 
 harshness and constraint. 
 
 26. u When men are anxious to go too fast, and are not 
 satisfied with Nature's method of development, they imperil 
 their inward strength, and destroy the harmony and peace of 
 their souls. 
 
 27. " When men rush into the labyrinth of words, for- 
 mulas, and opinions, without having gained a progressive 
 knowledge of the realities of life, their minds must develop 
 on this one basis, and can have no other source of strength. 
 
 28. " The schools hastily substitute an artificial method of 
 words for the truer method of Nature, which knows no hurry, 
 and is content to wait. In this way a specious form of 
 development is produced, hiding the want of real inward 
 strength, but satisfying times like our own. 
 
 36. " Man ! if thou seekest the truth in this natural order, 
 thou wilt find it as thou hast need of it for thy position and 
 for the career which is opening before thee. 
 
PESTALOZZI THE WRITER. 77 
 
 40. " The pure sentiment of truth and wisdom is formed 
 in the narrow circle of our personal relations, the circum- 
 stances which suggest our actions, and the powers we need 
 to develop. 
 
 49. " The performance of acts which are contrary to our 
 inward sense of right takes from us the power of recognising 
 truth, and our principles and impressions lose in nobleness, 
 simplicity, and purity. 
 
 50. " And thus all human wisdom rests on the strength of 
 a heart that follows truth, and all Iraman happiness on this 
 feeling of simplicity and innocence. 
 
 60. " A man's domestic relations are the first and most 
 important of his nature. 
 
 61. " A man works at his calling, and bears his share of 
 the public burdens, that he may have undisturbed enjoyment 
 of his home. 
 
 62. "Thus the education which fits a man for his pro- 
 fession and position in the State must be made subordinate 
 to that which is necessary for his domestic happiness. 
 
 63. "The home is the true basis of the education of 
 humanity. 
 
 64. " It is the home that gives the best moral training, 
 whether for private or public life. 
 
 70. " A man's greatest need is the knowledge of God. 
 
 71. " The purest pleasures of his home do not always 
 satisfy him. 
 
 72. "His weak, impressionable nature is powerless without 
 God to endure constraint, suffering, and death. 
 
 94. " God is the Father of humanity, and His children are 
 immortal. 
 
 135. " Sin is both the cause and effect of want of faith, 
 and is an act opposed to what a man's inmost sense of good 
 and evil tells him to be right. 
 
 168. " It is because humanity believes in God that I am 
 contented in my humble dwelling. 
 
 175. " I base all liberty on justice, but I see no certainty of 
 justice in the world so long as men are wanting in upright- 
 ness, piety, and love. 
 
 178. " The source of justice and of every other blessing in 
 the world, the source of all brotherly love amongst men, lies 
 in the great conception of religion that we are the children 
 of God. 
 
78 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK, 
 
 180. " That Man of God who, by His sufferings and death, 
 restored to men the sense that God is their Father, is indeed 
 the Savionr of the world. His teaching is justice itself, a 
 simple philosophy of practical value for all, the revelation of 
 God the Father to his erring children." 
 
 The Evening Hour does not seem to have aroused much 
 attention ; indeed, the great majority of people were incapable 
 of appreciating its real merit. It was a more popular book, 
 and one written in an easier and more agreeable style, that 
 first gave Pestalozzi a literary reputation, and drew him out 
 of his retirement. 
 
 About this time the Zurich Council, anxious to put things 
 on a more modern footing, had drawn up certain regulation? 
 concerning the dress of the officials who maintained order in 
 the town. To Pestalozzi, who was always strongly attached 
 to old-fashioned simplicity, the change thus introduced seemed 
 most ridiculous, and one day, in a humorous vein, he wrote a 
 satire on the plan for " changing crooked, dirty, and unkempt 
 guards into erect, clean, and tidy ones." He sent the paper 
 to Zurich, to his friend Fiissli the bookseller, whose brother 
 the painter, happening to see it one day, was so struck by it 
 that, after reading and re-reading it, he exclaimed, " To a man 
 who can write like this, his pen is a fortune in itself! " This 
 opinion, confirmed by other competent judges, gave great 
 delight to Fiissli, who repeated it to Pestalozzi, at the same 
 time urging him to write. The solitary of Neuhof was little 
 inclined to take the advice, believing himself quite incapable 
 of ever succeeding as an author. 
 
 " For ten years," he said, " I have read nothing, and lived 
 only with ignorant people. I could hardly write a sentence 
 without a mistake." But at last he allowed himself to be 
 persuaded. "I would even have made periwigs," he said 
 afterwards, " to get bread for my wife and child." 
 
 He accordingly set to work to read Marmontel's Moral 
 Tales, and had made as many as seven successive attempts 
 to imitate this style of composition, without being at all satis- 
 fied with his work, when suddenly the idea occurred to him 
 to draw a picture of the peasants he knew so well. He would 
 faithfully paint their vices and their poverty, but he would 
 also faithfully paint the elements of moral and physical re- 
 generation that, in spite of all their degradation, they still 
 
PESTALOZZI THE WRITER. 79 
 
 retained, and in this way he would still be working towards 
 his favourite end. 
 
 This sudden conception was the saving of his work. From 
 this time he wrote without trouble and without stopping, 
 without even preparing a plan beforehand, and Leonard and 
 Gertrude flowed from his pen in one unbroken stream. Too 
 poor to buy paper, he wrote between the lines in an old 
 account book, and in a few weeks the book was completed. 
 
 He then asked a friend to read it. The friend did so, and 
 pronounced it interesting, but horribly incorrect, and " want- 
 ing in literary style." As he further offered to correct it for 
 him, Pestalozzi gratefully accepted the offer ; but when his 
 MS. was returned, it was little more than a string of high- 
 sounding phrases, the peasants talking like pedants, and all 
 the truth and naturalness having disappeared. 
 
 Pestalozzi naturally could not consent to publish the work 
 thus disfigured, and in his embarrassment was on the point 
 of giving up all idea of doing so, when another of his friends 
 came to his rescue. This was Iselin, of Basle, who, under- 
 standing the real value and bearing of the manuscript, pre- 
 pared it for the press by correcting the mistakes, and 
 persuaded Decker, a bookseller in Berlin, to undertake its 
 publication. The price Decker paid Pestalozzi was rather 
 less than a shilling a page. 
 
 Leonard and Gertrude appeared in 1781 ; it was the 
 first of the four volumes which afterwards formed the com- 
 plete work. It had an immediate and immense success ; 
 most of the papers praised it, and extracts were inserted in 
 many almanacs. The Agricultural Society at Berne ad- 
 dressed a letter of congratulation to the author, with a gift 
 of fifty florins, and a gold medal of the same value. On the 
 medal was a crown of oak, with the words : Civi optimo. 
 
 Though Pestalozzi was now visited and made much of by 
 numbers of distinguished people, he retained all his simple- 
 mindedness. It is even said that one day, having been 
 invited out to dinner, and his host having sent his carriage 
 for him, he made the footman sit in the carriage beside him. 
 Charles de Bonstetten pressed him to come to his country- 
 house to stay, and several other influential people made simi- 
 lar overtures to him, but he refused to leave Neuhof. 
 
 Leonard and Gertrude is but a simple story, though 
 graphic and touching, of that village life which Pestalozzi 
 
8o PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 knew so well. Leonard is an honest fellow, full of good 
 intentions, but fond of drink. At one time his love for his 
 wife and children, whose ruin he is causing, induces him to 
 make the best resolutions ; at another, the influence of bad 
 companions drags him into evil again. Gertrude, his wife, 
 is an excellent mother, gentle, hard-working, and sensible. 
 By dint of hard work, patience, and perseverance, she saves 
 her family by saving her husband. The bailiff, Hummel, 
 who is also the village innkeeper, is a cunning, unscrupulous 
 man. He takes advantage of his position to get foolish men 
 to his house to drink and run into debt, and then hastens 
 their ruin, that he may grow rich on the spoil. Arner, the 
 new squire, is a man of noble ideas, and a generous heart ; 
 it is he who supports Gertrude in her trouble, and baffles the 
 plans of the bailiff. 
 
 In Leonard and Gertrude the characters are so admir- 
 ably drawn that, after having read the book, we seem to 
 know all the personages as well as if we had lived with them. 
 That, however, is not its chief merit. In Pestalozzi's view, 
 this story was only another way of popularizing his ideas, by 
 showing how education can raise the people and make them 
 happy. Into Gertrude's mouth he puts his views as to the 
 method in which children should be taught and made to take 
 part in the work of the home, and he uses Arner to prove 
 how much can be done by a kind and enlightened adminis- 
 tration towards helping and improving the moral condition of 
 the poor. But the story is so life-like that the intention to 
 teach never appears. 
 
 It is not surprising, then, that the public read it simply as 
 a healthy and interesting novel. Their very praise showed 
 Pestalozzi that he had not yet attained his end. He accord- 
 ingly wrote another book, intended to show the use that 
 might be made of Leonard and Gertrude in the education 
 of children, and to bring out more clearly the lessons it 
 contained. Its title was: The Instruction of Children in 
 the Home. This book was never printed, either because 
 Pestalozzi was not satisfied with it, or because he foresaw 
 that it would be very little read. Niederer, however, who 
 at one time had the MS. in his possession, afterwards pub- 
 lished a part of it in his Notes on Pestalozzi. The first 
 chapter runs as follows : 
 
PESTALOZZI THE WRITER. 81 
 
 Chapter I. — A man whose heart is good, and who yet 
 makes his wife and children very unhappy. 
 
 There is one woman in Bonal who brings up her children 
 better than all the others. Her name is Gertrude (1) ; her 
 husband, who is a mason (2), is called Leonard (3). They 
 have (4) seven children, who (5) work from morning till 
 evening, and are obedient, good-tempered, clean, careful, and 
 fond of each other. The father's failing (6) is that he often 
 allows himself to be enticed to the inn, where he sometimes 
 acts (7) like a madman. 
 
 (8) The village where this family has the misfortune to 
 live has been so demoralized for more than thirty years, that 
 (9) most of the present inhabitants care neither for law nor 
 gospel. 
 
 The fault is really (10) due to the late squire, who died 
 a few weeks ago. This (11) man took less interest in his 
 people than (12) in his dogs and game, with the result that 
 (13) there is nothing but misery in his villages, and that 
 they are filled with men who suck the very heart's blood of 
 the people. The worst of these blood-suckers (14) is Hummel, 
 the bailiff of Bonal. His house is full every day (15) of 
 cunning scoundrels, whose sole occupation and amusement 
 it is to lay snares for simple, honest folk, and rob them of 
 their money. They know the good-natured Leonard (16), 
 whom they encourage to drink and gamble, and so deprive 
 him almost daily of the fruit of his toil (17). But he always 
 repents bitterly the next morning, and (18) his heart bleeds 
 when he sees Gertrude and her children without bread (19). 
 He dares not look Gertrude in the face; his eyes fill when 
 he takes one of his children in his arms, and he often weeps 
 bitter tears in secret. 
 
 Gertrude is the best wife in the village, but (20) as 
 Leonard cannot resist the seductions of the inn, she and her 
 children (21) are in danger of losing father and cottage, 
 of being separated, and of falling into the direst poverty. 
 
 (22) Gertrude sees the extent of the danger, and is sore 
 troubled by it. She cannot forget it for a moment, and when 
 bringing grass from the meadow, or hay from the barn, or 
 when filling her spotless pails with milk, she has always 
 present with her the same terrible thought (23) that meadow, 
 barn, cow, nay, her very cottage may soon no longer be hers. 
 
82 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 When (24) her children surround her and nestle to her 
 bosom, her trouble is still greater, and often (25) when her 
 precious little ones are folding their innocent hands in 
 prayer to the Father in heaven, her heart is rent with 
 anguish. 
 
 (26) Hitherto, however, she had succeeded in hiding from 
 her children her silent tears, but (27) when, on the Wednes- 
 day before Easter, her husband was even later than usual 
 in coming home, she could not restrain her grief. The chil- 
 dren noticed her tears, and cried with one accord (28), " Oh, 
 mother, you are crying ! " (29) With grief on their faces 
 they clung about her, sobbing aloud in their terror. Eor the 
 first time the very baby looked into his mother's eyes with- 
 out smiling, for he saw in them nothing but despair. (30) 
 Gertrude, feeling that her heart must break, burst out into 
 loud sobs, the children weeping with her. (31) At this 
 moment the mason opened the door unperceived, for (32) 
 Gertrude had hidden her face in the bed. (33) The chil- 
 dren did not notice him either ; they had no eyes for 
 anything but their mother's grief, and clung about her in 
 helpless wonder. And thus their father found them. 
 
 (34) God in heaven sees the tears of the afflicted, and 
 puts an end to men's sorrows, and (35) it was this goodness 
 of God that now made Leonard a witness of this most painful 
 scene. (36) As, pale and trembling, he stammered a few 
 broken words, the mother and children became aware of 
 his presence. (37) The children's sobs at once ceased. 
 " Mother, mother," they cried, " here's father come home ! " 
 It is thus that when a wild flood or devouring fire ceases its 
 ravages, the first terror subsides, and is succeeded by a 
 dumb, calm sorrow. 
 
 Questions. 
 
 (1) What is the name of the woman in Bonal who brings 
 up her children better than all the rest ? (2) What is her 
 husband's name? (3) W T hat is he? (4) How many chil- 
 dren has he ? (5) How do the children behave ? (6) What 
 is the father's failing ? (7) How does he often act when he 
 is at the inn ? (8) What is the state of the village ? (9) 
 What is the result of this demoralization ? (10) Whose 
 fault is it chiefly ? (11) Why is it his fault ? (12) What 
 did he consider more than his people ? etc., etc. 
 
PESTALOZZI THE WRITER. 83 
 
 Instructive Truths. 
 
 1. Children who are well brought up are obedient, good- 
 tempered, clean, tidy, and affectionate. 
 
 2. In the ale-house men sometimes act like madmen. 
 
 3. It is the same with towns and villages as with indi- 
 viduals : demoralization ends in unhappiness. 
 
 4. Demoralized men respect neither law nor gospel. 
 
 5. The more demoralized a country is, the more is it 
 infested by clever scoundrels whose only occupation and 
 livelihood consists in cheating honest, simple folk out of 
 their money. 
 
 6. He who thinks less of his inferiors than of his dogs or 
 preserves, is the cause of much evil in the world, and incurs 
 a grave responsibility. 
 
 7. There is a certain kind of repentance which has no 
 reality, and is without effect on men's actions. 
 
 8. A bad conscience deprives men of the power of helping 
 themselves. 
 
 9. A bad father brings a thousand troubles on his wife 
 and children. 
 
 10. When children are good and thoughtful, kind and 
 God-fearing, their troubles cause their parents double pain. 
 
 11. God who is in heaven puts an end to man's distress. 
 
 Such was the beginning of the great work by which Pesta- 
 ozzi hoped to show the public that Leonard and Gertrude 
 was not merely a tale, but a popular manual of education for 
 every age. 
 
 The author, however, gave up the idea of publishing it, 
 and we cannot help thinking that he was right. But he was 
 anxious to continue the story he had began with so much 
 success, and in 1783 a second volume of Leonard and 
 Gertrude appeared, in 1785, a third, and in 1787, a fourth. 
 
 The fourth volume was dedicated to Felix Battier, a 
 merchant in Basle, by whose help he had been able to con- 
 tinue at Neuhof, after the failure of his first experiments. 
 In this dedication, dated the 1st April, 1787, Pestalozzi 
 expresses himself as follows : 
 
 « My friend ! you found me a bruised plant by the way- 
 side, and you preserved me from being trodden under foot. 
 Head these pages, and accept my thanks, for my most im- 
 
84 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 portant views would never have ripened without your help. 
 The burden of my experiences is still heavy upon me. I 
 still have the picture of my work before me, but only as in 
 a dream. As long as I breathe I shall keep my end steadily 
 in view, and shall only be happy in so far as I succeed in 
 realizing the ideas which inspired my first undertakings." 
 
 The four-volume work contains a complete account of th9 
 regeneration of the village of Bonal, the result of the com- 
 bined effects of law, religion, education, and a careful 
 administration. Pestalozzi called it, Leonard and Gertrude : 
 a Book for the People, but "the people" took very little 
 notice of it. The numerous readers of the first volume had 
 enjoyed it simply as a novel, without in the least caring for 
 the lessons it contained. The three other volumes, in which 
 the action is less sustained and less dramatic, and in which 
 educational, economical, and social questions occupy a very 
 large place, had much less success. They had no interest 
 for any but the most thoughtful people, and even thought- 
 ful people found parts of them beyond their comprehension, 
 so far was their author ahead of his time. The reforms he 
 advocated were then felt to be entirely impracticable, and 
 yet most of the great economical and moral improvements 
 of which Switzerland is proud to-day were suggested by 
 Pestalozzi in this book. 
 
 We find, for instance, the abolition of commonage, the 
 division of unproductive parish-land, only requiring the care 
 of an owner to become a source of wealth, the redemption 
 of tithes, the institution of savings-banks, the organization 
 of reformatory schools, the abolition of hanging, and, lastly, 
 the establishment of good primary schools, caring no less for 
 moral than material needs. But for some of these reforms 
 Switzerland had to wait thirty years after the publication 
 of Leonard and Gertrude, for others sixty, for others 
 eighty. 
 
 Count Zinzendorf, the Austrian Minister of Finance, had 
 vainly endeavoured to induce Pestalozzi to go to Vienna. 
 On the 26th of April, 1784, after receiving the continuation 
 of Leonard and Gertrude, he wrote to him as follows : 
 
 " Your plans and efforts for the education of the poor, and 
 the reform of vicious children, and more particularly what- 
 
PESTALOZZI THE WRITER. 85 
 
 ever you think necessary for the instruction of the people, 
 and whatever you think should form the object of legis- 
 lative measures, will have a great importance in my eyes, 
 and I shall receive with the greatest pleasure everything 
 you write on this subject." 
 
 And, again, on the 19th December, 1787, he writes : 
 
 " I have read the fourth volume twice. From page 164 it 
 is of the deepest interest, and develops views of great im- 
 portance for all legislation affecting the masses. To carry 
 out your ideas, the first thing to do would be to attempt to 
 get Arner's views shared by the whole of the nobility, who 
 are almost the only owners of property, that they might have 
 both the inclination and courage to bring their children up in 
 his spirit side by side with the country children, and be con- 
 tent to live on their estates." 
 
 In his reply of the 18th January, 1788, Pestalozzi says : 
 
 "A few statesmen and magistrates have indeed praised 
 the fourth volume, but the mass of readers have found it very 
 uninteresting from page 164. . . . 
 
 " Education being the centre from which everything should 
 start, the State should consider this the most important part 
 of its work, and make everything else subordinate to it. If 
 this matter is properly attended to, the private interests of 
 sovereigns will be the more easily looked after, and the 
 relations between the local and central authorities will be 
 all the more satisfactory. 
 
 " Let us hope that those who are the leaders of humanity 
 will soon arrive at the conviction that human progress and 
 improvement is their chief, nay, their only concern. For 
 my part, I am certain that sooner or later the difficulties 
 in the way of such an education of the people as I desire 
 will vanish, and that princes themselves will be the first 
 to encourage it, and lend their assistance to those who are 
 the most capable of directing it aright." 1 
 
 "We have lately re-read the four volumes of Leonard and 
 Gertrude, after a long interval, and have been much struck 
 
 We have borrowed these extracts from Pompée's interesting work, 
 " Studies of the Life and Works of J. H. Pestalozzi." Paris, 1850. 
 
86 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 by the richness, truth, and variety of the views which have 
 been lying hidden there for ninety years. In the strength 
 of Pestalozzi's convictions and in his deep sympathy with 
 misfortune in any shape, lies the secret of the eloquence and 
 real pathos of his writings. It may be said that his intel- 
 lect borrows its breadth and sagacity from his heart, for it 
 is his heart that fills him with such intelligent sympathy for 
 the suffering, the weak, and needy. 
 
 It is worthy of notice that in this picture of the vices 
 of a degraded people, complete as it is in other respects, 
 Pestalozzi makes no mention of impurity. He is as s lent 
 about libertinism, and everything connected with it, as 
 if his countrymen had been all saints, and nowhere will a 
 single word be found which might not be read by anybody. 
 
 In the first volume a few lines have been replaced by 
 dots, and the author explains in a note that this passage was 
 suppressed because a child of ten on hearing it read aloud 
 exclaimed that it was " very rude." 
 
 A French translation of the first volume of Leonard and 
 Gertrude, by the Baroness de Guimps, was published at 
 Geneva by J. J. Paschoud, in 1826, and a new edition was 
 brought out a few years ago. It is much to be regretted 
 that the three last volumes have not yet been translated. 
 
 Cotta's edition of the complete works published towards 
 the end of Pestalozzi's life does not include the whole of the 
 fourth volume of the first edition of Leonard and Gertrude, 
 the reason being that the author wanted to revise the last 
 part of it, make certain additions, and write a sixth part, 
 an intention he did not live to carry out. In the recent 
 edition published by Seyffarth, Leonard and Gertrude is in 
 five parts, but the fifth part is merely a reproduction of the 
 fourth volume, which appeared in 1787. 
 
 Whilst Pestalozzi was working at Leonard and Ger- 
 trude, he wrote four other works, which were published 
 from 1781 to 1783, and of which we have not yet spoken, 
 because we were unwilling to interrupt what we had to say 
 about the book which made his literary reputation. 
 
 In 1779 a Society in Basle had offered a prize for the best 
 essay on the following subject : How far is it advisable to 
 set a limit to personal expense in a small free state where 
 commerce is the foundation of prosperity ? Twenty-eight 
 essays were sent in, and the judges divided the prize be- 
 
PESTALOZZI THE WRITER. 87 
 
 tween a professor, named Meister, and Pestalozzi, who were 
 both from Zurich, and were old schoolfellows. In 1781, 
 Pestalozzi's essay, with two others, was published in 
 pamphlet form by the Society that had given the prize. 
 
 In this paper Pestalozzi pronounces an absolute condem- 
 nation of sumptuary laws in general, for reasons which we 
 need hardly reproduce, seeing that this question has long 
 been settled, and has little interest for us to-day. At the 
 same time he pleads forcibly for liberty in commerce and 
 industry. He also deplores the increase of luxury, and 
 suggests means by which it may be stopped. These means 
 must be purely educational, for coercion, prohibition, and 
 regulation could only do harm. In this way the question 
 which had been proposed, and which at first sight seemed 
 entirely foreign to Pestalozzi's work, brings him back to his 
 favourite theme of education. 
 
 He would have education fill both heart and mind with 
 such high aspirations that men should no longer be capable 
 of finding pleasure in the refinements of material life. He 
 would have the rich love the poor so well as to hesitate to 
 flaunt before them pleasures which are not within their 
 reach. He would have rulers and public bodies cease to set 
 the example of ostentatious and useless expense. 
 
 The foregoing is but a poor summary of the chief ideas 
 which make this essay, written before the second volume 
 of Leonard and Gertrude, still interesting to us. 
 
 In 1782 Pestalozzi published Christopher and Eliza; 
 My Second Book for the People. But this title deceived 
 the public. They expected to find another story as graphic 
 and interesting as the volume of Leonard and Gertrude 
 that they had just read, whereas the new work was nothing 
 but a commentary on the earlier one. 
 
 The aim of the author was to bring out and develop the 
 lessons contained in the first volume, lessons which his 
 readers had missed. He had chosen the form of a dialogue 
 between Christopher and Eliza, a husband and wife who 
 read a chapter of Leonard and Gertrude every evening in 
 the presence of their son Fritz and their old servant Joost. 
 In this way Pestalozzi directs attention to a number of 
 important considerations, all bearing on the morals, comfort 
 and happiness of the people. 
 
 But the reading of this book requires a more sustained 
 
88 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 mental effort than most people are capable of, and even many 
 who might have profited by it, but who began to read merely 
 for the sake of amusement, soon abandoned the attempt. 
 
 Pestalozzi here made the same mistake that he often made, 
 a mistake, indeed, which on more than one occasion proved 
 fatal to his attempts to propagate his doctrine. The truths 
 which he himself held, as it were, intuitively, seemed so 
 simple and self-evident, that he could not understand how 
 other minds could fail to grasp them, and never doubted 
 that he would be able to spread them by writing popular 
 books. 
 
 Christopher and Eliza did not succeed because both aim 
 and form were bad. In matter, indeed, it was perhaps 
 better than Leonard and Gertrude, being richer in im- 
 portant views on education and other social questions, many 
 of which views are still of value to-day. But it was pro- 
 bably Pestalozzi's opinions in matters of this sort that 
 hindered the success of his book amongst educated people, 
 for such opinions must at that time have been very offensive 
 to the upper classes. He points out, for instance, that the 
 corruption of those who are ruled generally results from the 
 corruption of their rulers, and that the vices of the poor 
 are too often caused by the vices of the rich, ideas, we think, 
 which no one would dare to condemn to-day so absolutely 
 as was done ninety years ago. 
 
 It was after having failed to reach his end with Chris- 
 topher and Eliza that Pestalozzi wrote the continuation 
 of Leonard and Gertrude. 
 
 We must here mention a publication of Pestalozzi's on a 
 question which had occupied his thoughts ever since he was 
 quite a young man. He was still a law student in Zurich 
 when two young girls of the Canton of Vaud were condemned 
 to death for infanticide. The trial made a great stir through- 
 out Switzerland, and Pestalozzi was both pained and in- 
 dignant. At first he refused to believe in the possibility 
 of such a crime against nature, but when upon inquiry 
 he found that infanticide was not only possible, but frequent, 
 he set himself to ascertain the causes which in civilized and 
 Christian Europe led young women to commit crimes so 
 monstrous as to be unheard of even amongst savage nations. 
 
 Accordingly, in 1780, after a long study of the question, 
 he wrote a pamphlet, entitled, On Legislation and Infant i- 
 
PESTALOZZI THE WRITER. 89 
 
 cide / Facts and Fancies, Investigations and Portraits. The 
 preface of the first edition, which was published in Frankfort 
 and Leipsic in 1783, concludes thus : 
 
 "I have considered this subject for many years, and I 
 am convinced that my view is the right one. But I know 
 two things : in the first place, that I am weak and cannot 
 see far ; and, in the second, that truth, as men see it, is 
 never entirely free from error, and that no road goes quite 
 straight to its mark. And so I earnestly hope that what is 
 false in my opinions, as well as what is true, may be made 
 perfectly clear." 
 
 The title of this work is misleading, since the author only 
 speaks of legislation to show the harm it has done, and its 
 powerlessness to prevent immorality and the crimes to which 
 immorality leads. He declares in a note that his object is 
 to give an answer to the question : What are the best means 
 for preventing infanticide ? In his opinion these means are 
 purely educational, educational that is in the widest sense, 
 and he would have parents, teachers, clergymen, and magis- 
 trates lose no opportunity of using their influence to reform 
 the manners, opinions, and conduct of people of all ages. 
 The work is divided as follows : 
 
 1. Introduction. 
 
 2. General causes of infanticide, resulting from legislation 
 and social relations. 
 
 3. Examination of special causes. Eight cases. 
 
 4. Results of this examination, corroborated by quotations 
 from official records of trials for infanticide. 
 
 5. Means for prevention. 
 
 We shall soon have occasion to return to this work, for 
 in the interval which elapsed between its composition in 
 1780, and its publication in 1783, much of it was printed in 
 the pages of the Stviss Neics, a periodical started by Pesta- 
 lozzi about this time, and of which we must now give some 
 account. 
 
 At this period of his life, when no practical undertaking 
 
 was any longer possible to him, Pestalozzi was indefatigably 
 
 active with his pen, and always in the direction of his one 
 
 great object, the improvement of the condition of the people 
 
 8 
 
9o PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 by education. Eager to seize every opportunity of reaching 
 his end, he was often working at several different subjects 
 at the same time, and as what was written first was not 
 always published first, it is sometimes hard to determine the 
 exact chronological order of his works. 
 
 As the best means for making his views more widely 
 known, Iselin had advised him to publish a newspaper. 
 Accordingly, on the 3rd of January, 1782, there appeared 
 a paper, consisting of sixteen duodecimo pages, with the 
 title, the Swiss News. This paper continued to appear 
 every Thursday till the end of the year, and the whole of it 
 forms two volumes, which are very rare and very little 
 known. 
 
 The contents are of a most varied nature, including, amongst 
 other things, short moral stories, dialogues, fables, and verse. 
 But the variety is more apparent than real, for the author's 
 favourite ideas are always recognizable, no matter what their 
 dress. The farther he gets, the more clearly does he explain 
 his plans of reform, so that the interest of his paper is con- 
 tinually increasing. 
 
 As early as the second number there is a fragment of the 
 essay on infanticide, which, together with his other writings, 
 attracted the attention of the most distinguished princes 
 of the time. The Emperor Joseph II., for instance, and the 
 Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany, both endeavoured to apply 
 Pestalozzi's views to the improvement of the condition of 
 their subjects, and particularly to the reform of penal legis- 
 lation and of prison discipline, and with this object instructed 
 their ministers to communicate with the author of Leonard 
 and Gertrude. 
 
 Numbers 19 to 24 of the Swiss News contain a scheme 
 for a penitentiary system so complete in every detail, that 
 it might have been drawn up in the middle of the present 
 century, and indeed might still be consulted with profit. 
 The author supposes that a prince, whom he does not hesitate 
 to call Duke Leopold, has consulted Arner (the lord of Bonal 
 in Leonard and Gertrude), as to the best system of State 
 prisons. Pestalozzi first gives the Duke's letter, and thon 
 Arner's reply, which is doubtless the same as that he made 
 to the Grand Duke at the request of his Minister. 
 
 Unfortunately for the Grand Duchy, Leopold was soon 
 called to replace Joseph II. on the throne of Austria, but he 
 
PESTALOZZI THE WRITER. 91 
 
 had already done an immense amount of good, and there 
 is every reason for thinking that the influence of Pestalozzi's 
 ideas may be traced in the admirable institutions which for 
 a long time placed Tuscany in the vanguard of civilization, 
 and thanks to which the plains of the Arno are still culti- 
 vated by the flower of the Italian peasantry. 
 
 But it is education that occupies the chief place in the 
 Swiss News. In very many things Pestalozzi still shows 
 himself to be a disciple of Rousseau, though his popular and 
 practical spirit, and the weight he attaches to moral and 
 religious development already separate him widely from the 
 Genevan philosopher. The quotations that follow will be 
 a sufficient proof of this : 
 
 Volume ii., page 11. " Everything that raises humanity 
 to purer pleasures is of use to man, who is certainly destined 
 to develop all the powers which have been given him, and 
 thus to rise to the height of whatever circumstances can 
 favour and utilize this development." 
 
 Page 24. " In this state of things, rulers and teachers 
 have only to guide the progress of the knowledge and pleasures 
 of the century with all the power and wisdom they possess, 
 in order that the people may lose nothing that is still good, 
 may thoroughly understand their, duty, and gladly do what- 
 ever enables them to live." 
 
 Page 157. " Why, oh men, do you serve God, if it is not 
 to sanctify yourselves and free yourselves from sin, to which 
 you are the more inclined the less you fear God and the 
 less you serve Him. The service that you render to God 
 preserves you from your greatest dangers. It is thus a 
 service that you render to yourselves, and is only true in 
 so far as it is useful." 
 
 Page 158. " Your God and Saviour seeks to lead you by 
 victory over your passions to a wise knowledge of life, and 
 by a wise knowledge of life to the worship of the invisible." 
 
 Page 159. " Love is the only real worship that man can 
 offer to God, and the only source of real faith. Love alone 
 leads man to life; without it the earth holds nothing but 
 death and perdition. The man without love is without hope. 
 He who is a slave to envy, hatred, and anger, falls into 
 despair. A man's best powers forsake him if he love not his 
 brother, and he cannot love his brother if he have no rever- 
 
92 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 ence for God. And thus the forgetfulness of God is a cause 
 of weakness and death." 
 
 Page 167. " Oh, my country, may you be enabled to recog- 
 nize that it is the domestic virtues which determine the 
 haj^piness of a nation." 
 
 Page 171. " On the throne and in the cottage man has 
 an equal need of religion, and becomes the most wretched 
 being on the earth if he forget God." 
 
 Page 173. " See what a mortal man is without God ; 
 he has nothing on earth because he hopes for nothing in 
 heaven ; whereas he who fears God has everything on earth 
 because he hopes for everything in heaven." 
 
 Page 209. " The child at his mother's breast is the weak- 
 est and most dependent of human creatures, and yet he is 
 already receiving the first moral impressions of love and 
 gratitude." 
 
 Page 211. "Morality is nothing but a result of the de- 
 velopment in the child of these first sentiments of love and 
 gratitude. 
 
 " The first development of the child's powers should come 
 from his participation in the work of his home, for this work 
 is necessarily what the parents understand best, what most 
 absorbs their attention, and what they are most competent to 
 teach. 
 
 " But even if this were not so, work undertaken to supply 
 real needs would be just as truly the surest foundation of a 
 good education. 
 
 " To engage the attention of the child, to exercise his judg- 
 ment, to open his heart to noble sentiments, is, I think, the 
 chief end of education ; and how can this end be reached so 
 surely as by training the child as early as possible in the 
 various daily duties of domestic life ? 
 
 11 Nothing makes a greater call on the attention than work 
 in general, because without close attention no work can be 
 well done ; but this is especially time of work which children 
 can do in a house, for it varies continually, and in a thou- 
 sand ways, and compels them to fix their attention on a great 
 number of different objects. 
 
 " Further, it is by doing all sorts of work at an early age 
 that a man acquires a sound judgment ; for if his work is to 
 succeed, the different circumstances under which it has to be 
 done must be thoroughly understood ; nor can the child help 
 
PESTALOZZI THE WRITER. 93 
 
 being struck by the fact that failure results from errors in 
 judgment. 
 
 " Finally, work is also the best means of ennobling the 
 heart of man, and of preparing him for all the domestic and 
 social virtues. For, to teach a child obedience, unselfishness, 
 and patience, I do not think anything can be better than 
 work in which he engages regularly with the rest of the 
 family. 
 
 " As a general rule, art and books would not replace it in 
 any way. The best story, the most touching picture the 
 child finds in a book, is but a sort of dream for him, some- 
 thing unreal, and in a sense untrue ; whereas what takes 
 place before his eyes, in his own house, is associated with 
 a thousand similar occurrences, with all his own experience 
 as well as that of his parents and neighbours, and brings him 
 without fail to a true knowledge of men, and develops in 
 him a thoroughly observant mind." 
 
 We must now quote a passage from the Swiss News, in 
 which we find the first trace of a thought that became the 
 fundamental principle of Pestalozzi's method of education, 
 the analogy, that is, between the development of the moral 
 and intellectual man, and the physical development of the 
 plant ; in other words, the organism of education. 
 
 In volume i., page 407, we read : 
 
 " Summer evening ! Who can describe thee, when thou 
 comest at last, after a day of oppressive heat ? Everything 
 that breathes rejoices in thy freshness ; everything that 
 breathes has need of thee. The roe leaves his hiding-place 
 in the forest to graze and breathe more freely in the open. 
 The flocks, too, gambol with enjoyment in the cool pastures, 
 and man, weary with the heat of the day, lies down till the 
 sun return. 
 
 " Summer day ! Teach this worm that crawls on the earth 
 that the fruits of life are formed amid the heat and storms 
 of our globe, but that to ripen, they have need of the gentle 
 rains, the glittering dew, and the refreshing rest of night. 
 Teach me, summer day, that man, formed from the dust of 
 the earth, grows and ripens like the plant rooted in the soil." 
 
 One more quotation from the Siviss Neivs and we have 
 done. In a few lines towards the end of the introduction, 
 
94 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 Pestalozzi paints one of the most touching and original 
 features of his own character. He had been reproached with 
 being still somewhat of a child, and he replies : 
 
 " I hope to remain so to the grave ; it is so pleasant to be 
 still a child, to believe, to trust, to love, to be sorry for your 
 mistakes and folly, to be better and simpler than knaves and 
 rogues, and at last, by their very wickedness, wiser. It is 
 pleasant to think nothing but good of men, in spite of all 
 you see and hear, to still believe in the human heart, even 
 though you may be deceived every day, and to forgive the 
 wise as well as the foolish of this world, when each, in his 
 own way, would lead you astray." 
 
 The two volumes of the Swiss Neivs are certainly one of 
 the most remarkable productions of Pestalozzi's genius ; the 
 richness, originality, and independence of his thought, free 
 as yet from all foreign influence, are there displayed in all 
 their fulness. 
 
 We have said that the paper was chiefly concerned with 
 education. At first sight this does not seem true, but the 
 fact is that the author is considering the broad question of 
 the general education of humanity in its relation to man- 
 ners and customs, social systems and governments, and hence 
 politics occupy a large share of his attention. 
 
 But Pestalozzi was asking for reforms, and reforms were 
 distasteful to the educated portion of his readers. Amongst 
 other things, he advocated the abolition of capital punish- 
 ment, a measure which, thanks to the Grand Duke Leopold, 
 had already had good results in Tuscany, but for which 
 Switzerland perhaps was not yet ready. However this may 
 have been, subscribers began to fall off, and at the end of 
 the first year the paper had to be discontinued. 
 
 With the fourth volume of Leonard and Gertrude, 
 published in 1787, closes the first series of Pestalozzi's 
 writings. Ten years of silence are about to follow, in the 
 course of which the great French Revolution will be accom- 
 plished, giving a new phase to the literary activity of the 
 philosopher of education. Let us pause, then, a moment, and 
 examine the position he had now reached. 
 
 The starting-point of his work had been his pity for the 
 poor. He had seen that the evil cannot be cured either 
 
PESTALOZZI THE WRITER. 95 
 
 by charity, legislation or preaching. Education seemed to 
 him the only effective remedy, but he saw that an education 
 was wanted which, based upon the child's daily life, should 
 set in action ail the powers for good contained in germ in his 
 nature, and keep him continually employed. This is why he 
 wished to combine instruction with manual labour, feeling 
 that such a combination, if made living and attractive, would 
 be not only a means of livelihood, but a strengthening and 
 salutary exercise for heart, mind, and body. 
 
 Having failed in his attempt to give the world a practical 
 example of this method of regeneration, he tried to make it 
 known by his writings, and explained it in such a way as to 
 make it clear, he thought, to everybody, and capable of being 
 carried out in every village and every family. But then 
 various obstacles occurred to him : first, the mechanical 
 methods of education and religion, then custom and prejudice, 
 and various other hindrances which were more or less con- 
 nected with the social and political system of his time. It 
 is these last obstacles that he is attacking every time he 
 touches on politics. 
 
 As for the mechanical methods of education which were 
 generally in use at that time, they disgusted the child with 
 work, filled his head with nothing but words, and left him 
 incapable of doing anything without help. Pestalozzi's object 
 was to find a simple, natural, efficacious system to replace 
 them. The search for such a system had already occupied 
 him a long time. It became more and more the chief work 
 of his life, and finally ended in the reform which has immor- 
 talized his name. 
 
 At the time of which we speak, he had already recognized 
 several very important principles of his method. For instance, 
 the true starting-point is in personal impressions, whether 
 physical or moral. Words, rules, and regulations should not 
 come till afterwards. Hence, practice in talking before 
 reading. For the child, religious impressions, prayers, 
 reading of the Bible, but no catechism, no dogmatic teaching. 
 His tendency to compare the education of the child to the 
 development of the plant was already visible, and this com- 
 parison, which is profoundly true, implies the idea of organic 
 development not only in the physical man, but in the intel- 
 lectual and moral man. And this idea is just what distin- 
 guishes Pestalozzi from those who preceded him ; the old 
 
ç6 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 school professed to build up upon a child a complete structure 
 of knowledge and morality ; the new contents itself with 
 merely giving the necessary support, direction, and means 
 of activity to the child's faculties, which, left to develop by 
 themselves, will produce a perfect man. 
 
 After 1787, Pestalozzi remained ten years without pub- 
 lishing anything. The chief reason of this silence was the 
 necessity for providing food for his family, for, notwithstand- 
 ing the success of his first book, his writing did not enable 
 him to live. In the first place, he was writing for an idea, 
 and not for the public taste ; and, in the second, if a man 
 is to make money, even as a writer, he must possess a certain 
 commercial aptitude, which, as we know, Pestalozzi was 
 entirely without. Lavater was perfectly right when he said 
 to Mrs. Pestalozzi : " If I were a prince, I would consult 
 your husband on everything connected with the improvement 
 and happiness of my people, but I would not entrust him 
 with a single farthing to spend." Indeed, after publishing 
 all the books we have mentioned, Pestalozzi was just as poor 
 as ever. He had, however, recovered his health and strength, 
 and now, for the sake of his wife and child, he set to work 
 again on his land, with his wonted energy and enthusiasm. 
 But his attention was soon diverted by the French Revo- 
 lution which had just burst upon the world, and which 
 he was inclined at first to consider a fortunate circumstance, 
 and likely to remove many an obstacle to the reforms he was 
 meditating. A short essay on the causes of the Révolution 
 which he wrote at this time remained unpublished till 1872, 
 when it was discovered by Seyffarth and printed at the end 
 of the sixteenth and last volume of his edition of Pestalozzi's 
 works. Pestalozzi had given the manuscript to Mrs. Niederer, 
 who, at her husband's death, had given it to Krusi, whose 
 son, Doctor Gr. Krusi, entrusted it to Seyffarth. Mrs. Niederer 
 herself had originally intended to publish it, and in 1846 had 
 written an introduction, in the course of which occurs the 
 following striking passage : 
 
 " Pestalozzi, the enthusiast and prophet, whose whole long 
 and troubled life was spent in the cause of education, once 
 said to me : 
 
 " * In another fifty years, when these times have passed 
 away and a new generation has taken our place, when Europe 
 
PESTALOZZI THE WRITER. 97 
 
 has been so undermined by a repetition of the same mistakes, 
 and by the terrible consequences of the ever-increasing 
 misery of the people, that the very foundations of society are 
 shaken, then perhaps will the lesson of my life at last be 
 understood, then will the wisest come to see that it is only 
 by ennobling men that an end can be put to the discontent 
 and suffering of the people, and to the abuses of despotism, 
 whether on the part of the many or the few.' 
 
 " For twenty years now the earth has covered the mortal 
 remains of this remarkable man, and more than half a century 
 has elapsed since he wrote down his inmost convictions in 
 this essay. 
 
 " If he did not publish it in his lifetime, it must undoubt- 
 edly have been because there was then some danger in 
 speaking thus openly, and because he was unwilling to im- 
 peril in the least degree the educational work to which he 
 was devoting his life." 
 
 An analysis of the Causes of the French Revolution would 
 take us too far. Pestalozzi's own words, as quoted by Mrs. 
 Niederer, must suffice to show the aim and importance of this 
 short work. 
 
 But although Pestalozzi was attracted to the Revolution 
 at the outset, he was soon shocked by the wild crimes per- 
 petrated in France in the name of the principles of 1789. 
 In his youth he had thrown himself into the local reforms 
 at Zurich with all the ardour of a revolutionary, but now 
 his horror of violent revolutions was no less great than his 
 enthusiasm for peaceful progress. He thus found himself 
 in rather a false position between the opponents and friends 
 of the Revolution, so he merely looked on in silence, and 
 devoted all his energy to the cultivation of his land. 
 
 During this long period Pestalozzi only left Neuhof twice. In 
 1792 he went to Leipsic to see his sister married, and turned 
 the occasion to advantage by visiting several German Training 
 Schools, with which, however, he was not at all satisfied. It 
 was at this time also that he made the acquaintance of Klop- 
 stock, Goethe, Wieland, Herder, and Jacobi. About a year 
 later he passed a few months at Éichterswyl with his mother's 
 brother, Doctor Hotz, from whose house he addressed to his 
 friend Mcolovius, of Berlin, the letter which has so often been 
 quoted to prove that he was not a Christian. 
 
98 PESTAL0ZZ1 : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 This friend of the poor and destitute, who had ruined him- 
 self at Neuhof in his attempt to come to their rescue, found 
 in Nicolovius a man who, being in thorough sympathy with 
 his views, and warmly attached to the cause that he himself 
 had so vainly sought to help, seemed likely to render him 
 valuable assistance. The two men thus became great friends, 
 Pestalozzi telling the other all that was in his heart. 
 
 "We translate the whole of Pestalozzi's letter, as much of it, 
 that is, as has ever been published. It will be seen that in 
 his simple-mindedness and extreme conscientiousness he judges 
 himself with unnecessary severity. This, however, is not the 
 only occasion on which he did himself a similar injustice. 
 
 " Richterswyl, October ls£, 1793. 
 
 " My friend ! Lost in the torrent of my life, I have drunk 
 but little at those pure sources whence the wisest and best 
 men draw such Divine strength when they make the sanctifi- 
 cation of their being the first concern of their lives. My 
 work, alas ! is all sullied by love of self and vulgar desires. 
 
 "It is true that from my youth up I have always been 
 eager and zealous for all that is good, but the mire of the 
 world through which I had to make my way had another law 
 that I knew not, and for which I was unprepared, so that at 
 the critical moment of my maturity I was laden beyond my 
 strength, unsettled and thrown out of harmony with myself. 
 And so I followed the dead path of my century, wavering 
 between my feeling, which led me to religion, and my judg- 
 ment, which kept me away, and letting my heart's religious 
 ardour cool, without, however, deciding against religion. 
 
 "In the matter of God's relations with man, I like neither 
 the poor wisdom of books, nor the observation of angles by 
 which Lavater sought to supplement it. Truth, indeed, lay 
 hidden within husks which repelled me, and as I did not find 
 that it brought men any certain comfort or satisfaction, I 
 gradually lost the essential strength that the fear of God lends 
 to calm and noble souls. And so, feeling that I was lacking 
 in all that most purifies our human powers, the stupefaction 
 that followed my short-lived dream of education entirely 
 destroyed my peace of mind, and deprived me of my inward 
 strength. My mistakes in administration in this matter long 
 kept me the slave of an error, or rather of a half-truth, of 
 
PESTALOZZI THE WRITER. 99 
 
 wliicli I had made an idol, and in the unspeakable sorrow 
 which was the consequence of this idolatry, vanished what 
 little strength of religious feeling I had ever had. 
 
 " I cannot then and must not hide the fact that truth, as 
 I apprehend it, is founded upon the earth, and is far from 
 reaching the sublime heights to which faith and love can raise 
 humanity. You know Grlulphi's 1 opinion ; it is also mine. 
 I doubt, not because I look on doubt as the truth, but because 
 the sum of the impressions of my life has driven faith, with 
 its blessings, from my soul. 
 
 il Thus impelled by my fate, I see nothing more in Chris- 
 tianity than the purest and noblest teaching of the victory 
 of the spirit over the flesh, the one possible means of raising 
 our nature to its true nobility, or, in other words, of establish- 
 ing the empire of the reason over the senses by the develop- 
 ment of the purest feelings of the heart. 
 
 " That is what I take to be the essence of Christianity, but 
 I do not think many men are capable, from their nature, of 
 becoming true Christians ; in fact, I believe men in general 
 to be as incapable of reaching this true nobility as of worthily 
 wearing an earthly crown. 
 
 "I believe Christianity to be the salt of the earth; but 
 however highly I value this salt, I believe that gold, stone, 
 sand, and pearls have an independent value, and that every- 
 thing must be considered in itself. I believe even that the 
 very mire of the earth has its laws and legitimate rights quite 
 independently of Christianity ; and though I am well aware 
 of the narrowness of my point of view when, in my search for 
 truth, I limit my investigations to these laws and these 
 rights, my voice still seems to me like a voice crying in the 
 wilderness to prepare a way for Him who is to come. Some- 
 times, indeed, I seem scarcely to know either what I am doing, 
 or whither I tend, and yet I find myself irresistibly driven 
 to say what I do ; and however much I may suffer from the 
 fatal circle which encompasses me, and from which there is 
 no escape, everything I say is at least in earnest. I stop then 
 far short of the perfection of my own character, and know 
 nothing of the heights to which I foresee that humanity may 
 some day rise. But enough for the present, my friend, of 
 the defects of my Christianity. . . . 
 
 1 In Leonard and Gertrude. 
 
ioo PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 "I am at présentât Richterswyl. Doctor Hotz has left 
 home for some months, and during his absence I am staying 
 in his house, with no business to attend to, and no one to 
 disturb me. Rejoice, my friend, at the happiness which is 
 to be mine for a time." 
 
 It was now that Pestalozzi began his correspondence with 
 Fellenberg, the celebrated founder of the Hofwyl institutions. 
 His letters give us valuable information as to the view he 
 took of the French Revolution, and as to the hopes, and more 
 especially the fears, with which it filled him for Switzerland. 
 Fellenberg had just the qualities which Pestalozzi lacked; 
 he was practical, prudent, firm, and a good administrator. 
 Could these two men have worked steadily together, the 
 success of the philanthropic enterprises in which they were 
 both engaged would probably have been ensured ; but even 
 their great friendship was powerless to keep two such different 
 natures long in harmony. Pestalozzi's generous enthusiasm 
 was wounded by Fellenberg's cold reasoning, and the almost 
 rustic simplicity of the Zurich democrat accorded but ill with 
 the somewhat ostentatious dignity of the Bernese patrician. 
 Fellenberg several times offered him help in his troubles, but 
 the perfect sympathy and understanding which alone would 
 have made it possible for the two men to undertake a work 
 in common never existed between them. 
 
 The letters we are about to quote were written between 
 the years 1792 and 1794. They have a special interest from 
 the fact that no cloud having }^et arisen between the two 
 friends, Pestalozzi speaks quite openly of all that is in his 
 mind. 
 
 Pestalozzi to Fellenberg. 
 
 " Neuhof, September lbtJi, 1792. 
 
 11 Dear and noble friend ! Thank you once more for the 
 many proofs you have given me of your friendship. I am 
 greatly rejoiced at the thought of spending a few weeks with 
 you at the beginning of November. Between now and then 
 the fate of France will be decided. If she is beaten, we shall 
 be better able than now to judge of what is really important 
 to humanity in her affairs ; if she still resists, her very faults 
 will be forgiven by those in whom they now excite such 
 unreasonable fury. In either case the world will gain some- 
 
PESTAL0ZZ1 THE WRITER. 101 
 
 thing ; and if France is worthy of liberty, she will certainly 
 have it. . . . 
 
 "I am informed that several members of the National 
 Assembly have been told that, in the present passionate excite- 
 ment of the French people, nobody could point out to them 
 the truths they stand in need of better than I could ; but I 
 doubt whether I could do any good." 
 
 " Neahof, October 4th, 1792. 
 
 " I agree with you entirely on the points you mention. 
 And yet I think it very important to persuade France of the 
 harm that would result to herself and the good cause from 
 any hostile action against us ; it would be much worse than 
 she thinks, and than people, carried away by passion, care 
 to tell her. You know I am not one of these. All my life 
 I have ardently desired the emancipation of the people, and 
 yet no one was ever more firmly convinced than I am that it 
 can only be brought about by preserving all the conditions 
 of public order. 
 
 " I can quite see that such manifestations by Switzerland 
 as you speak of might do great good to the country ; and after 
 the last declarations of the French, I am inclined to think 
 that something of the sort might be necessary. I very much 
 wish we could talk the matter over. Be quite happy about 
 me, my friend ; I am more than prudent, I am innocent, and, 
 in the face of my innocence, suspicions would only confound 
 those who were suspicious. My country has no more faithful 
 citizen than I, but my opinion in matters that concern the 
 true welfare of humanity is to be bought by no man, either 
 French or Swiss. 
 
 " My agriculture swallows up all my time. I am longing 
 for winter, with its leisure. My time passes like a shadow, 
 and though my experience may be ripening, I am prematurely 
 losing the power of expressing my ideas. I impatiently long 
 for rest, and a cell where I should be free from cares. 
 Here I am never free from weariness and disturbance." 
 
 " NeuJiof, November 19th, 1792, 
 
 " It is notorious, too, in my part of the country that I am a 
 1 Nationalist,' and am going to Paris. A few women, friends 
 of the clergy in the neighbourhood, cross themselves when 
 
io2 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 they meet the heretical democrat. I quietly await the result 
 of the calumnies to which this will probably give rise. And 
 yet Leonard and Gertrude will always be a proof that I 
 almost wore myself out in my efforts to save the aristocracy. — 
 as much of it, that is, as was worth saving. My trouble, 
 however, only excited ingratitude, so much so, indeed, that 
 that excellent man, the Emperor Leopold, spoke of me before 
 he died as a good Abbé de Saint Pierre. After all, nobody 
 can help those who will not help themselves, and there is 
 nothing commoner than to see people who have been the cause 
 of their own ruin trying to save themselves by meanness and 
 falsehood." 
 
 " NeuJwf, December bth, 1792. 
 
 " I want a talk with you very badly, and shall certainly 
 come to Berne at the beginning of next year. I am already 
 rejoicing at the prospect. I have decided to render France 
 what assistance I can by writing on several points of legis- 
 lation. . . . The last news from Berne as to the danger 
 of an attack on our country is more reassuring. I am all 
 the more glad, because I fancy I am right in thinking that 
 this war, especially at first, would bring about a split in the 
 Confederation. We cannot, indeed, do too much for the sake 
 of peace, for it is important that we should be in a position 
 to give the people throughout Switzerland as much liberty as 
 will ensure their warm support for all future governments." 
 
 " Richtersivyl, November 15M, 1793. 
 
 11 Thank you for a letter in which your love of good carries 
 you certainly too far. I am but a feeble old man ; there are 
 immense gaps in my knowledge, my intellectual strength is 
 comparatively small, and perhaps my only merit is that in 
 most things my will is not governed by my interests. The 
 little I have done for truth and the happiness of men makes 
 you, in your love for humanity, esteem me more than I 
 deserve. Do not think me ungrateful ; but I know, and 
 indeed ought to know, how weak I am. 
 
 " Ah, my friend, I have lived many years in a state of 
 indescribable misery, and my experience has taught me much ; 
 amongst other things, that Nature herself bids a man look 
 to his own interests and those of his family. My own early 
 education, unfortunately, did not in any way prepare me for 
 
PESTALOZZI THE WRITER. 103 
 
 this duty, and the harm is irreparable. Nor is my son, in 
 this respect, any better off than I am, for I only arrived at 
 a clear and exact idea of the importance of special training 
 for this end when it was too late. But now I have made up 
 my mind that, so long as I am capable of doing so, I shall 
 devote my remaining strength to completing the writings I 
 have begun, and endeavour to make profit by their publica- 
 tion. 
 
 " But, my friend, this will not be an easy matter. In my 
 desire for simplicity, I destroy whole pages of my manu- 
 scripts for every few lines I keep. You would not believe 
 what long and painful efforts many of the passages that seem 
 so simple have cost me. I shall never be quite repaid then 
 for all my trouble, but, thank God, I have never stooped to 
 letting a word stand simply for the sake of being paid for 
 it. It is certain that, from a pecuniary point of view, my 
 system is a very bad one ; but I hope that some day, when I 
 have sufficiently sacrificed myself in this way, a way indeed 
 which is likely to find few imitators amongst my money- 
 loving brethren, I hope, I say, that after a time I shall at 
 last realize some small profit from a complete collection of 
 my writings, which will then have been made as perfect as 
 possible. When that time comes, I shall rely principally 
 upon my friends for co-operation and support. But how can 
 I talk to you at this length on a mere question of money ! 
 
 " And yet, my friend, the happiness of the world largely 
 depends upon its wisdom in these questions, in which I 
 personally have always been one of the greatest fools in the 
 universe. But God grant that in higher matters I may be 
 able to render the services you expect of me. When the 
 book I am at present engaged on is finished, I will come to 
 you. I know that you will be all the better pleased that 
 in my way of treating my subject all personal interest dis- 
 appears, whether in the democracy, the aristocracy, or the 
 monarchy, just as in a statement of the principles of pure 
 Christianity all personal interest in a particular sect should 
 disappear. . . . 
 
 " If you should hear anything certain as to the possibility 
 of peace, I entreat you to send me a line ; for if the war con- 
 tinues, we shall go back at least a generation. In the mean- 
 time let us comfort ourselves by doing our work as if we were 
 ignorant of what is taking place." 
 
io 4 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 " RicJdersicyl) January 16th, 1794. 
 
 " The times in which we live are like those hot summer 
 days in which fruits ripen amid thunder and hail, to the gain 
 of the whole, but to the detriment of certain parts. I am 
 most anxious to see you this spring ; if you do not come here, 
 I shall come to Berne. 
 
 "I am actively engaged in thinking out my new work. 
 What do you think of this : ' Who are those who suffer most, 
 and run the greatest danger in the present state of things ? 
 Is it not those who possess most ? And ought you not chiefly 
 to comfort those who suffer most?' Striking words; but 
 before giving you their history, I should like to have your 
 opinion of them. 
 
 " Fichte is making a commentary on Leonard and Ger- 
 trude, from the point of view of Kant's philosophy. Baggesen 
 urges me to go to Denmark. I often wish I were ten years 
 younger, or rather, that I were still as strong as I was ten 
 years ago. But I mean to make the fullest use of the flying 
 hours, and am grateful to you and to all others who are help- 
 ing me gather up the crumbs of my wasted life. 
 
 " I am very glad to have satisfied myself, from a conversa- 
 tion with Fichte, that my experience has led me to many of 
 the same results as Kant." 
 
 These letters give us an insight into Pestalozzi's life and 
 thought during those ten years of seclusion, when there were 
 neither published writings nor practical undertakings to bear 
 witness to his activity. 
 
 In this correspondence he no longer speaks of his favourite 
 idea of a school for poor children, the failure of his experi- 
 ment being still too recent to allow him to see any possibility 
 of ever meeting with complete success ; his thoughts turn 
 rather to politics and the coming reforms in the institutions 
 of his country, in which he sees help for the realization of 
 his plans for the happiness of the people. 
 
 We see that he even hopes sometimes to induce France to 
 listen to him, and by the influence of his ideas make measures 
 for the reform of public education one of the fruits of the 
 Revolution. This hope would seem presumptuous did we 
 not know that it was to some extent justified by a decree of 
 the National Assembly, which, on Sunday, the 27th of August, 
 1792, had solemnly declared citizens of the French Republic 
 
PESTALOZZI THE WRITER. T05 
 
 all the men of that time who were distinguished for their 
 efforts on behalf of humanity. Pestalozzi was amongst the 
 number, with Benthani, Payne, Wilberforce, Clarkson, Wash- 
 ington, Madison, Klopstock, Kosciusko, and others. 
 
 Pestalozzi's relations with Fichte, of which mention is made 
 in these letters to Pellenberg, were much more intimate than 
 has generally been supposed. Eichte had married a very old 
 friend of Mrs. Pestalozzi's, and as he often stayed in Zurich, 
 a great friendship had sprung up between the two thinkers, 
 who, in 1794, spent several days together at BichterswyL 
 We shall see that the relations which thus existed between 
 the German philosopher and the Swiss philanthropist, contri- 
 buted in no small degree to the subsequent appreciation in 
 Germany of the principles and work of the great educational 
 reformer. 
 
 In his letters to Pellenberg, Pestalozzi often speaks of cer- 
 tain writings, to which, in spite of many difficulties, he is 
 in the habit of devoting all the leisure left him by his 
 agriculture. These works, published in 1797, were his 
 Fables and his Inquiry into the Course of Nature in the 
 Development of the Human Race. Both are distinguished 
 from his other books by a very marked political tendency. 
 The former first appeared under the curious title of Figures 
 for my ABC Book, a name Pestalozzi had given to Leonard 
 and Gertrude, because it contained, as he said, the A B of 
 wisdom for the people. The figures he now adds to it are 
 short apologues, intended to give body, as it were, to its 
 moral teaching. The title of Fables only appeared in the 
 second edition, published at Basle, in 1803, and is scarcely 
 suitable to the nature of the work. 
 
 There are as many as two hundred and thirty-nine of these 
 so-called fables, all in prose, nearly all very short, and all 
 containing some striking and original truth bearing on 
 morality, education, society, or politics. In reading the book, 
 we are struck by the author's imagination no less than by his 
 power of observation and reflection. To give some idea of 
 the fables, we cannot do better than append a few : 
 
 8. The Grass and the Mushroom. 
 
 The Mushroom said to the Grass, " I grow in an instant, 
 but you take a whole year." " True," replied the Grass, 
 9 
 
io6 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 " whilst I am acquiring my value, you, in your uselessness, 
 may come and go a hundred times." 
 
 26. The Two Colts. 
 
 Two colts, as like as two eggs, fell into different hands. 
 One was bought by a peasant, whose only thought was to 
 harness it to his plough as soon as possible ; this one turned 
 out a bad horse. The other fell to the lot of a man who, by 
 looking after it well, and training it carefully, made a noble 
 steed of it, strong and mettlesome. 
 
 Fathers and mothers, if your children's faculties are not 
 carefully trained and directed aright, they will become not 
 only useless, but hurtful, and the greater the faculties, the 
 greater the danger. 
 
 53. A Fool's Fountain. 
 
 The fountain of a poor, vain fool having run almost dry, 
 he told his servant to stop the pipe when there was no one 
 near, but to let it run on the approach of strangers. " That 
 will only make the fountain worse," answered the servant, 
 u and there will often be no water just when it is most 
 needed." To which his master replied, " I can bear anything 
 so long as people do not know that my fountain is dry." 
 
 72. The Oak and the Grass 
 
 Said the Grass to the Oak, under whose shade it grew, " I 
 should thrive better in the open than under your shelter." 
 " Ungrateful one ! " exclaimed the Oak, " you forget that 
 every winter I cover you with my leaves." " What ! " cried 
 the Grass, " your proud branches rob me of sun, dew, and 
 rain ; your roots of the nourishment of the soil ; and yet you 
 would have me grateful for the forced alms of a few withered 
 leaves, which serve rather to foster your own growth than 
 prevent my decay ! " 
 
 74. The Crumbling Eock. 
 
 A rock, which for centuries had sheltered cattle from sun 
 and rain, was crumbling with age. Day after day pieces 
 broke off, and fell upon the animals, till at last they fled from 
 the place where they had formerly loved to rest. But the 
 old herdsman, half blind and half deaf, could not understand 
 
PESTALOZZI THE WRITER. 107 
 
 what had happened, and thought they had been bewitched by 
 an enemy. 
 
 It is sad to see the old shelters becoming dangerous ruins ; 
 sadder still to see the leaders of the people failing to under- 
 stand the danger. . 
 
 86. The Interior of the Hill. 
 
 À simpleton, seeing a hill covered with beautiful verdure, 
 thought that it must be good earth right through ; but a man 
 who knew the place took him to a spot where the interior 
 was exposed, and it was nothing but rock and gravel. 
 
 The hills of the earth, however green and fertile they may 
 be, have nearly always a hard, barren subsoil. Similarly, 
 men, however noble in heart and mind, are seldom without 
 strata of rock and gravel in the flesh. 
 
 Even when outward appearances are most beautiful, and 
 most rich in power, honour, and dignity, shut in below the 
 surface are the vices of our nature. Hence, however high a 
 man may be placed, he must give ear to the precept : "Watch 
 and pray, lest ye enter into temptation ; for the spirit truly 
 is willing, but the flesh is weak," 
 
 92. The Lime-tree and the King. 
 
 A King, who was standing alone under a lime-tree, was 
 struck by the beauty of its foliage, and exclaimed : " Would that 
 my subjects held to me as these leaves hold to thy branches!" 
 
 The Tree answered him : " I am for ever carrying the sap 
 of my roots to each of my leaves." 
 
 97. A Simpleton's Judgment. 
 
 Some magnificent poplars and a few scrubby, undersized 
 oaks grew by the side of the same stream. Simple Simon 
 therefore concluded that the poplar makes good wood, and 
 the oak bad. 
 
 I know teachers who judge of their scholars, pastors of 
 their flocks, and rulers of those they govern, with no more 
 reason than Simple Simon judged of the merits of the oak 
 and the poplar-tree. 
 
io8 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 101. One of the Bad Effects of Proverbs. 
 
 " It is sad that, in spite of his feelings, a man so often finds 
 himself obliged to be unkind to his horses ! " said a kind- 
 hearted waggoner one day, compelled to hurry his over- 
 burdened beasts. And then gradually he got into the habit 
 of repeating the words with as little thought as Good-morning 
 or Good-night, till at last they became a proverb amongst the 
 waggoners of the country ; and now, any wretched fellow 
 who ill-treats his horses or his oxen, excuses himself with: 
 11 It cannot be otherwise ; a waggoner must be unkind in 
 spite of his feelings." 
 
 116. The Feeling of Equality. 
 
 A shepherd, who fed his sheep rather poorly but all alike, 
 found that, as a rule, they were satisfied. But one day he 
 picked out a dozen for better treatment, and from that 
 moment there was discontent in the flock, and many ewes 
 died of vexation. 
 
 117. The Limit of Equality. 
 
 A Dwarf said to a Giant : " I have the same rights as you." 
 " True, my friend," replied the Giant ; " but you could not 
 walk in my shoes." 
 
 1G0. The Lord and his Vassals. 
 
 " I do a great deal to make you contented and happy," said 
 a great lord to his vassals. " True, true," they replied with 
 one accord, " and we have much to thank you for." One 
 peasant only did not speak. He was silent for a time, and 
 then said : " May I ask my lord a question ? " " Certainly," 
 was the reply. 
 
 Peasant : " I have two fields of corn, one richly manured, 
 but badly cultivated and full of weeds ; the other sparingly 
 manured, but well cultivated and clean. Which will yield 
 me the most ? " 
 
 Lord : " The second, of course, since you have made it 
 possible for the corn to grow freely." 
 
 Peasant : " Well, my lord, if, instead of loading us with 
 gifts, you would be good enough to leave us to manage our 
 own affairs, I think we should be better off." 
 
PESTALOZZI THE WRITER. 109 
 
 176. Why Jupiter made the Lion King. 
 
 The animals stood before Jupiter's throne awaiting his 
 decree, most of them believing and hoping that the elephant 
 would be appointed. The lion had as domineering an air- as 
 though he were king already, but the elephant moved quietly 
 to and fro with the greatest unconcern. 
 
 Suddenly the voice of the lord of the thunder was heard : 
 " The lion is king." 
 
 " My choice surprises you," said Jupiter to the others, who 
 were standing open-mouthed with astonishment ; " you must 
 learn, then, that the elephant needs you not, having intelli- 
 gence and talents enough to be self-sufficing ; but the lion 
 has need of you, and as he is able, at the same time, to make 
 himself respected, I appoint him to be king." 
 
 197. Mephistophel.es Sings the Praises op a Brazen 
 Tongue. 
 
 The princes of hell, assembled in council, complained of 
 the slow progress of the kingdom of lying and injustice. 
 " The violent means," they said, " that our servants employ 
 against our eternal enemies, truth and justice, are absolutely 
 useless. In vain do we make martyrs of the heroic followers 
 of truth, love, and justice ; the more we persecute hell's 
 enemies, the more strength do they seem to gain." 
 
 After a moment's silence, Mephistopheles rose and addressed 
 the assembly: "It is true that our servants do not understand 
 all that is wanted to establish our sway amongst men. They 
 should pursue our enemies not only with fire and sword, but 
 above all with the tongue. They must learn better how to 
 throw dust into men's eyes by empty words ; to twist injustice 
 into justice, and lying into truth; to make straight crooked, 
 and crooked straight ; to pervert the truth in an opponent's 
 mouth even before it is uttered ; to represent all manifesta- 
 tions of goodness, kindness, and love as the contemptible 
 results of human folly and weakness. The sole strength of 
 our enemies lies in the crumbs of love and truth that have 
 fallen to them from heaven ; but this gift is in weak hands, 
 from which, if we be but bold enough of speech, we may 
 wrest it. A clever, brazen tongue cannot be too highly 
 praised, for it is always associated with hatred, injustice, 
 harshness, and lying, which in themselves are quite enough 
 
no PESTAL0ZZ1: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 to destroy the love and truth that heaven has bestowed upon 
 feeble men." 
 
 The whole of hell applauded this speech of the prince, and 
 all the devils obeyed. 
 
 214. How the Animals Understand Liberty. 
 
 King Lion one day asked his subjects what they meant 
 when they talked of liberty. 
 
 Said the ox: "I should think it the most desirable liberty 
 to be never fastened to the yoke, but always to the manger." 
 
 Said the monkey : " I shall never think nryself free so 
 long as I have a tail and a hairy skin. Without these 
 disadvantages I should be quite free, for I should be a man." 
 
 Said the draught horse : " I feel free when my harness is 
 taken off, and I have nothing at all to carry." 
 
 Said the carrriage horse : "When I am magnificently har- 
 nessed, and drag a fine carriage for a short distance, I 
 sometimes feel freer than the noble lord behind me." 
 
 Said the ass : " To be free is never to have either sack or 
 basket upon your back." 
 
 Said the sloth : " If, when I have devoured all the leaves 
 on my branch, somebody would be good enough to carry me 
 to another and put me within reach of the leaves I so much 
 enjoy, I should be free indeed." 
 
 Said the fox : " And I should be free if my prey did no 
 cost me so much fear, cunning, and patience." 
 
 A man overheard all this and cried : " Surely none but 
 animals can wish for this sort of liberty." He was right : 
 every wish for such liberty as is only fit for animals stifles 
 in a man's soul all true sense of real liberty. 
 
 In this same year, 1797, in which the first edition of 
 the Fables appeared, Pestalozzi published his Inquiry 
 into the Course of Nature in the Development of the 
 Human Race. His aim was to study the law of man's 
 natural development, and by so doing to throw light on 
 certain points of moral and political science, and furnish 
 education with a few fundamental principles. In other 
 words, Pestalozzi sought to give some philosophical colour 
 to the views he was endeavouring to spread, and which he 
 had hitherto rather felt than proved to be true. 
 
 In his previous writings he had either described concrete 
 
PESTA LOZZI THE WRITER. ni 
 
 facts or proclaimed isolated truths ; but in the book we are 
 now considering he undertakes a serious philosophical 
 inquiry, with a view to building up such a sound and com- 
 plete system as will explain and justify his views, and at 
 the same time give them a centre and unity. 
 
 This new method was not much to Pestalozzi's taste, nor 
 was it in accordance with the general bent of his mind ; it 
 is probable indeed that he would never have adopted it, 
 had he not been persuaded by his friend Fichte, the philo- 
 sopher, who, accustomed to generalizations, urged the Swiss 
 philanthropist to formulate the philosophical principle 
 which was at the root of his teaching and plans. Fichte 
 even gave him certain directions for the work, to which 
 Pestalozzi devoted himself for three years with incredible 
 zeal and assiduity. 
 
 The Inquiry is the most important book published by 
 Pestalozzi, but it is also the most unsatisfactory. The very 
 qualities which are so essential in a work of this kind — 
 method and order — are sadly lacking ; there are far too many 
 unnecessary and tedious developments, and the whole book 
 is prolix and obscure. The result was that it met with no 
 success, as the author himself tells us in How Gertrude 
 Teaches her Children, published in 1801. The passage is 
 as follows : 
 
 " For three years I took immense pains with my In- 
 quiry j my chief object being to co-ordinate my favourite 
 ideas, and bring my natural sentiments into harmony with 
 my views on civil law and morality. But my work was 
 but another proof of my incapacity. . . . 
 
 " And so I reaped no more than I had sown. My book 
 had no more effect than my previous labours, nobody under- 
 stood me, and there was not a man who did not give me to 
 understand that he considered the whole work a jumble of 
 nonsense. Only to-day even, a man of some distinction, and 
 a friend, said to me : * Surely, Pestalozzi, you see now that 
 in writing that book you did not really know what you 
 meant.' " 
 
 Niederer, however, who was afterwards so intimately as- 
 sociated with Pestalozzi, judged differently. Early in 1801 
 he wrote to the author as follows : 
 
ii2 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 " Your Inquiry strikes me as a rough but solid product 
 of that psychological intuition which is peculiar to you; 
 and so little does it seem to me to be nonsense, that I look 
 upon it as containing a most valuable discovery, what in- 
 deed I may call the germ of your whole educational method. 
 Your ideas are so profound and suggestive that I wish you 
 could find enough quiet leisure to arrange them somewhat 
 more clearly ; but you must not attempt this till you have 
 put your educational work on a satisfactory basis. 1 The 
 expression of your views will then probably be more general 
 and complete, and more intelligible to men who are still 
 unfamilar with the new point of view you have thrown open 
 to us." 
 
 After having carefully studied this book, we have come to 
 very much the same conclusion as Niederer. It certainly 
 contains many suggestive truths, not j^et generally recog- 
 nized, which go far to explain some of the apparent con- 
 tradictions in the life of the individual and of humanity, 
 which might help to solve the political and social problems 
 that torment our age, and which afford a broad and solid 
 basis for Pestalozzi's method of education. But with all 
 this, the book, if it is to be really useful, must be rewritten ; 
 and since the author did not follow Niederer's advice, 
 some capable man is wanted, first to saturate himself with 
 Pestalozzi's ideas, and then to restate them, and make of 
 this nonsense, as it has been called, a new work, clearer 
 and more systematic than the original, and leading to more 
 definite conclusions. 
 
 After what we have said, it is evident that we cannot 
 here attempt an analysis of the book. It will be enough to 
 give a general notion of the subjects it treats, and cite a few 
 of the most striking ideas. Pestalozzi's aim may be best 
 stated in his own words : 
 
 "The contradictions which apparently exist in human 
 nature affect very few people so keenly as they affect me. 
 Even when I was beginning to grow old, I felt the same 
 need that I had always felt of some sort of free and useful 
 
 1 This letter was written just after Pestalozzi had started his institu- 
 tion at Burgdorf. 
 
PESTALOZZI THE WRITER. 113 
 
 activity, and this in spite of the fact that my activity has 
 always been vain and sterile and productive of little con- 
 tentment. 
 
 " But now at last I feel tired and sit down to rest, and 
 yet I am thankful to say that though my heart is suffering 
 and downcast, I am still able to ask myself with all the 
 simpleness of a child : What am I, and what is humanity ? 
 What have I done, and what does humanity do ? 
 
 "lam anxious to know what my life, such as it has been, 
 has made of me ; and what life, such as it is, makes of 
 humanity ? 
 
 " I am anxious to find out the real sources of my activity 
 and of the opinions which have resulted naturally from the 
 circumstances in which I have been placed. 
 
 " I am anxious also to find out the real sources of the 
 activity of my race, and of the opinions which result 
 naturally from the circumstances in which men are placed." 
 
 After having thus stated the philosophical problem, the 
 author recognizes three different tendencies in himself, 
 three natures, three distinct men as it were : the animal 
 man, the social man, and the moral man. 
 
 The animal man is the work of Nature, a slave to the 
 pleasures of sense, careless of the morrow, thinking only of 
 to-day ; but kindly, simple, and straightforward in his ways. 
 He predominates in the infancy of the individual as in that 
 of humanity. v 
 
 The weakness of the animal man, however, leads him to 
 engage in industry, and industry produces property, and 
 property strife. Gradually, too, differences in power and 
 capability produce differences in position, and the less 
 fortunate are compelled to appeal to the powerful for pro- 
 tection, to the thoughtful for guidance, and to the rich for 
 food, and so the social state begins. 
 
 The social man is not merely the work of Nature ; he is 
 also, and in a much greater degree, the work of society, for 
 it is society that makes him what he is by limiting his 
 liberty and by subjecting him to rule, custom, and opinion. If 
 childhood may be taken as a fairly correct image of the ani- 
 mal man, adolescence may be taken as that of the social man, 
 for it is upon the youth that teachers and professors, schools 
 and universities, lay hands to fashion him to their liking, 
 
ii4 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 But tlie animal man is restless under the control of the 
 social man, and so everybody tries to preserve for himself 
 the liberty he denies to others, and pleasures that cannot 
 be shared by all. And thus society, that aimed at putting 
 an end to strife, has only changed its form and made it 
 more general. The employment of force being forbidden, a 
 hundred other ways of attack have been found, and an- 
 tagonism has become so general that in civilized States every 
 man is on his guard against every other. The kindliness 
 and straightforwardness of the animal man have dis- 
 appeared, and have been replaced in the social man by ill- 
 will and cunning. 
 
 Society has need of laws and government, and must 
 therefore allow its rulers that right of force which is denied to 
 the individual. Thus the social state, bringing with it on the 
 one hand a spirit of dominion, and on the other a state of 
 subjection, indefinitely increases men's natural inequalities 
 as well as their pride and ambition, and the smothered 
 strife that goes on throughout society has no longer for 
 cause the simple desire to satisfy legitimate needs, but 
 rather the pursuit of a number of refined artificial pleasures, 
 limitless as the dreams of a diseased imagination. 
 
 The social state, then, in spite of its immense advantages 
 for the progress of order, security, industry, science, and 
 art, is powerless to improve the heart of man ; nay, even 
 religion itself, in so far as it is only a part of a social 
 system, is like a mould which does but shape the surface. 
 The moral man is not, therefore, the work of society. 
 
 The animal man is the work of Nature, the social man the 
 work of society, but the moral man must be the work of 
 himself — the result, that is, of the development and exercise 
 of the sentiments of pity and justice, love and gratitude, 
 faith and charity, which the Creator has set in the human 
 soul. Each individual must have the desire to be higher, 
 nobler, and better, and must endeavour to make himself so 
 by working upon his own character. The result of such 
 work is the moral man, and society is only really and 
 entirely beneficial when it is composed of men of this sort. 
 
 True religion exists for the moral man alone ; for man 
 can only find God by the searchings of his own heart, and 
 in so far as he still preserves God's image in himself. "When 
 this image is no longor there, he makes a god in his own 
 
PESTALOZZI THE WRITER. 115 
 
 image. The religion of the animal man is idolatry, and of 
 the social man deceit ; but the religion of the moral man is 
 truth, the principle and stay of all morality, and gives him 
 not only the desire for unceasing self-improvement, but the 
 means of carrying it out. 
 
 A man's progress is real, and his activity of value to 
 himself, his family, and society, only when he is self-formed; 
 for then only is all that he possesses really his own, then 
 only has he a distinct individuality, with heart and mind 
 no longer the slaves either of animal instincts or of the 
 prejudices of society. 
 
 The foregoing sketch will give but a very imperfect idea 
 of the Inquiry, for we have done little more than point out 
 the general plan of the work, whereas it is in the digressions 
 and developments that we often find the author's most 
 striking ideas. Often, too, when he is led by his feelings and 
 imagination either to satirize the institutions of his time, 
 or paint in glowing colours the moral and intellectual pro- 
 gress to which he aspires, the philosopher is lost in the 
 poet, and we come upon page after page of the most lofty 
 eloquence. The book closes with the following touching 
 reference to himself: 
 
 " Thousands of men (the work of Nature alone) yield to 
 the corruption of sensual pleasures and desire nothing 
 further ; myriads accept the hard bondage of their needle, 
 their hammer, or their crown, and also desire nothing 
 further. 
 
 " I, however, know a man who was not thus contented. 
 The innocence of childhood was his delight, his faith in men 
 was such as is shared by few mortals, his heart was 
 fashioned for friendship, his nature was love itself, con- 
 stancy his chief joy. 
 
 " But as he was not made by the world, the world had 
 no place for him, and finding him thus, without even 
 asking whether the fault was his or another's, crushed him 
 with its iron hammer as the mason crushes a useless stone. 
 
 " But though crushed, he still cared more for humanity 
 than for himself, and set to work on a task from which, 
 amid cruel sorrows, he learned things that few mortals 
 know. Then he looked for justice from those whom in his 
 retirement he still loved, but he was disappointed, for he 
 
n6 PESTAL0ZZ1: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 was judged by men who had not even listened to him, and 
 persistently declared him to be fit for nothing. 
 
 " This was the grain of sand that turned the balance of 
 his fate and was his ruin. 
 
 " He is now no more, and a few confused traces are all 
 that remain of his broken existence. He has fallen, as the 
 green fruit falls from the tree when the cold north wind 
 has smitten its blossom, or the cankerworm gnawed its 
 heart, And as he fell, he leaned his head against the trunk, 
 and murmured : l Yet would I still nourish thy roots with 
 my dust.' Passer-by, give a tear to his memory, and leave 
 this fallen, rotting fruit to strengthen the tree in whose 
 branches it passed its short-lived summer." 
 
 With this book closes the series of works published by 
 Pestalozzi during the period when he was merely a writer, 
 and before he entered upon the educational undertakings 
 in which he applied and developed his method of teach- 
 ing, and which not only brought him many eminent colla- 
 borators, but helped to spread far and wide the fame of the 
 Pestalozzian method. 
 
 Pestalozzi's publications during this period have a peculiar 
 importance, partly because they give their author's ideas 
 free from all foreign alloy, partly because his manuscripts 
 were printed just as they left his pen. 
 
 Afterwards, at Hurgdorf and Yverdun, it was no longer 
 the same, for Pestalozzi, unable to write everything himself, 
 entrusted much of the work connected with his elementary 
 books to some of his collaborators, particularly Krusi and 
 Schmidt. Niederer also helped him in this way, revising all 
 his more important work before publication, with a view to 
 giving it a more philosophical form. 
 
 But none who have studied Pestalozzi can be deceived, 
 the master's style bearing an unmistakable stamp of origin- 
 ality. Pestalozzi sees far and deep, but seldom indulges in 
 general views; his impulsive genius is entirely unsystematic; 
 he sheds no steady light, but breaks out rather in brilliant 
 flashes, following every impulse of his heart and every dis- 
 covery of his genius with little care for logical sequence. 
 This is at once his great merit and his great defect. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PESTALOZZI'S DOCTRINE BEFORE 1798. 
 
 The Swiss Revolution of 1798 divides Pestalozzi's life into 
 two widely different parts. 
 
 In the first, left to himself, he worked alone ; he was little 
 understood ; his undertakings failed, and he lived on in his 
 obscure retreat, poor and despised by everybody. But at the 
 same time there was nothing to check the activity of his 
 thought, or in any way affect the originality of his genius 
 and his ideas. 
 
 In the second part of his life, Pestalozzi, thanks to the 
 Revolution, obtained support from the Swiss Government, 
 and was at last able to carry out his views for the education 
 of the people. His rare devotion and success excited general 
 admiration; offers of helpers and pupils came to him from 
 all sides, and he founded his educational institutions. But 
 after the first outburst of enthusiasm, criticism and envy also 
 made their appearance. The general body of teachers, indeed, 
 manifested considerable opposition to the new method, and 
 numerous attacks were directed against it, which had all to be 
 answered. The consequence of this was that from that time 
 Pestalozzi, having to consider his protectors the magistrates, 
 his collaborators, and the parents of his pupils, was no longer 
 able to preserve the complete independence he had formerly 
 enjoyed. And hence it is important that we should clearly 
 understand what Pestalozzi's doctrine was at the end of this 
 first period of his life, before those undertakings were em- 
 barked upon which brought him glory, it is true, though 
 often, if we may judge from its outward manifestations, at the 
 expense of the independence and originality of his genius. 
 
 In 1797 Pestalozzi was fifty-one years old, and, as we have 
 seen, looked upon himself as a worn-out old man incapable 
 of further effort. And yet his most important work, that 
 
n8 . PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 work which, in spite of not "being entirely free from foreign 
 influences, was in the truest sense the result and development 
 of his past thought and activity, was not even begun. If we 
 examine Pestalozzi's views at the point we have now reached, 
 it will be easier, when we are describing the second part 
 of his life, to distinguish the natural and logical development 
 of these views from the modifications introduced into them by 
 circumstances. 
 
 We have seen that the starting-point of Pestalozzi's work 
 was his search for the means of rescuing the people from 
 their state of poverty and degradation. He soon saw that 
 it is impossible to help the poor, unless the poor are able and 
 willing to help themselves ; that is to say, their material 
 destitution cannot disappear so long as their moral and intel- 
 lectual poverty exists. In other words, the true remedy is 
 education. 
 
 Then, in studying human nature in very young children, 
 he found, even in the families most degraded by poverty, the 
 seed as it were of a wealth of faculties, sentiments, tastes, 
 and capabilities, whose natural development would provide 
 for the satisfaction of all the material, intellectual, and moral 
 needs of society. 
 
 He saw, further, that the ordinary education of his day, 
 instead of looking for these elements of power in the child, 
 in order to develop them by use and encourage a full natural 
 growth of all the child's best faculties, did nothing but put 
 before him the knowledge, ideas, and feelings of others, and 
 try to make him regulate his habits by them, and fix them 
 in his memory. 
 
 Thus the most precious powers of the child wasted in 
 inaction, and education did little more than stifle his indi- 
 viduality beneath a mass of borrowed ideas. 
 
 The direction of the education of the day was from without 
 to within ; Pestalozzi wished to make it from within to without. 
 
 All these ideas are expressed so often and so clearly in the 
 quotations we have given from Pestalozzi's writings, that it 
 seems superfluous to refer to the numerous passages in which 
 they are to be found. It was still necessary, however, to find 
 a way of developing these powers, which exist in the child 
 but in germ, and of strengthening and increasing the bud- 
 ding faculties whose united and harmonious action is to form 
 the perfect man. 
 
PESTALOZZrS DOCTRINE BEFORE 1798. 119 
 
 In his first writing on education, The Evening Hour 
 of a Hermit, printed in 1780, Pestalozzi had said in No. 22 : 
 " Nature develops all the powers of humanity by exercising 
 them ; they increase with use." And, again, in No. 25 : 
 " Thou who wouldst be a father to thy child, do not expect 
 too much of him till his mind has been strengthened by 
 practice in the things he can understand." 
 
 Thus if faculties are to be developed, they must be used ; 
 and before they can be used they must be provided with 
 work within their scope. Hence the importance in all 
 elementary exercises of the starting-point, which, after much 
 careful investigation, Pestalozzi found in the child's natural 
 tastes, in the needs of its age, in the circumstances of its 
 home-life, for we read in No. 40 of the Evening Hour : 
 " The pure sentiment of truth and wisdom is formed in the 
 narrow circle of our personal relations, the circumstances 
 which suggest our actions, and the powers we need to develop." 
 Having thus sought the starting-point of education in the 
 needs, desires, and circumstances of actual life, Pestalozzi 
 was naturally led to associate the work of the body with that 
 of the mind, to develop industry and study side by side, 
 to combine, as it were, the workshop and the school. It is 
 particularly in Leonard and Gertrude that this last point of 
 view is most fully treated. 
 
 Thus the question of education led to the consideration 
 of economical questions. It was not only necessary to 
 develop the intellectual faculties and the moral sense of the 
 child, but also to exercise his bodily powers and teach him to 
 earn his livelihood in the society in which he has to live, and 
 in which nothing but his own efforts will keep him a place. 
 
 This explains how it was that Pestalozzi felt called upon 
 to examine our social system, to point out the obstacles in the 
 way of an improved condition of the people, and to deter- 
 mine what reforms were necessary for helping this on. 
 
 Thus led to the consideration of social and political 
 questions, he first treats them in fiction in Leonard and 
 Gertrude, where he describes the reformation of the village 
 of Bonal ; then in apologues in the Fables, and finally in 
 a philosophical essay in the Inquiry, a work which cost 
 him, as we know, three years of sustained effort. 
 
 In his views on social organization, Pestalozzi was in 
 advance of his time, and the points he raises are still burning 
 
i2o PESTALOZZI; HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 questions to-day, though his opinions will seem vague and 
 timid to modern socialists who do not always respect religion, 
 family ties, or the rights of property, all of which Pesta- 
 lozzi believed to be essential conditions of civilization and 
 progress. He condemns luxury, display, and the arrogance of 
 those upon whom the world smiles. He wishes comfort to be 
 within the reach of the lower classes, though for this end, 
 which is the great unchanging desire of his heart, he relies 
 much more on education than on statutes. 
 
 In politics he has distinctly radical tendencies, though 
 with a horror of all violence. He is an enthusiast for liberty, 
 and wants everything to be doue for the people, the poor, 
 the weak, and the ignorant. He does not, however, want 
 everything done by the people. It is true that the poor 
 people amongst whom he lived, arid whom he understood 
 better than anybody, were not at that time fit to have the 
 direction of public affairs placed in their' hands. His demo- 
 cracy then was not quite the same as the democracy of 
 to-day. 
 
 Pestalozzi's religious sentiment was strong and living; 
 it comes out in all his writings and in all the circumstances 
 of his life. And yet it is by no means clear what his 
 religion was, for he nowhere makes a complete profession 
 of faith, which can only be looked for in isolated passages 
 that do not always agree. The fact is that Pestalozzi had 
 no religious system. The first seeds of the religious senti- 
 ment had been sown in his earliest childhood in his home- 
 life, and, though his faith had been weakened rather than 
 strengthened by his subsequent theological studies, and 
 severely shaken by the writings of Rousseau and the philo- 
 sophers of the eighteenth century, it had revived, as we 
 have seen, at the birth of his son. But even then Pestalozzi 
 still held aloof from all dogmatism, and refused his adher- 
 ence to any set of doctrines. He had seen too much dead 
 orthodoxy and barren dogma, too much religious instruction 
 that was powerless to touch the heart or change the life. 
 He rejected formularies no less than formalism, and con- 
 demned the use of the catechism in schools, where he wanted 
 religion to be confined to the reading of the Bible and the 
 practice of the Christian virtues. He felt that set doctrines 
 have always something that savours of men about them, 
 that they are only useful for scholars and not good for little 
 
PESTALOZZI'S DOCTRINE BEFORE 1798. 121 
 
 children. He feared, too, that theology might prove a 
 tempting substitute for the religion of the heart and life, 
 a fear which we think may be explained by the state of 
 religious feeling amongst the educated classes at the end of 
 the last century. 
 
 In this frame of mind Pestalozzi was inclined to yield 
 to every suggestion of his heart and imagination, and often 
 indulged in outbursts which exaggerated his real thought, 
 and sometimes led him to contradict himself without sus- 
 pecting it. We will give but one instance out of many. 
 Pestalozzi has often been charged with not believing in 
 original sin ; that is, in the innate existence of evil in the 
 heart of man, a charge which can be supported by numerous 
 passages in which he exalts the innocence of the child, and 
 expects everything from an education that shall nourish, 
 train, and develop the germs of virtue and goodness im- 
 planted in the heart. 
 
 And yet in other places he points with precisely the 
 same force of conviction to the existence of evil in human 
 nature. He does this in a most striking manner in the 
 fable, The Interior of the Hill, which we quoted in full in 
 the last chapter. 
 
 Orthodox Christians will find many expressions in Pesta- 
 lozzi's writings that they will take exception to, but they 
 will find no attack on revealed truths. Now, had he not 
 believed in them, he would have said so, for he was not a 
 man to spare anything that he did not think good and true. 
 Though eminently a free-thinker in the proper sense of the 
 word, and also a free speaker, never did his free-thought 
 lead him to doubt the Christian verities. It is true that at 
 this period of his life his outward manifestations of religion 
 were, from a Christian point of view, exceedingly incom- 
 plete ; afterwards, however, he endeavoured to make up 
 for these shortcomings, though he always more or less 
 ignored the essential doctrine of the redemption. This 
 explains how it is that certain people, forgetting his long 
 life of abnegation, ardent charity, and absolute self- 
 surrender, have gone so far as to say that Pestalozzi was 
 not a Christian. But did not Jesus Himself say, " By their 
 fruits ye shall know them " ? 
 
 If it is now asked what, in this first part of his life, Pes- 
 talozzi's essential work really was, and what the discovery 
 
122 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 was that we owe to his genius and to the prodigious activity 
 of his thought, we answer that his work was that of 
 a philosopher, and his discovery that of a principle which 
 regulates the law of man's development, and is the funda- 
 mental principle of education. It may seem hard to some 
 to recognize a philosopher in this man, who seemed bent 
 on nothing but practical experiments, who, as a writer, 
 excelled chiefly in drawing characters and relating facts 
 of his observation with a great wealth of detail, and who, 
 in his Inquiry 1 the one book in which he attempted a 
 philosophical form and style, succeeded only in being prolix 
 and obscure. But in this respect, as in many others, Pesta- 
 lozzi was like nobody else ; he was a philosopher without 
 intending it. It was in truth an idea, a general idea, and 
 always the same, which struck him in all his observations, 
 which inspired all his plans for reform, and which he fol- 
 lowed in all the practical undertakings to which he put his 
 hand. To be convinced of this, it is enough to follow him 
 closely in his life and writings. In this way, too, we shall 
 come to understand this general idea which was so peculiarly 
 his own, which was constantly urging him to passionate 
 and disinterested activity, and which inspired the great 
 work of his life. 
 
 All the real knowledge, useful powers, and noble senti- 
 ments that a man can acquire are but the extension of his 
 individuality by the development of the powers, strength, 
 and faculties that God has put in him, and. by their assimila- 
 tion of the elements supplied by the outer world. There 
 exists for this development and this work of assimilation 
 a natural and necessary order which is generally neglected 
 in school education. 
 
 That, then, is the dominant idea in Pestalozzi's thought, 
 an idea which comes out in one way or another in all his 
 plans for reform and in all his writings. Here are a few 
 passages from the Evening Hour, in which it is easy to 
 recognize it : 
 
 " All the pure and beneficent powers of humanity are 
 neither the products of art nor the results of chance. They 
 are really a natural possession of every man. Their develop- 
 ment is a universal human need." (No. 8.) 
 
 u Man ! in thyself, in the inward consciousness of thine 
 
PESTALOZZrS DOCTRINE BEFORE 1798. 123 
 
 own strength, is the instrument intended by Nature for thy 
 development." (No. 12.) 
 
 a The path of Nature, which develops the powers of 
 humanity, must be easy and open to all ; education which 
 brings true wisdom and peace of mind must be simple and 
 within everybody's reach." (No. 21.) 
 
 " The exercise of a man's faculties and talents, to be pro- 
 fitable, must follow the course laid down by Nature for the 
 education of humanity." (No. 23.) 
 
 " When men are anxious to go too fast, and are not 
 satisfied with Nature's method of development, they imperil 
 their inward strength, and destroy the harmony and peace 
 of their souls." (No. 26.) 
 
 " The schools hastily substitute an artificial method of 
 words for the truer method of Nature, which knows no hurry 
 and is content to wait. In this way a specious form of 
 development is produced, hiding the want of real inward 
 strength, but satisfying times like our own." (No. 28.) 
 
 We have only quoted from the Evening Hour, because 
 Pestalozzi there expresses his thought in short, pithy 
 aphorisms, whereas such quotations as we might have taken 
 from his other writings must necessarily have been much 
 longer. But if we wish to grasp Pestalozzi's idea in its 
 simplest, and at the same time its most general expression, 
 we must seek it in a comparison which is so natural and 
 familiar to him that he is always coming back to it. 
 
 In his speeches, in his explanations of his views, and 
 especially in his fables, he is constantly comparing the 
 education of man, even from the intellectual and moral 
 point of view r , to the development and growth of a plant. 
 It is evident that in his eyes the analogy is complete. He 
 even states it once in these words : " Man, formed from the 
 dust of the earth, grows and ripens like a plant rooted in the 
 soil." 
 
 It is by virtue of this analogy that he always speaks 
 of education as a development, a product of the child's own 
 work, a graduated series of progressive steps, in which each 
 step follows naturally from the last, and prepares the way 
 for the next. In his eyes, then, the gift of God which 
 renders the human soul capable of its intellectual and moral 
 victories, is like a seed which opens that its shoots may 
 
124 PESTALOZZI; HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 grow, spread, blossom, and bear fruit ; and the part of educa- 
 tion is to encourage and direct an organic development. 
 
 The word organism, it is true, is not found iu any of 
 Pestalozzi's writings before the time at which we have 
 arrived ; but although the word is not there, the idea is. It 
 jis later, in the book entitled IIoiv Gertrude Teaches lier 
 Children, that Pestalozzi first uses the word, which was 
 suggested to him perhaps by some of the men who were 
 then associated with him. 
 
 The organism of education has been treated by the author 
 of the present biography in a work entitled, The Philo- 
 sophy and Practice of Education, in which an attempt is 
 made to show that the abstract organic law which is seen 
 to exist in the material world also governs the intellectual 
 and moral development of man, and includes all the essential 
 principles that were recognized and applied by Pestalozzi. . 
 
 Some people have hesitated thus to introduce into the 
 domain of moral science a word which had only been em- 
 ployed in the physical sciences, fearing, perhaps, the abuse 
 the materialist school might make of it, a fear, however, 
 which seems to us to be entirely groundless. Be that as it 
 may, it is certain that the word could not be replaced save 
 by some neologism which would be much less clear. 
 
 In his later writings, and as his work advances, Pesta- 
 lozzi makes more and more use of the word organic in 
 explaining his views. And yet he never called his method 
 the organic method, which seems to us the only name that 
 really expresses its character. 
 
 We are now about to see Pestalozzi at work at last as a 
 teacher, applying his ideas to the education of children, and 
 formulating, if not in its principle, at any rate in its spirit and 
 details, the method that bears his name. Now, too, the 
 philosophical idea upon which his whole system is based, 
 and of which in his previous writings we have caught but 
 a glimpse, will stand out fully revealed. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 Pestalozzi at Stanz. 
 
 Swiss Revolution : the hopes it awakens in Pestalozzi. His 
 political pamphlets. He is appointed chief editor of the 
 "Popular Swiss News" the organ of the Government. 
 The Directory orders the formation of an Educational 
 Institution to be managed by Pestalozzi. Bevolt of the 
 small cantons. Disaster at Stanz. The Directory founds 
 a Home for Orphans there under the management of Pesta- 
 lozzi. Great difficidties. Astonishing success. Beturn of 
 the French troops to Stanz. The orphanage wanted for a 
 hospital. Pestalozzi ill. Goes away to the Gurnigel. His 
 letter to Gessner on his work at Stanz. Pedagogical results 
 of this experiment. 
 
 Pestalozzi's correspondence with Pellenberg has shown us 
 how much he dreaded the intervention of Prance in the 
 home affairs of Switzerland ; but in the beginning of 1798 
 this intervention was an accomplished fact, and the young 
 republic, scarcely recovered from the bloody convulsions of 
 its birth, set to work to refashion its elder sister, Switzer- 
 land, in its own image. 
 
 The principles of 1789 having penetrated into most of the 
 cantons, and divided the country, resistance was easily over- 
 come, and the ancient structure which for four centuries 
 had safeguarded the independence of the confederated 
 states, crumbled and fell, carrying with it, however, oligar- 
 chical governments, family and local privileges, and a host 
 of rights, customs and prejudices that had considerably 
 interfered with the liberty and equality of the citizens. 
 The Swiss Republic, one and indivisible, was now pro- 
 claimed, under the government of a Directory of five 
 members. 
 
 In the meantime Pestalozzi had become somewhat re- 
 conciled to the intervention he had so much dreaded. 
 
126 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 The real progress and great moral regeneration that now 
 seemed in store for his country made him forget all the 
 harm done to Switzerland by the' presence of foreign 
 armies, and by the irritation that resulted from the conflict 
 of so many different ideas, feelings, and interests. He firmly 
 believed that the reforms so often asked for in vain by 
 many of the wisest and noblest men, were at last about to 
 be realized, that he would be able henceforth to sow his 
 ideas in a fruitful soil from which all obstacles had been 
 removed, and that the efforts of the new rulers, who cared 
 for nothing but the well-being and happiness of the people, 
 were destined to meet with complete success. Carried away 
 by his enthusiasm, he already seemed to see the simplicity, 
 purity, and loyalty of former times reviving under this new 
 breath of liberty. 
 
 Thoroughly convinced of the benefits that were to result 
 from the new order of things, Pestalozzi at once became 
 one of its most zealous supporters ; and between the spring 
 and autumn of 1798 published in quick succession a number 
 of political pamphlets bearing the following titles : 
 
 a. " A Word to the Legislative Councils of Helvetia." 
 
 b. " On Tithes." 
 
 c. " Awake, People of Helvetia ! " 
 
 d. " To my Country." 
 
 e. " To the People of Helvetia." 
 
 /. " An Appeal to the Inhabitants of the old Democratic 
 Cantons." 
 
 g. " On the Present and Future of Humanity." 
 
 The first of these pamphlets, however, was condemned by 
 the very party for whom it was written, and for no other 
 reason than that it vehemently opposed a scheme that had 
 been adopted by the Great Council for indemnifying, at the 
 expense of the oligarchies, certain patriots who had been 
 prosecuted for their attacks on the old order of things. In 
 all these writings, indeed, Pestalozzi advocated union, har- 
 mony, and forge tfulness of the past. Nor was he satisfied 
 with merely seeking to reconcile to the new constitution 
 those who were still hostile to it, but exhorted the govern- 
 ing bodies to establish justice and morality, stimulate 
 activity throughout the country, encourage all industries, 
 
PESTALOZZI AT STANZ. 127 
 
 and above all help on in every possible way the education of 
 the people. 
 
 But his publications were hardly looked at by the people 
 to whom they were addressed, and exercised little or no 
 influence. 
 
 It is doubtful indeed whether they would have exercised 
 much influence, in any case, for their author does not betray 
 any very great practical sense. The fact is that Pestalozzi, 
 as the Germans used to say, " understood man better than 
 men." 
 
 Before very long, Pestalozzi's influence as a political 
 writer was still further lessened in a way which we must 
 now explain. In June, 1798, the Great Council asked the 
 Directory to publish a newspaper for the purpose of meeting 
 the opposition excited by the new state of things, enlighten- 
 ing men's minds, and rallying the people throughout the 
 country round the unitary government. On the 23rd of 
 July, the Directory instructed Stapfer, the Minister of Arts 
 and Sciences, to see that this was done. Stapfer at once 
 applied to Pestalozzi, who, on the 20th of August, accepted 
 the editorship of the new publication. The paper was to 
 be called the Popular Siviss News, was to appear weekly, 
 and was to be sent gratuitously to schoolmasters, ministers 
 of religion, and all government officials, who were instructed 
 to read it and explain it to those about them. 
 
 Pestalozzi had help from Hess, Lavater, Fussli, and others, 
 but he wrote most of the paper himself. Having one day 
 asked Zschokke for his collaboration, the latter refused, say- 
 ing, "A really popular paper ought not to be the organ of 
 the Government, but a perfectly independent publication 
 written in the spirit and language of the people for whom it 
 is intended." 
 
 Zschokke was right. The paper was looked upon with 
 suspicion by the opponents of the Republic, and was not 
 read by the common people. After the first nineteen num- 
 bers, therefore, the Government suppressed it, " because it 
 was not reaching its end." Pestalozzi, however, had ceased 
 to be the editor some time before, grave events having 
 called him away to work that was far more worthy of him. 
 
 As early as May, 1798, Pestalozzi had addressed the 
 following letter to Meyer, the Minister of Justice, in the 
 absence of Stapfer, who was then in Paris : 
 
128 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 11 Citizen Minister, — 
 
 " Convinced that the country is in urgent need of some 
 improvement in the education and schools of the people, and 
 feeling sure that three or four months' experience would give 
 the most important results, I address myself, in the absence 
 of citizen minister Stapfer, to citizen minister Meyer, to 
 offer through him my services to the country, and to beg him 
 to take the necessary steps with the Directory for the accom- 
 plishment of my patriotic purpose. 
 
 " With republican greeting, 
 
 (; Pestalozzi. 
 "Aarau, the 21st May, 1798." 
 
 This offer was accepted, and Stapfer, on his return to 
 Aarau, at once opened negotiations with Pestalozzi. The 
 minister was inclined to begin by establishing a training 
 school for country schoolmasters, and putting Pestalozzi at 
 its head, but the latter declared that he was particularly 
 anxious to test his method with children, and showed Stap- 
 fer a plan for a poor school, such as he had attempted to 
 establish at Neuhof, and had described in Leonard and 
 Gertrude. The minister proposed the execution of this 
 plan to the Directory in a long report from which we can 
 only give a few extracts. 
 
 After pointing out the necessity for an entire reorganiza- 
 tion of public education, the report continues : 
 
 " Thanks to a distinguished patriot, your minister is in a 
 position to do this. Citizen Pestalozzi has submitted to me 
 a plan for an educational establishment, suited not only to 
 the needs and resources of our own time, but to the nature of 
 men and citizens in general. The mere name of the author 
 is enough in itself. He is a man who in his excellent and 
 popular works has given the greatest proofs of capacity, 
 whose disinterested activity for the country both before and 
 after the Revolution is well known, whose opinions have 
 received the unanimous approval of the most enlightened 
 men and noblest princes of our time, and who longs, by a 
 thoroughly efficient system of popular education, to give 
 dignity to our political reform, and provide it with a solid 
 guarantee of duration and strength. 
 
 " I might here call attention to the many advantages that 
 
PESTALOZZI AT STANZ. 129 
 
 would be likely to result from listening to the advice of 
 such a man, but I will content myself with one observation. 
 Although this indefatigable patriot has been praised on all 
 sides, and has seen his ideas partially applied in many parts 
 of Germany, nothing has as yet been done in his own 
 country, where he himself would have worked for the success 
 of each establishment, where he would have been sure of 
 finding active collaborators, and where he would have given 
 the world an example of the realization of his views. He is 
 already fighting against old age, but the hope of obtaining 
 aid from an enlightened magistracy in carrying out his 
 heart's desire for his country and humanity, fills him once 
 more with the courage and strength of youth. Your minis- 
 ter hopes, citizen directors, that the honour of rewarding 
 him with the realization of his plans for the happiness of 
 the country has been reserved for you." 
 
 The report then proceeds to prove : 
 
 1. That Pestalozzi's proposal satisfies all the require- 
 ments of education in general, and of public education in 
 particular. 
 
 2. That it in no way endangers the unity and uniformity 
 of the educational establishments of the republic, and con- 
 stitutes no sort of privilege. 
 
 3. That it satisfies the requirements of the most rigid 
 economy. 
 
 It closes with the following suggestion : 
 
 Proposed Form of Decree. 
 
 1. The Directory hereby assures citizen Pestalozzi of its 
 high appreciation of the many proofs he has given of his 
 patriotism, disinterestedness, and activity in all that con- 
 cerns the welfare of his country and fellow-citizens. 
 
 2. The Minister of Arts and Sciences is authorized to 
 allow citizen Pestalozzi the sum of one hundred and twenty 
 pounds, to be payable in such instalments and at such times 
 as shall be agreed upon. 
 
 3. The Minister will settle with citizen Pestalozzi as 
 to the place where an educational establishment shall be 
 founded, and as to the number of masters, pupils, etc. 
 
 4. On receiving the Minister's report, the Directory will 
 
I30 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 furnish citizen Pestalozzi with a sufficient quantity of beds 
 and other furniture from various national institutions. 
 
 5. At stated intervals citizen Pestalozzi will make re- 
 ports to the Minister on the administration and progress of 
 the institution, which reports will afford means of making 
 the establishment more generally known, and of spreading 
 its benefits. 
 
 The Directory adopted these suggestions, and steps were 
 immediately taken to carry them out. But the choice of a 
 locality and of a site for the establishment, as well as other 
 questions of detail, took some time, and before these preli- 
 minary matters were settled, a frightful catastrophe gave a 
 new direction to Pestalozzi's unselfish and untiring activity. 
 
 The three cantons of Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden, may 
 be said to have been the cradles of Swiss liberty. Strongly 
 attached to their ancient laws and customs, their priests, 
 and the Catholic faith of their fathers, and proud of their old 
 right to be self-sufficing, and to govern themselves as they 
 thought best by popular assemblies, they naturally felt 
 nothing but horror for the revolution which had just taken 
 place, and for the single central government which it had 
 set up in Switzerland. The district of Lower Unterwalden 
 borders the lake of the Four Cantons, and consists of a small 
 group of fertile hills rising gradually to that part of the 
 Alps which is crowned by the glaciers of the Titlis, and 
 which commands, on the other side, the valley of the Aar in 
 the canton of Berne. Fertile, well-watered, and happy in a 
 mild climate, this secluded spot, cut off as it seemed from 
 the rest of the world, was cultivated almost as carefully as 
 a garden. It was inhabited by a fine set of people, who in 
 their isolation in the midst of modern civilization, had pre- 
 served many of the qualities as well as the defects of the 
 primitive races of the world. 
 
 Their flocks were their chief source of wealth, but there 
 was a good deal of cultivated land in the neighbourhood of 
 the village, and an abundance of fruit-trees everywhere. 
 They were simple and frugal in their habits, and though 
 they possessed no knowledge of any industry, and very little 
 in struction, they were yet able to live in comfort and con- 
 tentment without leading very laborious lives. 
 
 According to the laws and customs of the district, the 
 
PESTALOZZI AT STANZ. 131 
 
 poor were entitled to help from their relations, even the 
 most distant, as well as from the parish and the State, a 
 right which had gradually encouraged habits of idleness and 
 mendicity amongst a certain portion of the population. In 
 other respects the people of Unterwalden were a gifted 
 race — quick, intelligent, generous, and especially remarkable 
 for a certain aesthetic instinct, which has produced a con- 
 siderable number of artists of real merit, and which is still 
 evident to-day in all they do, in their dress, their houses, 
 and their chapels, and above all in the small and delicate 
 paintings that have replaced the wayside crosses on the 
 hills. Such were the people who were now asked to take 
 the oath of allegiance to the Unitary Constitution of Swit- 
 zerland. Upon their refusal, the Directory sent a French 
 army-corps, under the command of General Schauenbourg, to 
 reduce them to submission. 
 
 Though they were few in number, they were resolved to 
 sell their lives dearly. Men, women, and children fought 
 like lions, but had at last to succumb to the superior num- 
 ber, tactics, and weapons of their formidable enemies. The 
 French soldiers were exasperated by this unexpected and 
 obstinate resistance. They suffered serious losses, and in 
 consequence gave no quarter, sparing neither age nor sex, 
 and completing their work of destruction by devastating the 
 district by fire. 
 
 In the meantime the old and infirm people had assembled 
 in the church of Stanz, the chief town of the district, to 
 pray with their priest, Luci, a venerable old man of sixty. 
 This vast building, which served as a meeting place for the 
 faithful of all the country round, stands in the principal 
 square of the town, and is raised some four or five yards 
 above the level of the road with which it is connected by a 
 large flight of stone steps. 
 
 When the victors reached this square, General Corbineau, 
 thinking that the church might prove a fresh centre of 
 resistance, rode up the steps and entered the building, fol- 
 lowed by his men. The priest, who was at the altar elevat- 
 ing the host, was shot dead, and an indescribable scene of 
 terror and tumult followed. In spite of the efforts of a few 
 humane officers, the work of revenge did not cease till the 
 arrival of General Schauenbourg two days afterwards. 
 
 The Stanz disaster happened on the 9th of September, 
 
132 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 1798 ; the first number of the Popular Swiss Neivs, of which 
 Pestalozzi was the editor, had appeared the day before. 
 
 Truttman, sub-prefect of Arth, and the agent of the 
 Government in Lower Unterwalden, made a detailed inquiry 
 into the losses resulting from this terrible event. We find 
 them stated as follows in the report of the Minister of the 
 Interior, Rengger : 
 
 " Dead : 259 men, 102 women, 25 children. 1 
 
 " Buildings burnt : 340 dwelling-houses, 228 barns, 144 
 
 small out-houses. 
 
 " Approximate value of buildings and furniture destroyed : 
 
 £85,000. 
 
 " Of the 350 people whose houses have been burnt, only 50 
 are in a position to rebuild with their own money ; 97 others 
 require more or less help ; 203 have absolutely no means of 
 building again. 
 
 " The most unfortunate, however, are the very large number 
 who had no houses of their own, and have lost everything 
 they possessed. Amongst these are 111 infirm old men; 
 169 orphans, not counting 77 who have been provided for 
 by private charity in other cantons; and lastly, 237 other 
 children who, without being orphans, are still practically 
 homeless on account of the utter destitution of their families/' 
 
 The Directory at once took steps to send help to these un- 
 fortunate people. On the 18th of November it was decided 
 to found an orphan home in Stanz, and the ministers Stapfer 
 and Rengger were instructed to prepare a plan and find a 
 director for the establishment. They decided to make use of 
 the outer premises of the women's convent, and part of the 
 large field adjoining. But neither the heads of the convent 
 nor the council of tho canton were consulted in the matter, 
 and this choice excited violent opposition. In consequence 
 of the objections raised by the convent authorities, the 
 council pointed out to the minister Stapfer the grave in- 
 convenience of placing an orphan as}dum in a building 
 which was already used by the nuns as a girls' school, and 
 
 1 This first computation was undoubtedly incomplete, for the monu- 
 ment erected in Stanz cemetery in 1807 makes the number of dead 
 414. 
 
PESTALOZZI AT STANZ. 133 
 
 of taking over out-buildings in which the servants lived who 
 were charged with the management of the cattle and the 
 estate. The Government, however, was firm, and its orders 
 were carried out. 
 
 At the same time Rengger had instructed the sub-prefect 
 Truttman, and Meyer, Minister of Justice and Police, to try 
 and find a man and his wife to take entire charge of the 
 proposed establishment. But as they deemed it essential that 
 the Director should be a Catholic, all their efforts were 
 unsuccessful. 
 
 Meanwhile Pestalozzi was burning with the desire to go 
 and be a father and teacher to the Unterwalden orphans ; it 
 seemed indeed almost a providential opportunity for putting 
 into practice the ideas which had so long engrossed his atten- 
 tion. He accordingly informed directors Stapf er and Legrand 
 of his wish. 
 
 To the latter he had already fully explained his views and 
 plans, and he had done so the more freely and gladly that 
 he had found him to be not only thoroughly sympathetic but 
 in complete agreement with him. 
 
 A new plan presented by Pestalozzi was warmly recom- 
 mended by Stapf er, Rengger, and Legrand, and on the 5th of 
 December, 1798, the Directory issued a decree, the principle 
 clauses of which were as follows : 
 
 " The immediate control of the poor-house at Stanz is 
 entrusted to citizen Pestalozzi. 
 
 " Children of both sexes, taken from among the poorest, 
 and especially from the orphans in the Stanz district, will be 
 received in it and brought up gratuitously. 
 
 " Children will not be received before the age of five years ; 
 they will remain till they are fit to go into service, or to 
 learn such a trade as could not be taught them in the 
 establishment. 
 
 " The poor-house will be managed with all the care and 
 economy that such an institution requires. The children will 
 gradually be led to take part in all work necessary for the 
 carrying on and support of the establishment. The time of 
 the pupils will be divided between field-work, house- work, 
 and study. An attempt will be made to develop in the pupils 
 as much skill, and as many useful powers as the funds of 
 the establishment will allow. So far as it is possible to do 
 
134 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 so without danger to the industrial results which are to be 
 aimed at, a few lessons will be given during the manual 
 labour. 
 
 " All the out-buildings of the women's convent at Stanz are 
 to be devoted to the purposes of the establishment, as well as 
 a certain portion of the adjoining meadow-land. These build- 
 ings will at once be repaired and fitted up for the reception 
 of eighty pupils, according to the plans drawn up by citizen 
 Schmidt, of Lucerne. Tor the founding of the asylum, the 
 Minister of the Interior will, once for all, place a sum of two 
 hundred and forty pounds at the disposal of the committee 
 (Pestalozzi, Truttman, sub-prefect of Arth, and the priest 
 Businger of Stanz)." 
 
 A new editor was at once found for the Popular Siuiss 
 Neics, and on the 7th of December Pestalozzi arrived in 
 Stanz to superintend the repairs. 
 
 A few days later his wife wrote the following lines in her 
 diary : 
 
 " In December, 1798, Pestalozzi went to Stanz to take 
 charge of a number of children whose parents were killed in 
 a sad combat because they would not accept the new Consti- 
 tution. It is a great trouble to us all, to faithful Lisbeth, 
 and our friends, as well as the children and myself, to see 
 him undertake such a task at his age. When I told him of 
 our anxiety, he answered : 
 
 " ' My fate and yours will now be decided. If your hus- 
 band has not been misunderstood, if he really deserves the 
 scorn and neglect with which he has generally been treated, 
 there is no hope for us. But if I have been unfairly judged, 
 if I am really worth what I think I am, you will soon find me 
 a comfort and support. But enough ; your words stab me to 
 the heart ; I can no longer bear 3^our incredulity. Write to 
 me then hopefully. You have waited thirty years, will you 
 not wait another three months ? I have not yet any children 
 here, but plenty of workmen. The Government are giving 
 the undertaking wise support, and are showing me much 
 good will." 
 
 The alterations and repairs had been begun at a bad time 
 of year, and proceeded slowly ; the winter was early and 
 
PESTALOZZI AT STANZ. 135 
 
 severe, and it was the middle of January before the first 
 children were admitted. 
 
 At the same time there was much distress and suffering in 
 the country, as is evident from the following extract from 
 an official report made by the sub-prefect Truttman : 
 
 " The distress of the inhabitants of the Stanz district is 
 indescribable ; it increases every day, and affects more or less 
 everybody. The many poor people whose former benefactors 
 have lost all means of helping them have nothing to live upon 
 beyond what they receive from the Government, and the alms 
 which are sent to them from other cantons. Their sufferings 
 in this extreme and prolonged cold are inexpressible ; their 
 small stock of potatoes is frozen, and they have no other food ; 
 there is already much sickness among them." 
 
 At last, on the 14th of January, 1799, Truttman wrote to 
 Hengger : 
 
 "To-day the first children have been received into the 
 orphanage. May God bless our good Government for this 
 beneficent work. I look forward to the best results from it. 
 It was not without deep emotion that I saw these poor ragged 
 creatures rescued at last from their unhappy condition, and 
 admitted into an establishment where their education and 
 future independence will be properly provided for." 
 
 A few days later the numbers had reached fifty. Never 
 did an educational institution open under such unfavourable 
 conditions. So important was it to come at once to the rescue 
 of these unfortunate children that they were admitted before 
 the buildings were ready. There was nothing really habit- 
 able but one small room ; all the others were full of plaster 
 and rubbish ; even the kitchen was not yet in order. The 
 children, who were covered with sores and vermin, brought 
 with them not only diseases, but deplorable habits and 
 inveterate vices. To manage this household, to watch over 
 the cleanliness, health, and education of these children, Pes- 
 talozzi was alone with one woman-servant. 
 
 We have before our eyes the first list of the children that 
 Pestalozzi drew up and sent to the Directory, in which he 
 mentions twenty-nine boys and sixteen girls. We will copy a 
 few of the names, with the observations that accompany them : 
 
136 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 " Boys. 
 
 " 1. Jacob Baggenstoss, fifteen, of Stanzstad ; father dead, 
 mother living ; good health, little capacity ; can do nothing 
 else but spin cotton ; accustomed to begging. 
 
 " 2. Francis Joseph Businger, fourteen, of Stanz ; father 
 living, mother dead ; good health, good capacity, and good 
 manners ; does not know his ABC, can spin cotton ; very 
 poor. 
 
 " 3. Gaspard Joseph Waser, eleven, of Stanzstad ; father 
 living, mother dead ; healthy, good capacity, but wild and 
 ill-mannered ; does not know his ABC; cannot spin ; accus- 
 tomed to begging. 
 
 " 4. Charles, brother of the above, ten ; same manners and 
 same antecedents as his brother. 
 
 " 26. Mathias Odermatt, eight, of Stanz ; father killed, 
 mother living ; deformed and sickly, weak and idle, knows 
 nothing; poor. 
 
 " 27. Joseph KuefFer, nine, of Stanz ; non-burgess ; parents 
 living ; healthy, fair capacity, is beginning to spell, cannot 
 spin ; poor. 
 
 " 28. Gaspard Stieer, eight, of Stanz ; father killed, mother 
 living ; bad health, more than average capacity, unwilling to 
 learn, is beginning the ABC, can spin ; very poor. 
 
 " 29. " Jacob Adacher, seven, of Kirsiten ; father killed, 
 mother living ; healthy, timid, knows nothing ; very poor. 
 
 " Girls. 
 
 " 1. Anna Josephine Amstad, fifteen, of Stanz ; father dead, 
 mother living ; healtlry, fair capacity, is beginning to read, 
 and can spin ; extremely poor. 
 
 " 2. Clara Waser, twelve, of Stanzstad ; father living, 
 mother dead ; healtlry, fair capacity, fond of study, does not 
 know her ABC, can spin ; accustomed to begging. 
 
 " 3. Josephine Kieter, thirteen, of Stanz ; father and 
 mother both dead ; healthy, average capacity, is beginning 
 to read, can spin ; extremely poor. 
 
 " 4. Anna Maria Beutschgi, eleven, of Stanz ; father 
 banished, mother dead ; healthy, exceedingly neglected, knows 
 nothing, very bad habits ; very poor. 
 
 " 15. Barbara Spillmater, ten, of Stanz ; father dead, 
 mother living ; healthy, good capacity, knows nothing, good 
 habits ; poor. 
 
PESTALOZZI AT STANZ. 137 
 
 " 16. Catherine Aieer, five, of Stanz ; father killed, mother 
 living ; healthy, good capacity, knows nothing ; poor." 
 
 In spite of all these obstacles, and in spite of the little 
 practical ability of the director, the success was immediate, 
 almost miraculous. 
 
 Scarcely a month had passed when Truttman, in his report 
 to the minister Eengger, dated the 11th of February, 1799, 
 wrote as follows : 
 
 "The poor-house is doing well. Pestalozzi works night 
 and day. There are now seventy-two children in the estab- 
 lishment, though not more than fifty can stay all night, 
 as there are not enough beds. It is astonishing to see how 
 active this indefatigable man is, and how much progress 
 his pupils have made in so short a time. They are now 
 eager for instruction. In a few years the State will certainly 
 be more than repaid for the sacrifices it is making for this 
 useful institution. I hope the good nuns may soon go to 
 heaven, or to some other convent." 
 
 This testimony is confirmed by the report that Bu singer 
 made to the Directory in the same week, which runs as 
 follows : 
 
 " The poor-house has started, and is going on well. More 
 than seventy children have already been received, and 
 every day brings more applications for admission. Citizen 
 Pestalozzi works incessantly for the progress of the estab- 
 lishment, and it is hardly credible how far he has been able 
 to bring his work in so short a time." 
 
 Pestalozzi, then, had surmounted the internal obstacles, 
 those, that is, which he could attack directly, but there were 
 others outside which compromised the final success of his 
 work. These obstacles were, on the one hand, the distrust, 
 ill-will, and even open opposition of the district he had come 
 to help ; on the other, the unsound opinions of men who 
 were thought to be competent, but who, accustomed to the 
 old educational tracks, and misunderstanding Pestalozzi's 
 thought, condemned him the moment he deviated from the 
 pattern on which they themselves were formed. 
 
 The people of Lower Unterwalden detested the unitary 
 Government which had been the cause of their late mis- 
 11 
 
138 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 fortunes, and were convinced that it was only looking after 
 their children for the purpose of winning them over to this 
 new and hated Constitution. They were, besides, entirely 
 and exclusively Catholic ; never had a Protestant held the 
 smallest office amongst them, much less an educational one, 
 and in the eyes of most of them, the poor children, by being 
 put under the care of the heretic Pestalozzi, were in danger 
 of losing their souls. 
 
 At the same time the work of this man was like no other 
 work of the same sort, because it consisted in putting into 
 practice a new idea, and often necessitated the adoption of 
 methods which were the direct opposite of those hitherto in 
 use. For instance, Pestalozzi worked without any settled 
 plan, without any apparent order, and without dividing his 
 children into classes. He was constantly with them, giving 
 proof of his affection for them in everything he did and watch- 
 ing to take advantage of the slightest manifestation of their 
 faculties, powers, and good impulses, like a gardener who, 
 in tending a young tree, waits for its shoots to appear before 
 deciding how to train them. That is why he had not asked 
 for help, and indeed no one could have been of much use to 
 him, an experienced teacher least of all. At first he had 
 neither books nor school material, nor did he ask for any, 
 wishing nothing for his children, beyond the simple neces- 
 saries of life, but contact with himself and with Nature. 
 
 The system of which we have just given such an im- 
 perfect sketch, is set forth clearly and completely in the 
 letter on his stay at Stanz, written by Pestalozzi to his 
 friend Gessner. Our readers will find this letter farther on, 
 for its account of its author's doctrine makes it of great 
 importance. We have felt it better not to interrupt our 
 account of the Stanz asylum, an account, it must be added, 
 which is entirely based on official documents ; but what we 
 have just said as to Pestalozzi's method, was necessary for 
 the understanding of the various judgments expressed about 
 him while he was engaged in the work. 
 
 Visitors to the establishment, for instance, often saw 
 nothing but disorder and confusion, with an entire absence, 
 as it seemed, of all serious instruction. 
 
 At the same time the poor-committee, who felt that their 
 chief duty was to put the children in the way of earning 
 something as soon as possible, complained that time was 
 
PESTALOZZI AT STANZ. 139 
 
 being lost, and calculated the profit that might have been 
 made by the manufacture of silk, an industry, however, for 
 which there were absolutely no appliances. 
 
 The sub-prefect Truttman, a capable and well-meaning 
 man, also failed to understand Pestalozzi's thought, and the 
 higher end he had in view, being deceived by appearances. 
 In his report to the minister, dated the 25th of March, 1799, 
 he wrote as follows : 
 
 " I must tell you frankly that the appointment of a bursar, 
 the classification of the children, both for instruction and 
 manual work, the installation of the necessary superinten- 
 dents and masters, can no longer be put off without danger 
 to this useful institution. If I were not confined to my room 
 by a swollen foot, I should come to Lucerne to-morrow to 
 speak freely to you about this important matter. I admire 
 the zeal of citizen Pestalozzi, and his indefatigable activity 
 in his work, and he certainly deserves our gratitude ; but 
 I foresee that he will be incapable of carrying out his 
 ideas, and of giving the enterprise the carefully ordered 
 development which is necessary for its success. Indeed, 
 without a new organization, which shall take into consider- 
 ation all the various needs of the establishment, it cannot 
 succeed. This excellent man has both firmness and gentle- 
 ness, but unfortunately he often uses them at the wrong 
 time. I have frequently spoken with him on the subject. 
 I begged him even to go to Zurich, to study in detail the 
 organization of the poor-school in that town, with a view 
 to copying it, as far as possible, in Stanz. He accordingly 
 went, but I do not look for any satisfactory result from his 
 visit, because his idea is to do everything himself, without 
 any plan, and without any other aid than that of the chil- 
 dren themselves. The establishment needs a larger staff. 
 But where are helpers to be found ? I beg of you, citizen 
 minister, for the honour of the Government, and for the 
 public good, to lay this matter to heart, and find a remedy 
 before the evil is too great." 
 
 But the Directory would not allow Pestalozzi to be in- 
 terfered with, and left him complete liberty of action. He 
 was not happy, however, but suffered terribly, both from 
 the hostility of the district where he had expected to find 
 
[40 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 gratitude, and from the opposition that his work was exciting 
 amongst the very people on whom he had relied for its sup- 
 port. In spite of his burning faith and courage, he feared 
 at times that this new undertaking, which had filled him 
 with such great hopes, would fail like the rest, and by its 
 failure rob the idea that had engrossed his thoughts for the 
 last thirty years, of all its value for himself, his country, and 
 humanity. 
 
 This trouble comes out in the first report that he sent to 
 the minister Rengger, which is dated the 19th of April, 1799, 
 and is couched in these terms : 
 
 " Citizen Minister, — 
 
 " I know and feel that it is my duty not to leave you 
 without information as to the progress of the institution, but 
 I am oppressed by the weight of the many urgent things 
 to be done, which can be done only by me. Unfortunately, 
 what absorbs my strength is not the essential work of the 
 establishment, but a multitude of minor details. In spite 
 of the success of my efforts hitherto, I am powerless to 
 do all I would, for want of a few paltry kitchen utensils, 
 for which citizen Haas has kept me waiting for a fortnight 
 without even noticing my applications. At the same time 
 political animosity, which is beginning to make itself felt 
 again here, is exercising a fatal influence on the children, and 
 those who ought to try and check this animosity say that 
 this is not the time to make people dissatisfied for the sake 
 of an orphan asylum. I have already accomplished much, 
 and I long for the time to come when you will be able to 
 come and judge for yourself of the good results that have 
 been obtained in an establishment which started amid so 
 many difficulties, and especially of those which may confidently 
 be looked forward to, if the work is continued on the same 
 principles and on the same method. I shall endeavour shortly 
 to draw up a clear account of the money I have received, and 
 shall send it to you. Workmen here are very dear, and there 
 are prejudices which prevent my always doing things in the 
 cheapest manner ; but I shall steadily continue to use my best 
 efforts to carry out the objects of the institution as economically 
 as possible. 
 
 " The hours of work and study are now fixed as follows: 
 from six to eight, lessons ; then manual work till four in the 
 
PESTALOZZI AT STANZ. 141 
 
 afternoon ; then lessons again till eight. The health of the 
 children is excellent. The difficulty of combining work and 
 instruction grows less every day ; the children are slowly 
 learning to be orderly, and to apply themselves. You can 
 imagine how much trouble it has taken to bring these neglected 
 little mountain-children as far even as this. We are only the 
 more pleased at having reached our end. Several children 
 have had a sort of bilious, feverish cold, but are now almost 
 well again. I am waiting impatiently for letters from Zurich 
 on the subject of the assistants of both sexes of whom I stand 
 in need ; I should be glad, too, to be reassured by hearing 
 that your views coincide with mine. 
 
 " Allow me to commend the institution and myself to your 
 kind consideration. 
 
 " With respect and gratitude, 
 
 " Pestalozzi." 
 
 In spite of everything the undertaking prospered. The 
 children had arrived with sad, troubled faces, with eyes weary 
 and timid, or bold and distrustful, some apathetic, some 
 rebellious. But they had undergone the same transformation 
 as Nature when she revives under the breath of spring, and 
 were now joyful, unrestrained, eager, active, gentle, and kind. 
 
 The 24th of May, 1799, was a great day for the institution 
 and its director. On that day Pestalozzi took his whole 
 establishment to Lucerne, where they were welcomed by 
 the Executive Directory, the highest authority in Switzer- 
 land, each child receiving a new silver coin worth a little 
 more than a shilling. It is evident from this that the 
 director Legrand had paid little heed to Pestalozzi's de- 
 tractors. 
 
 Unfortunately, the institution was near its end. It con- 
 tained eighty children and was in full prosperity, when, a 
 fortnight after the excursion to Lucerne, unforeseen events 
 made its further existence impossible. 
 
 The chances of the war brought the Trench troops once 
 more into the canton. They had a great number of sick 
 with them, and Zschokke, the Government agent, could find 
 no other place for a hospital but Pestalozzi's orphanage. On 
 the 8th of June, 1799, sixty of the children were sent away, 
 homes being found for them in different families. This left 
 only twenty in the establishment. Under these circum- 
 
142 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 stances Pestalozzi himself was unwilling to stay. He gave 
 two suits of clothes and a little money to each child who had 
 been sent away, put the furniture in safety in Lucerne, and 
 handed over to Zschokke what money he had left, amounting 
 to rather more than a hundred pounds. 
 
 Then, utterly broken down in health, he retired to the 
 Gurnigel for the waters. He had worked far beyond his 
 strength, and was so worn out that he spat blood. 
 
 The Directory only heard of these events when they were 
 already accomplished facts, and in its sitting of the 17th of 
 June, 1799, it granted Pestalozzi a small sum of money 
 (about twenty-five pounds) for his services in connection with 
 the Stanz institution. 
 
 The orders given by Zschokke, Pestalozzi's departure, and 
 the subsequent final closing of the establishment, blamed by 
 some, approved by others, gave rise to much angry discussion, 
 in which the facts were often considerably strained. For 
 the sake of making known the real truth of the matter, we 
 shall continue to quote from authentic documents. 
 
 For instance, Zschokke, in his report to the minister 
 Rengger of the 28th of June, 1799, says : 
 
 "I have not closed the Stanz orphanage, that noble monu- 
 ment of Swiss beneficence ; I have simply reduced the 
 number of children. Such an establishment deserves to be 
 maintained even amid the troubles of the war; I, at least, 
 will not be the one to suppress it. The large number of 
 soldiers to be lodged, the absence of any place fit for a 
 hospital for the sick and wounded defenders of our country, 
 the anxiety of the parents who, on the approach of the war, 
 asked to be allowed to take their children till the danger 
 had passed, these and a hundred other reasons made it 
 imperative that the numbers of the establishment should be 
 reduced. In accordance with my strict injunctions, no chil- 
 dren have been sent away, save those whose parents or 
 friends assured either Pestalozzi or myself that they would 
 be properly looked after for a time. Pestalozzi gave them 
 each a change of clothes, some linen, and a little money. At 
 the present moment there still remain in the establishment 
 twenty-two children of both sexes. Citizen van Matt, 1 a 
 
 1 Van Matt was a blacksmith. 
 
PESTALOZZI AT STANZ. 143 
 
 member of the Stanz municipality, and a kind, fatherly man, 
 has undertaken to superintend the establishment for nothing. 
 He visits it several times a day. The greatest attention is 
 paid to cleanliness and order. The Capuchin friars take 
 turns in teaching the children reading, writing, and reli- 
 gion. 
 
 " It is a real pleasure to me to see these little ones in 
 their tidy rooms, with health, joy, and innocence so clearly 
 expressed in their faces. Their appearance alone is reward 
 enough for those who founded the establishment. Here, 
 too, Pestalozzi, by his generous activity, has raised himself 
 a monument which can never be forgotten." 
 
 We feel that we ought to supplement the details contained 
 in this report by what Zschokke wrote five years afterwards 
 in his History of the Memorable Facts of the Siviss Revo- 
 lution, 1804, vol. ii. p. 259 : 
 
 " One of the first unfortunate consequences of the return 
 of the Trench to Unterwalden was that, for want of a better 
 place for a hospital, that part of the out-buildings of the 
 women's convent at Stanz in which the noble Pestalozzi was 
 living with his orphans, had to be made over to them. Even 
 if it had been possible to save the orphanage, by putting tne 
 sick into one of the crowded houses in the town that had 
 escaped the fire, the military authorities would never have 
 consented to it. Pestalozzi realized this painful necessity, 
 and yielded to it, though not without sorrow. . . . 
 
 " With Pestalozzi disappeared the spirit of his teaching. 
 The orphans, however, were still carefully taught, and such 
 matters as order and cleanliness, which had previously been 
 somewUat neglected, received particular attention. Van 
 Matt deserves the highest praise for the zeal with which he 
 undertook the general superintendence of the establishment. 
 He received valuable help from the parish priest Businger." 
 
 On the 4th of July, 1799, the sub-prefect Truttman wrote 
 to E-engger : 
 
 " It was only a few days afterwards that I heard of the 
 break up of the Stanz orphanage. It was simply the result 
 of the general terror. There are still twenty-two children 
 in the establishment. "For their support, citizen Van Matt 
 
144 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 a most honourable man, whom the municipality have made 
 superintendent, has asked me for dried fruits, potatoes, 
 and peas, which I have accordingly sent him. I must ask 
 you, citizen minister, to give me definite instructions as to 
 whether I am to continue to furnish provisions to the 
 establishment, and generally as to what I am expected to do 
 for it." 
 
 The same year, in the month of August, Zschokke wrote 
 to the Directory asking that, as the scene of war had once 
 more shifted from Stanz, the orphanage there should be 
 revived and submitted to a thorough reorganization, and 
 that its management should be entrusted to himself and 
 Truttman. 
 
 This request was granted, but the thorough reorganization 
 was slow in coming, for on the 16th of September, 1799, 
 Truttman wrote : 
 
 " The poor-school now contains forty children, boys and 
 girls, but everything necessary for carrying out the purpose 
 for which it was founded is absolutely wanting. The chil- 
 dren are fed, and that is all ! " 
 
 At last, in October, Zschokke presented his scheme for 
 reorganization, which was little more than a consideration of 
 the best way of providing funds for the institution, so as to 
 make it as small a burden as possible to the national budget. 
 He proposed that the expense should no longer fall upon the 
 Government, but that it should be met partly by the convent 
 estate, and partly by the profits of a cotton mill in which 
 the children would be employed. Of the internal organiza- 
 tion, looked at from the intellectual and moral point of view, 
 he said nothing. 
 
 In the report which accompanied this scheme, we read : 
 
 " There are now thirty-eight children of both sexes in the 
 orphanage. I have made the town-councillor Van Matt in- 
 spector. He has hitherto carried out his duties gratuitously. 
 He visits the establishment every day, looks after the ac- 
 counts, the purchases, the order of the children, etc. 
 
 if I have, besides, employed a poor, honest citizen, Remigi 
 Gut, who sleeps in the school, is constantly with the children, 
 and gives them reading and writing lessons four hours a day. 
 
PESTALOZZI AT STANZ. 145 
 
 I have had some models prepared for him by my secretary, 
 and have furnished him with a few books. I have told him 
 that if he succeeds in making the children apply themselves 
 to their work, he may hope to receive a small salary in 
 addition to his keep."' 
 
 The state of the institution, however, continued very much 
 the same as we find it in Truttman's letter of the 16th of 
 September, quoted above. This is evident from the following 
 memorial addressed to the Directory in November, 1799, by 
 Businger : 
 
 " The first thing to which I am anxious to call your atten- 
 tion, citizen directors, is the orphanage at Stanz. This useful 
 institution is your work ; it is to your fatherliness that it 
 owes its existence. But as it exists at present, and indeed 
 as it has existed for some time already, it does none of the 
 good that it was expected to do, and seems in danger of 
 coming to an end even before its good results have been 
 made known. Citizen Pestalozzi undertook the direction 
 of this orphan-home with the best possible intentions, and 
 with an exemplary activity ; but his disposition had been 
 embittered by many misfortunes, and this, combined with 
 the weakness which resulted from his age, with his neglect 
 of externals, and with many mistakes into which he had 
 fallen from the very beginning, prevented the institution 
 from ever being in a position to realize its objects, and 
 made all clear-sighted men long to see the good Pestalozzi 
 anywhere else but there. "When the French made Stanz 
 their head-quarters, and took the rooms of the orphanage for 
 their military hospital, most of the children had to be sent 
 away, and Pestalozzi himself withdrew. But after the 
 departure of the Prench, the poorest orphans were taken 
 back again into the vacant rooms. A worthy member of 
 our town-council temporarily undertook their superintendence. 
 As many as forty poor children are thus provided with a very 
 comfortable home, where they are fed, and taught reading 
 and writing ; but the whole establishment shows signs that 
 ruin is imminent, and in truth I shall see it come to an end 
 without much regret," 
 
 Businger's memorial was sent to the minister Stapfer to be 
 
i 4 6 PESTAL0ZZ1: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 reported on. His report, which was in French, was entirely 
 favourable to Pestalozzi, and runs as follows : 
 
 " The memorial of citizen Businger begins by insinuating 
 that citizen Pestalozzi was not fitted to be the director of 
 this institution. 
 
 "I regret to say that, in consequence of prejudices, of 
 which I cannot now examine either the source or the nature, 
 this excellent and well-known old man has reason to be 
 greatly dissatisfied with the treatment he has received at 
 the hands of citizens Zschokke and Businger. By their 
 exaggerated complaints they have paralyzed an establishment 
 which promised to be very useful to the country. 
 
 "They accuse Pestalozzi of being wasteful, dirty, and 
 brutal, aud of having lost the affections of his pupils." 
 
 Stapfer then examines these different charges in detail, 
 and refutes them one after the other by citing certain well- 
 known facts. After referring again to Pestalozzi's views, 
 and to the good that might be effected by their realization, 
 he concludes as follows : 
 
 "In my opinion, it is important that citizen Pestalozzi 
 should be restored to the post which the misfortunes of the 
 war have compelled him to give up." 
 
 Meanwhile, rest and the waters of the Gurnigel had 
 restored the old man's health, and he was now eager to return 
 to Stanz to continue his interrupted work. 
 
 " I could not," he said, " live without my work ; I was 
 like a man who rests for a few moments on a rock in the sea, 
 impatient all the time to go on swimming." 
 
 In spite of his burning desire, in spite of all Stapfer's 
 efforts, the Directory did not send Pestalozzi back to Stanz, 
 but allowed the orphanage to be closed. 
 
 In our opinion, this action of the Directory was most 
 fortunate both for Pestalozzi and for education. 
 
 The noble old man had undertaken a task which was 
 beyond his strength. It had already nearly brought him to 
 death's door, and he certainly would not have been able to 
 carry it on much longer. He encountered, besides, the most 
 
PESTALOZZI AT STANZ. 147 
 
 violent opposition. Most of the inhabitants of Unterwaklen 
 saw in him nothing bnt an agent of revolutionaries and 
 heretics. They easily believed all the calumnies of which 
 he was the object, and instead of looking on his presence as 
 a blessing, endured it as an unjust punishment fraught with 
 danger to their country. Under these circumstances, he 
 could do them but little good ; for it is almost impossible 
 to help people against their will. 
 
 A priest named Gut, living in Stanz, has since re-echoed 
 his countrymen's grievances against Pestalozzi in a book 
 entitled, The Surprise-attack on Lower Unterivalden : its 
 Causes and its Consequences. At page 579, he says that 
 the choice of Pestalozzi was a mischievous action on the 
 part of the Directory ; that he kept the best of everything 
 for himself and his servant, and fed the children badly; 
 that he dressed them like convicts ; that their e3^es lacked 
 lustre, and their cheeks colour ; that they were chiefly 
 taught to imitate the cries of animals; that he took away 
 the furniture from Stanz for his institute at Burgdorf, 
 etc. 
 
 But as Mr. Gut was only a child of five when Pestalozzi 
 left Stanz, his accusations are evidently nothing more than 
 the repetition of what was said around him, and are 
 scarcely worth refuting. 
 
 As we thought it would be interesting, however, to 
 ascertain with what feelings Pestalozzi was still remembered 
 in the district for which he well-nigh sacrificed his life, we 
 made inquiries at Stanz at a time when several old men, who 
 remembered the poor-school, were still living. But all they 
 told us was mere hearsay ; none of them could give us any 
 positive facts. 
 
 They had heard, for instance, that the Directory had sent 
 Pestalozzi to Lower Unterwalden to destroy the very religion 
 for which its inhabitants had fought ; that the priest Businger 
 had been much blamed for helping to found the orphanage ; 
 that Pestalozzi's manners and appearance were a sufficient 
 proof that he was incapable ; and further, that he was 
 mortally afraid of the Austrians, and at the news of their 
 approach had fled hastily in the night. 
 
 We also had an interview with Mr. Gut himself, whose 
 opinions seemed to us to have undergone considerable modifi- 
 cation since the publication of his book, for he did not repeat 
 
148 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 any of the charges mentioned above, and only spoke of 
 Pestalozzi in becoming terms. Two grievances, however, he 
 still thought well founded. The first was that the teaching 
 of the Catholic religion was too much neglected in the school. 
 Yet he could quote nothing in any of Pestalozzi's utterances 
 opposed to it, and could only say that he was reported to have 
 once said to the children, "Crucifixes will not give you bread; 
 you must learn to work." The second grievance was that he 
 sometimes corrected the children by striking them with a 
 rope. 
 
 To sum up, it seems to ns that it was a mistake to send 
 Pestalozzi to Stanz, as he could not avoid hurting the religious 
 feelings of the people he was expected to help. The opposi- 
 tion he excited was not only quite natural, but, from the 
 point of view of the people themselves, was even legitimate 
 and meritorious, and ought to have been foreseen. It may be 
 said that for five months he did but struggle against the 
 difficulties of an untenable position, and it is lucky that, when 
 he recovered from the illness which so nearly proved fatal, he 
 was not allowed to continue his heroic efforts. 
 
 The folly of unitarism did much harm to Switzerland, and 
 yet, since God is able to bring good out of evil, it gave rise to 
 an era of true progress. In the same way the folly of Stanz 
 resisted in the primary school of the nineteenth century, an 
 institution which has already brought no small increase of 
 strength and prosperity to those nations that have adopted 
 it. 
 
 Pestalozzi's experiences at Stanz, their value for his observ- 
 ant mind, the principles his genius deduced from them for a 
 natural and logical method of elementary education, the whole 
 picture, in short, of the birth of a great, fruitful, and salutary 
 reform, is to be found in the letter written from the Gurnigel, 
 and addressed by Pestalozzi to his friend Gessner, the book- 
 seller, the son of the author of the Idylls. This letter, in 
 which he gives an account of his work at Stanz, was printed 
 for the first time in 1807, in the Weekly Journal for the 
 Education of Humanity, and then in the edition of Pesta- 
 lozzi's works published by Cotta (vol. ix.). It was afterwards 
 reprinted in the complete edition by Seyffarth. Parts of it 
 have often been quoted by different biographers, who have 
 copied them from each other. Its great importance compels 
 us to give it here in its entirety. 
 
PESTALOZZI AT STANZ. 149 
 
 Letter from Pestalozzi to a friend on Ms ivork at Stanz. 
 
 " My friend, once more I awake from a dream ; once more 
 I see my work destroyed, and my failing strength wasted. 
 
 " But, however weak and unfortunate my attempt may 
 have been, a friend of humanity will not grudge a few 
 moments to consider the reasons which convince me that some 
 day a more fortunate posterity will certainly take up the 
 thread of my hopes at the place where it is now broken. 
 
 "From its very beginning I looked on the Revolution 
 as a simple consequence of the corruption of human nature, 
 and on the evils which it produced as a necessary means of 
 bringing men back to a sense of the conditions which are 
 essential to their happiness. 
 
 " Although I was by no means prepared to accept all the 
 political forms that a body of such men as the revolutionists 
 might make for themselves, I was inclined to look upon certain 
 points of their Constitution not only as useful measures pro- 
 tecting important interests, but as suggesting the principles 
 upon which all true progress of humanity must be based. 
 
 " I once more made known, therefore, as well as I could, my 
 old wishes for the education of the people. In particular, I laid 
 my whole scheme before Legrand (then one of the directors), 
 who not only took a warm interest in it, but agreed with me 
 that the Republic stood in urgent need of a reform of public 
 education. He also agreed with me that much might be done 
 for the regeneration of the people by giving a certain number 
 of the poorest children an education which should be complete, 
 but which, far from lifting them out of their proper sphere, 
 would but attach them the more strongly to it. 
 
 " I limited my desires to this one point, Legrand helping me 
 in every possible way. He even thought my views so impor- 
 tant that he once said to me : 'I shall not willingly give up 
 my present post till you have begun your work.' 
 
 " As I have explained my plan for the public education of the 
 poor in the third and fourth parts of Leonard and Gertrude, 
 I need not repeat it here. I submitted it to the director 
 Stapfer, with all the enthusiasm of a man who felt that his 
 hopes were about to be realized, and he encouraged me with 
 an earnestness which showed how thoroughly he understood 
 the needs of popular education. It was the same with the 
 
 minister Rengger. 
 
i5o PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 "It was my intention to try to find near Zurich or in 
 Aargau a place where I should be able to join industry and 
 agriculture to the other means of instruction, and so give my 
 establishment all the development necessary to its complete 
 success. But the Unterwalden disaster (September, 1798) left 
 me no further choice in the matter. The Government felt the 
 urgent need of sending help to this unfortunate district, and 
 begged me for this once to make an attempt to put my plans 
 into execution in a place where almost everything that could 
 have made it a success was wanting. 
 
 " I went there gladly. I felt that the innocence of the 
 people would make up for what was wanting, and that their 
 distress would, at any rate, make them grateful. 
 
 " My eagerness to realize at last the great dream of my life 
 would have led me to work on the very highest peaks of the 
 Alps, and, so to speak, without fire or water. 
 
 " For a house, the Government made over to me the new 
 part of the Ursuline convent at Stanz, but when I arrived it 
 was still uncompleted, and not in any way fitted to receive 
 a large number of children. Before anything else could be 
 done, then, the house itself had to be got ready. The Govern- 
 ment gave the necessary orders, and Rengger pushed on the 
 work with much zeal and useful activity. I was never indeed 
 allowed to want for money. 
 
 " In spite, however, of the admirable support I received, 
 all this preparation took time, and time was precisely what 
 we could least afford, since it was of the highest importance 
 that a number of children, whom the war had left homeless 
 and destitute, should be received at once. 
 
 " I was still without everything but money when the chil- 
 dren arrived ; neither kitchen, rooms, nor beds were ready 
 to receive them. At first this was a source of inconceivable 
 confusion. For the first few weeks I was shut up in a very 
 small room ; the weather was bad, and the alterations, which 
 made a great dust and filled the corridors with rubbish, ren- 
 dered the air very unhealthy. 
 
 " The want of beds compelled me at first to send some of 
 the poor children home at night ; these children generally 
 came back the next day covered with vermin. Most of them 
 on their arrival were very degenerated specimens of humanitj'. 
 Many of them had a sort of chronic skin-disease, which almost 
 prevented their walking, or sores on their heads, or rags full 
 
PESTALOZZI AT STANZ. 151 
 
 of vermin ; many were almost skeletons, with haggard, care- 
 worn faces, and shrinking looks ; some brazen, accustomed to 
 begging, hypocrisy, and all sorts of deceit ; others broken by 
 misfortune, patient, suspicious, timid, and entirely devoid of 
 affection. There were also some spoilt children amongst them 
 who had known the sweets of comfort, and were therefore full 
 of pretensions. These kept to themselves, affected to despise 
 the little beggars their comrades, and to suffer from this 
 equality, and seemed to find it impossible to adapt themselves 
 to the ways of the hoiise, which differed too much from their 
 old habits. But what was common to them all was a per- 
 sistent idleness, resulting from their want of physical and 
 mental activity. Out of every ten children there was hardly 
 one who knew his ABC; as for any other knowledge, it was, 
 of course, out of the question. 
 
 " This complete ignorance was what troubled me least, for 
 I trusted in the natural powers that God bestows on even the 
 poorest and most neglected children. I had observed for a 
 long time that behind their coarseness, shyness, and apparent 
 incapacity, are hidden the finest faculties, the most precious 
 powers ; and now , even amongst these poor creatures by whom 
 I was surrounded at Stanz, marked natural abilities soon 
 began to show themselves. I knew how useful the common 
 needs of life are in teaching men the relations of things, in 
 bringing out their natural intelligence, in forming their judg- 
 ment, and in arousing faculties which, buried, as it were, 
 beneath the coarser elements of their nature, cannot become 
 active and useful till they are set free. It was my object then 
 to arouse these faculties, and bring them to bear on the pure 
 and simple circumstances of domestic life, for I was convinced 
 that in this way I should be able to form the hearts and minds 
 of children almost as I wished. 
 
 " Now that I had an opportunity of carrying out this object, 
 I felt sure that my affection would change the nature of my 
 children as quickly as the sun changes the frozen earth in 
 spring ; nor was I wrong, for before the snow of our moun- 
 tains had melted the children were no longer the same. 
 
 " But I must not anticipate. Just as in the evening I often 
 mark the quick growth of the gourd by the side of the house, 
 so I want you to mark the growth of my plant ; and, my 
 friend, I will not hide from you the worm which sometimes 
 eats into its leaves, sometimes even into its heart. 
 
152 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 11 1 opened the establishment with no other helper but a 
 woman-servant. I had not only to teach the children, but to 
 look after their physical needs. I preferred being alone, and, 
 indeed, it was the only way to reach my end. No one in the 
 world would have cared to fall in with my views for the 
 education of children, and at that time I knew scarcely any one 
 capable even of understanding them. The better the education 
 of the men who might have helped me, the less their power 
 of understanding me and of confining themselves, even in 
 theory, to the simple beginnings to which I sought to return. 
 All their views as to the organization and needs of the enter- 
 prise were entirely different from mine. What they especially 
 disagreed with was the idea that such an undertaking could 
 be carried out without the help of any artificial means, but 
 simply by the influence exercised on the children by Nature, 
 and by the activity to which they were aroused by the needs 
 of their daily life. 
 
 " And yet it was precisely upon this idea that I based my 
 chief hope of success ; it was, as it were, a basis for innumer- 
 able other points of view. 
 
 " Experienced teachers, then, could not help me ; still less 
 boorish, ignorant men. I had nothing to put into the hands 
 of assistants to guide them, nor any results or apparatus by 
 which I could make my ideas clearer to them. 
 
 " Thus, whether 1 would or no, I had first to make my 
 experiment alone, and collect facts to illustrate the essential 
 features of my system before I could venture to look for out- 
 side help. Indeed, in my then position, nobody could help me. 
 I knew that I must help myself and shaped my plans accord- 
 ingly. 
 
 " I wanted to prove by my experiment that if public educa- 
 tion is to have any real value, it must imitate the methods 
 which make the merit of domestic education ; for it is my 
 opinion that if public education does not take into considera- 
 tion the circumstances of family life, and everything else that 
 bears on a man's general education, it can only lead to an 
 artificial and methodical dwarfing of humanity. 
 
 " In any good education, the mother must be able to judge 
 daily, nay hourly, from the child's eyes, lips, and face, of the 
 slightest change in his soul. The power of the educator, too, 
 must be that of a father, quickened by the general circum- 
 stances of domestic life. 
 
PESTAL0ZZ1 AT STANZ. 153 
 
 " Such was the foundation upon which I built. I deter- 
 mined that there should not be a minute in the day when my 
 children should not be aware from my face and my lips that 
 my heart was theirs, that their happiness was my happiness, 
 and their pleasures my pleasures. 
 
 "Man readily accepts what is good, and the child readily 
 listens to it ; but it is not for you that he wants it, master and 
 educator, but for himself. The good to which you would lead 
 him must not depend on your capricious humour or passion ; 
 it must be a good which is good in itself and by the nature 
 of things, and which the child can recognize as good. He 
 must feel the necessity of your will in things which concern 
 his comfort before he can be expected to obey it. 
 
 " Whenever he does anything gladly, anything that brings 
 him honour, anything that helps to realize any of his great 
 hopes, or stimulates his powers, and enables him to say with 
 truth, I can, then he is exercising his will. 
 
 " The will, however, cannot be stimulated by mere words ; 
 its action must depend upon those feelings and powers which 
 are the result of general culture. Words alone cannot give 
 us a knowledge of things ; they are only useful for giving 
 expression to what we have in our mind. 
 
 " The first thing to be done was to win the confidence and 
 affection of the children. I was sure that if I succeeded in 
 doing that, all the rest would follow of itself. Think for a 
 moment of the prejudices of the people, and even of the chil- 
 dren, and you will understand the difficulties with which I 
 had to contend. 
 
 " The unfortunate country had suffered all the horrors of 
 war. Most of the inhabitants detested the new constitution, 
 and were not only exasperated with the Government, but 
 suspicious of its offered help. Opposed by the natural melan- 
 choly of their character to anything new coming from outside, 
 they held fast, with bitter and defiant obstinacy, to everything 
 connected with their former condition, wretched as it was in 
 many respects. To these people I was simply an agent of the 
 new order of things. They looked on me as a mere instru- 
 ment, working not for them, but for the men who were the 
 cause of their misfortunes, and whose opinions, views, and 
 plans were entirely opposed to their own. This political dis- 
 trust was strengthened by a no less deep religious distrust. 
 I was a heretic, and so all my efforts to do good could only 
 12 
 
154 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 imperil their children's souls. Amongst them no Protestant 
 had ever held the smallest public office ; what must they 
 have felt, then, on seeing one made a teacher of children ? To 
 make matters worse, religious and political passion in Stanz 
 was just then excited to an unusually high degree. 
 
 11 Think, my friend, of this temper of the people, of my 
 weakness, of my poor appearance, of the ill-will to which I 
 was almost publicly exposed, and then judge how much I had 
 to endure for the sake of carrying on my work. 
 
 u And yet, however painful this want of help and support 
 was to me, it was favourable to the success of my undertaking, 
 for it compelled me to be always everything for my children. 
 I was alone with them from morning till night. It was my 
 hand that supplied all their wants, both of body and soul. 
 All needful help, consolation, and instruction they received 
 direct from me. Their hands were in mine, my eyes were 
 fixed on theirs. 
 
 " We wept and smiled together. They forgot the world 
 and Stanz ; they only knew that they were with me and I 
 with them. We shared our food and drink. I had neither 
 family, friends, nor servants ; nothing but them. I was with 
 them in sickness, and in health, and when they slept. I was 
 the last to go to bed, and the first to get up. In the bedroom 
 I prayed with them, and, at their own request, taught them 
 till they fell asleep. Their clothes and bodies were intolerably 
 filthy, but I looked after both myself, and was thus constantly 
 exposed to the risk of contagion. 
 
 " This is how it was that these children gradually became so 
 attached to me, some indeed so deeply that they contradicted 
 their parents and friends when they heard evil things said 
 about me. They felt that I was being treated unfairly, and 
 loved me, I think, the more for it. But of what avail is it for 
 the young nestlings to love their mother when the bird of prey 
 that is bent on destroying them is constantly hovering near ? 
 
 " However, the first results of these principles and of this 
 line of action were not always satisfactory, nor, indeed, could 
 they be so. The children did not always understand my love. 
 Accustomed to idleness, unbounded liberty, and the fortuitous 
 and lawless pleasures of an almost wild life, they had come 
 to the convent in the expectation of being well fed, and of 
 having nothing to do. Some of them soon discovered that 
 they had been there long enough, and wanted to go away 
 
PESTALOZZI AT STANZ. 155 
 
 again ; they talked of the school fever that attacks children 
 when they are kept employed all day long. This dissatis- 
 faction, which showed itself during the first months, resulted 
 principally from the fact that many of them were ill, the con- 
 sequence either of the sudden change of diet and habits, or 
 of the severity of the weather and the dampness of the build- 
 ing in which we lived. We all coughed a great deal, and 
 several children were seized with a peculiar sort of fever. 
 
 " This fever, which always began with sickness, was very 
 general in the district. Cases of sickness, however, not fol- 
 lowed by fever, were not at all rare, and were an almost 
 natural consequence of the change of food. Many people 
 attributed the fever to bad food, but the facts soon showed 
 them to be wrong, for not a single child succumbed. 
 
 " On the return of spring it was evident to everybody that 
 the children were all doing well, growing rapidly, and gaining 
 colour. Certain magistrates and ecclesiastics, who saw them 
 some time afterwards, stated that they had improved almost 
 beyond recognition. 
 
 " A few of the children, however, continued in ill-health for 
 some time, and the influence of the parents was not favour- 
 able to their recovery. ' Poor child, how ill you look ! I am 
 sure I could look after you at home as well as you are looked 
 after here. Come away with me.' That was the sort of thing 
 said by women who were in the habit of begging from door 
 to door. On Sundays, especially, numbers of parents used to 
 come and openly pity their children till they made them cry, 
 and then urge them to go away. I lost a great many in this 
 way ; and though their places were soon filled by others, you 
 can understand how bad these constant changes were for an 
 establishment that was only just beginning. 
 
 " Many parents thought they were doing me a personal 
 favour by leaving the children with me, and even asked the 
 Capuchins whether it was because I had no other means of 
 subsistence that I was so anxious to have pupils. It was the 
 general opinion amongst these people that poverty alone could 
 have induced me to give myself so much trouble, an opinion 
 which came out in their behaviour towards me. 
 
 " Some asked me for money to make up for what they had 
 lost by their children being no longer able to beg ; others, hat 
 on head, informed me that they did not mind trying a few 
 days longer ; others, again, laid down their own conditions. 
 
156 PESTAL0ZZ1: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 " Months passed in this way before I had the satisfaction 
 of having my hand grasped by a single grateful parent. But 
 the children were won over much sooner. They even wept 
 sometimes when their parents met me or left me without a 
 word of salutation. Several of them were perfectly happy, 
 and used to say to their mothers : ' I am more comfortable 
 here than at home.' At home, indeed, as they readily told 
 me when we talked alone, they had been ill-used and beaten, 
 and had often had neither bread to eat nor bed to lie down 
 upon. And yet these same children would sometimes go off 
 with their mothers the very next morning. 
 
 " A good many others, however, soon saw that by staying 
 with me they might both learn something and become some- 
 thing, and these never failed in their zeal and attachment. 
 Before very long their conduct was imitated by others, though 
 not always from the same considerations. 
 
 " Those who ran away were the worst in character and the 
 least capable. But they were not incited to go till they were 
 free of their vermin and their rags. Several were sent to 
 me with no other purpose than that of being taken away again 
 as soon as they were clean and well clothed. 
 
 " But after a time their better judgment overcame the defiant 
 hostility with which they arrived. In 1799 I had nearly 
 eighty children. Most of them were bright and intelligent, 
 some even remarkably so. 
 
 " For most of them study was something entirely new. As 
 soon as they found that they could learn, their zeal was 
 indefatigable, and in a few weeks children who had never 
 before opened a book, and could hardly repeat a Pater Noster 
 or an Ave, would study the whole day long with the keenest 
 interest. Even after supper, when I used to say to them, 
 1 Children, will you go to bed, or learn something ? ' they 
 would generally answer, especially in the first month or two, 
 * Learn something.' It is true that afterwards, when they 
 had to get up very early, it was not quite the same. 
 
 " But this first eagerness did much towards starting the 
 establishment on the right lines, and making the studies the 
 success they ultimately were, a success, indeed, which far 
 surpassed my expectations. And yet the difficulties in the 
 way of introducing a well-ordered system of studies were at 
 that time almost insurmountable. 
 
 " Neither my trust nor my zeal had as yet been able to 
 
PESTALOZZI AT STANZ. 157 
 
 overcome either the intractability of individuals or the want 
 of coherence in the whole experiment. The general order of 
 the establishment, I felt, must be based upon order of a higher 
 character. As this higher order did not yet exist, I had . to 
 attempt to create it ; for without this foundation I could not 
 hope to organize properly either the teaching or the general 
 management of the place, nor should I have wished to do so. 
 I wanted everything to result not from a preconceived plan, 
 but from my relations with the children. The high principles 
 and educating forces I was seeking, I looked for from the 
 harmonious common life of my children, from their attention, 
 activity, and needs. It was not, then, from any external 
 organization that I looked for the regeneration of which they 
 stood so much in need. If I had employed constraint, regula- 
 tions and lectures, I should, instead of winning and ennobling 
 my children's hearts, have repelled them and made them 
 bitter, and thus been farther than ever from my aim. First of 
 all, I had to arouse in them pure, moral, and noble feelings, so 
 that afterwards, in external things, I might be sure of their 
 ready attention, activity, and obedience. I had, in short, to 
 follow the high precept of Jesus Christ, ' Cleanse first that 
 which is within, that the outside may be clean also ' ; and if 
 ever the truth of this precept was made manifest, it was made 
 manifest then. 
 
 " My one aim was to make their new life in common, and 
 their new powers, awaken a feeling of brotherhood amongst 
 the children, and make them affectionate, just, and considerate. 
 
 " I reached this end without much difficulty. Amongst 
 these seventy wild beggar-children there soon existed such 
 peace, friendship, and cordial relations as are rare even 
 between actual brothers and sisters. 
 
 " The principle to which I endeavoured to conform all my 
 conduct was as follows : Endeavour, first, to broaden your 
 children's sympathies, and, by satisfying their daily needs, to 
 bring love and kindness into such unceasing contact with their 
 impressions and their activity, that these sentiments may be 
 engrafted in their hearts ; then tr3 r to give them such judgment 
 and tact as will enable them to make a wise, sure, and abundant 
 use of these virtues in the circle which surrounds them. In 
 the last place, do not hesitate to touch on the difficult questions 
 of good and evil, and the words connected with them. And 
 you must do this especially in connection with the ordinary 
 
i 5 8 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 events of every day, upon which your whole teaching in 
 these matters must be founded, so that the children may be 
 reminded of their own feelings, and supplied, as it were, with 
 solid facts upon which to base their conception of the beauty 
 and justice of the moral life. Even though you should have 
 to spend whole nights in trying to express in two words what 
 others say in twenty, never regret the loss of sleep. 
 
 " I gave my children very few explanatioDs; I taught them 
 neither morality nor religion. But sometimes, when they 
 were perfectly quiet, I used to say to them, ' Do you not think 
 that you are better and more reasonable when you are like 
 this than when you are making a noise ? ' When they clung 
 round my neck and called me their father, I used to say, 'My 
 children, would it be right to deceive your father ? After 
 kissing me like this, would you like to do anything behind my 
 back to vex me ? ' When our talk turned on the misery of 
 the country, and they were feeling glad at the thought of their 
 own happier lot, I would say, ' How good God is to have given 
 man a compassionate heart ! ' Sometimes, too, I asked them if 
 they did not see a great difference between a Government that 
 cares for the poor and teaches them to earn a livelihood, and 
 one that leaves them to their idleness and vice, with beggary 
 and the workhouse for sole resource. 
 
 " Often I drew them a picture of the happiness of a simple, 
 peaceful household, that by economy and hard work has pro- 
 vided for all its wants, and put itself in a position to give 
 advice to the ignorant, and help to the unfortunate. When 
 they pressed round me, I used to ask the best of them, even 
 during the first few months, whether they would not like to 
 live like me, and have a number of unfortunate children about 
 them to take care of and turn into useful men. The depth of 
 their feelings would even bring tears to their eyes, as they 
 answered, ' Ah, if I could only do that ! ' 
 
 " What encouraged them most was the thought of not 
 always remaining poor, but of some da}' taking their place 
 again amongst their fellows, with knowledge and talents that 
 should make them useful, and win them the esteem of other 
 men. They felt that, owing to my care, they made more 
 progress in this respect than other children ; they perfectly 
 understood that all they did was but a preparation for their 
 future activity, and they looked forward to happiness as the 
 certain result of their perseverance. That is why steady 
 
PESTALOZZI AT STANZ. 159 
 
 application soon became easy to them, its object being in 
 perfect accordance with their wishes and their hopes. Virtue, 
 my friend, is developed by this agreement, just as the young 
 plant thrives when the soil suits its nature, and supplies the 
 needs of its tender shoots. 
 
 " I witnessed the growth of an inward strength in my 
 children, which, in its general development, far surpassed 
 my expectations, and in its particular manifestations not only 
 often surprised me, but touched me deeply. 
 
 " When the neighbouring town of Altdorf was burnt down, 
 I gathered the children round me, and said, ' Altdorf has 
 been burnt down ; perhaps, at this very moment, there are a 
 hundred children there without home, food, or clothes ; will 
 you not ask our good Government to let twenty of them come 
 and live with us ? ' I still seem to see the emotion with 
 which they answered, ' Oh, yes, yes ! ' ' But, my children,' I 
 said, 'think well of what you are asking! Even now we 
 have scarcely money enough, and it is not at all certain that 
 if these poor children came to us, the Government would give 
 us any more than they do at present, so that you might have 
 to work harder, and share your clothes with these children, and 
 sometimes perhaps go without food. Do not say, then, that 
 you would like them to come unless you are quite prepared 
 for all these consequences.' After having spoken to them in 
 this way as seriously as I could, I made them repeat all I had 
 said, to be quite sure that they had thoroughly understood 
 what the consequences of their request would be. But they 
 were not in the least shaken in their decision, and all repeated, 
 ' Yes, yes, we are quite ready to work harder, eat less, and 
 share our clothes, for we want them to come.' 
 
 " Some refugees from the Grisons having given me a few 
 crowns for my poor children, I at once called them, and said, 
 1 These men are obliged to leave their country ; they hardly 
 know where they will find a home to-morrow, yet, in spite, of 
 their trouble, they have given me this for you. Come and 
 thank them.' The emotion of the children at these words 
 brought tears to the eyes of the refugees. 
 
 " It was in this way that I strove to awaken the feeling of 
 each virtue before talking about it, for I thought it unwise to 
 talk to children on subjects which would compel them to speak 
 without thoroughly understanding what they were saying. 
 
 " I followed up this awakening of the sentiments by exer- 
 
i6o PESTALOZZT: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 cises intended to teach the children self-control, and interest 
 the best natures amongst them in the practical questions of 
 every-day life. 
 
 " It will easily be understood that, in this respect, it was 
 not possible to organize any system of discipline for the 
 establishment ; that could only come slowly, as the general 
 work developed. 
 
 " Silence, as an aid to a implication, is perhaps the great 
 secret of such an institution. I found it very useful to insist 
 on silence when I was teaching, and also to pay particular 
 attention to the attitude of my children. The result was 
 that the moment I asked for silence, I could teach in quite a 
 low voice. The children repeated my words all together ; 
 and as there was no other sound, I was able to detect the 
 slightest mistakes of pronunciation. It is true that this was 
 not always so. Sometimes, whilst they repeated sentences 
 after me, I would ask them half in fun to keep their eyes 
 fixed on their middle ringers. It is hardly credible how useful 
 simple things of this sort sometimes are as means to the very 
 highest ends. 
 
 44 One young girl, for instance, who had been little better 
 than a savage, by keeping her head and body upright, and 
 not looking about, made more progress in her moral education 
 than any one would have believed possible. 
 
 11 These experiences have shown me that the mere habit of 
 carrying oneself well does much more for the education of 
 the moral sentiments than any amount of teaching and lec- 
 tures in which this simple fact is ignored. 
 
 14 Thanks to the application of these principles, my children 
 soon became more open, more contented and more susceptible 
 to every good and noble influence than any one could possibly 
 have foreseen when they first came to me, so utterly devoid 
 were they of ideas, good feelings, and moral principles. 
 As a matter of fact, this lack of previous instruction was 
 not a serious obstacle to me ; indeed, it hardly troubled 
 me at all. I am inclined even to say that, in the simple 
 method I was following, it was often an advantage, for I 
 had incomparably less trouble to develop those children 
 whose minds were still blank, than those who had already 
 acquired a few more or less correct ideas. The former, too, 
 were much more open than the latter to the influence of all 
 pure and simple sentiments. 
 
PESTALOZZI AT STANZ. 161 
 
 " But when the children were obdurate and churlish, then 
 I was severe, and made use of corporal punishment. 
 
 " My dear friend, the pedagogical principle which says that 
 we must win the hearts and minds of our children by words 
 alone, without having recourse to corporal punishment, is 
 certainly good, and applicable under favourable conditions and 
 circumstances; but with children of such widely different 
 ages as mine, children for the most part beggars, and all full 
 of deeply-rooted faults, a certain amount of corporal punish- 
 ment was inevitable, especially as I was anxious to arrive 
 surely, speedily, and by the simplest means, at gaining an 
 influence over them all, for the sake of putting them all in 
 the right road. I was compelled to punish them, but it would 
 be a mistake to suppose that I thereby, in any way, lost the 
 confidence of my pupils. 
 
 " It is not the rare and isolated actions that form the 
 opinions and feelings of children, but the impressions of every 
 day and every hour. ïrom such impressions they judge 
 whether we are kindly disposed towards them or not, and 
 this settles their general attitude towards us. Their judg- 
 ment of isolated actions depends upon this general attitude. 
 
 " This is how it is that punishments inflicted by parents 
 rarely make a bad impression. But it is quite different with 
 schoolmasters and teachers who are not with their children 
 night and day, and have none of those relations with them 
 which result from life in common. 
 
 " My punishments never produced obstinacy ; the children 
 I had beaten were quito satisfied if a moment afterwards I 
 gave them my hand and kissed them, and I could read in 
 their eyes that the final effect of my blows was really joy. 
 The following is a striking instance of the effect this sort of 
 punishment sometimes had. One day one of the children I 
 liked best, taking advantage of my affection, unjustly threat- 
 ened one of his companions. I was very indignant, and my 
 hand did not spare him. He seemed at first almost broken- 
 hearted, and cried bitterly for at least a quarter of an hour. 
 When I had gone out, however, he got up, and going to the 
 boy he had ill-treated, begged his pardon, and thanked him 
 for having spoken about his bad conduct. My friend, this 
 was no comedy ; the child had never seen anything like it 
 before, 
 
 " It was impossible that this sort of treatment should pro- 
 
i62 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 duce a bad impression on my children, because all day long I 
 was giving them proofs of my affection and devotion. They 
 could not misread my heart, and so they did not misjudge my 
 actions. It was not the same with the parents, friends, 
 strangers, and teachers who visited us, but that was natural. 
 But I cared nothing for the opinion of the whole world, pro- 
 vided my children understood me. 
 
 " I always did my best, therefore, to make them clearly 
 understand the motives of my actions in all matters likely to 
 excite their attention and interest. This, my friend, brings 
 me to the consideration of the moral means to be employed 
 in a truly domestic education. 
 
 " Elementary moral education, considered as a whole, 
 includes three distinct parts : the children's moral sense must 
 first be aroused by their feelings being made active and pure ; 
 then they must be exercised in self-control, and taught to take 
 \, interest in whatever is just and good ; finally, they must be 
 brought to form for themselves, by reflection and comparison, 
 a just notion of the moral rights and duties which are theirs 
 by reason cf their position and surroundings. 
 
 " So far, I have pointed out some of the means I employed 
 to reach the first two of these ends. They were just as simple 
 for the third ; for I still made use of the impressions and 
 experiences of their daily life to give my children a true and 
 exact idea of right and duty. When, for instance, they made 
 a noise, I appealed to their own judgment, and asked them if 
 it was possible to learn under such conditions. I shall never 
 forget how strong and true I generally found their sense of 
 justice and reason, and how this sense increased and, as it 
 were, established their good will. 
 
 " I appealed to them in all matters that concerned the 
 establishment. It was generally in the quiet evening hours 
 that I appealed to their free judgment. When, for instance, 
 it was reported in the village that they had not enough to 
 eat, I said to them, ' Tell me, my children, if you are not 
 better fed than you were at home ? Think, and tell me your- 
 selves, whether it would be well to keep you here in such a 
 way as would make it impossible for you afterwards, in spite 
 of all your application and hard work, to procure what you 
 had become accustomed to. Do you lack anything that is 
 really necessary ? Do you think that I could reasonably and 
 justly do more for you ? Would you have me spend all the 
 
PESTAL0ZZ1 AT STANZ. 163 
 
 money that is entrusted to me on thirty or forty children 
 instead of on eighty as at present ? Would that be just ? ' 
 
 "In the same way, when I heard that it was reported that I 
 punished them too severely, I said to them : ' You know how 
 I love you, my children ; but tell me, would you like me to 
 stop punishing you ? Do you think that in any other way I 
 can free you from your deeply rooted bad habits, or make you 
 always mind what I say ? ' You were there, my friend, and 
 saw with your own eyes the sincere emotion with which they 
 answered, ' We do not complain of your treatment. Would 
 that we never deserved punishment ; but when we do, we are 
 willing to bear it.' 
 
 " Many things that make no difference in a small household 
 could not be tolerated where the numbers were so great. I 
 tried to make my children feel this, always leaving them to 
 decide what could or could not be allowed. It is true that, 
 in my intercourse with them, I never spoke of liberty or 
 equality ; but, at the same time, I encouraged them as far 
 as possible to be free and unconstrained in my presence, with 
 the result that every day I marked more and more that clear, 
 open look in their eyes which, in my experience, is the sign 
 of a really liberal education. I could not bear the thought 
 of betraying the trust I read in their faces, and was always 
 seeking to encourage it, as well as the free development of 
 their individuality, that nothing might cloud their angel eyes, 
 the mere sight of which gave me such deep pleasure. I never 
 tolerated frowns and gloomy faces, but always tried to call 
 back smiles. The consequence was that, even amongst them- 
 selves, gloomy looks were kept out of sight. 
 
 " By reason of their great number, I had occasion nearly ^ 
 every day to point out the difference between good and evil, 
 justice and injustice. Good and evil are equally contagious 
 amongst so many children, so that, according as the good or 
 bad sentiments spread, the establishment was likely to become 
 either much better or much worse than if it had only con- 
 tained a smaller number. About this, too, I talked to them 
 frankly. I shall never forget the impression that my words 
 produced when, in speaking of a certain disturbance that had 
 taken place amongst them, I said, 'My children, it is the 
 same with us as with every other household ; when the chil- 
 dren are numerous, and each gives way to his bad habits, 
 such disorder ensues that even the weakest mother is obliged 
 
i64 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 to be reasonable, and make them submit to what is just and 
 right. And that is what I must do now. If you do not 
 willingly assist in the maintenance of order, our establish- 
 ment cannot go on, you will fall back into your former 
 condition, and your misery — now that you have been accus- 
 tomed to a good home, clean clothes, and regular food — will 
 be greater than ever. In this world, my children, necessity 
 and conviction alone can teach a man to behave ; when both 
 fail him, he is hateful. Think for a moment what you would 
 become if you were safe from want and cared nothing for 
 right, justice, or goodness. At home there was always some 
 one who looked after you, and poverty itself forced you to 
 many a right action ; but with convictions and reason to guide 
 you, you will rise far higher than by following necessity 
 alone.' 
 
 " I often spoke to them in this way without troubling in 
 the least whether they each understood every word, feeling 
 quite sure that they all caught the general sense of what I 
 said. 
 
 " Lively pictures of the condition in which they might some 
 day find themselves, had also a very great effect upon them. 
 I pointed out to them the result of each particular defect. I 
 said, for instance : ' Do you not know men who are detested 
 for their evil tongue ? Would you, in your old days, care to 
 be thus held in abomination by your neighbours and relations, 
 perhaps even by your children ? ' In that way I used their 
 own experience to put before them as striking a picture as I 
 could of the evil results of our faults. Similarly, I pointed 
 out the consequences of right action. 
 
 "Generally, however, I tried to make clear to them the very 
 different effects of good and bad education. 'Do you not 
 know men whose unhappiness is solely the result of their 
 want of thought and application w r hen young ? Do you not 
 know some who could earn three or four times as much if 
 they could read and write? Will you not take advantage 
 of your time here, and learn as much as possible, so that you 
 may never have to live by begging, or be a burden to your 
 children ? ' 
 
 " Here are a few more thoughts which produced a great 
 impression on my children : ' Do you know anything greater 
 or nobler than to give counsel to the poor, and comfort to the 
 unfortunate ? But if you remain ignorant and incapable, 
 
PESTALOZZI AT STANZ. 165 
 
 you will be obliged, in spite of your good heart, to let things 
 take their course; whereas, if you acquire knowledge and 
 power, you will be able to give good advice, and save many a 
 man from misery.' 
 
 " I have generally found that great, noble, and high 
 thoughts are indispensable for developing wisdom and firm- 
 ness of character. 
 
 " Such an instruction must be complete in the sense that it 
 must take account of all our aptitudes and all our circum- 
 stances ; it must be conducted, too, in a truly psychological 
 spirit, that is to say, simply, lovingly, energetically, and 
 calmly. Then, by its very nature, it produces an enlightened 
 and delicate feeling for everything true and good, and brings 
 to light a number of accessory and dependent truths, which 
 are forthwith accepted and assimilated by the human soul, 
 even in the case of those who could not express these truths 
 in words. This verbal expression of the truths which rule 
 our lives is not so generally useful to humanity as it is thought 
 to be by men who have been accustomed for centuries to 
 hear Christian instruction conveyed by question and answer, 
 regardless of result, and who for a generation past have seen 
 the mania of our poor century for empty speech more and 
 more encouraged, alas! by the very people who pretend to 
 enlighten it. 
 
 "I believe that the first development of thought in the 
 child is very much disturbed by a wordy system of teaching, 
 which is not adapted either to his faculties or the circum- 
 stances of his life. 
 
 "According to my experience, success depends upon whether 
 what is taught to children commends itself to them as true, 
 through being closely connected with their own personal 
 observation and experience. 
 
 " Without this foundation, truth must seem to them to be 
 little better than a plaything, which is beyond their compre- 
 hension, and therefore a burden. Truth and justice are 
 certainly more than empty words to men, for they are the 
 outcome of inward convictions, high views, noble aspirations, 
 and sound judgment, to say nothing of the external signs by 
 which their power may be made manifest. 
 
 " And what is not less true is that this sentiment of truth 
 and justice, when it has developed simply and soberly in the 
 depths of a man's soul, is his best safeguard against the chief 
 
166 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 and most deadly consequences of prejudice ; nor will it ever 
 allow error, ignorance, or superstition, however bad they may 
 be in themselves, to influence him as they do and always 
 must influence those who, without a trace of love or justice 
 in their hearts, are incessantly prating of religion and right. 
 
 "These general principles of human instruction are like 
 pieces of pure gold ; the particular truths which depend upon 
 them are but silver and copper. I cannot help comparing the 
 swimmer, who loses himself in this sea, made up of so many 
 thousand drops of truth, to a merchant who, after having 
 amassed a fortune, penny by penny, should become so attached 
 not only to the general principle of looking after the pence, 
 but to each individual penny, that the loss of a single one 
 would distress him as much as that of a golden guinea. 
 
 " When the peaceful exercise of his duty produces a har- 
 mony between a man's powers and feelings, when the charm 
 of pure relations between men is increased and ensured by 
 the wider recognition of certain simple and lofty truths, 
 there is nothing to be feared from prejudices ; they will 
 disappear before the natural development of these feelings 
 and powers like darkness before the dawn. 
 
 " Human knowledge derives its real advantages from the 
 solidity of the foundations on which it rests. The man who 
 knows a great deal must be stronger, and must work harder 
 than others, if he is to bring his knowledge into harmony 
 with his nature and with the circumstances of his life. If 
 he does not do this, his knowledge is but a delusive will-o'- 
 the-wisp, and will often rob him of such ordinary pleasures 
 of life as even the most ignorant man, if he have but common 
 sense, can make quite sure of. That, my dear friend, is why 
 I felt it to be so important that this harmony of the soul's 
 powers, the combined effect of our nature and first impres- 
 sions, should not be disturbed by the errors of human art. 
 
 "I have now put before you my views as to the family 
 spirit which ought to prevail in an educational establishment, 
 and I have told you of my attempts to carry them out. I 
 have still to explain the essential principles upon which all 
 my teaching was based. 
 
 "I knew no other order, method, or art, bat that which 
 resulted naturally from my children's conviction of my love 
 for them, nor did I care to know any other. 
 
 "Thus I subordinated the instruction of my children to a 
 
PESTAL0ZZ1 AT STANZ. 167 
 
 higher aim, which was to arouse and strengthen their best 
 sentiments by the relations of every-day life as they existed 
 between themselves and me. 
 
 " I had Gedicke's reading-book, but it was of no more nse 
 to me than any other school-book ; for I felt that, with all 
 these children of such different ages, I had an admirable 
 opportunity for carrying out my own views on early educa- 
 tion. I was well aware, too, how impossible it would be to 
 organize my teaching according to the ordinary system in use 
 in the best schools. 
 
 " As a general rule I attached little importance to the study 
 of words, even when explanations of the ideas they repre- 
 sented were given. 
 
 " I tried to connect study with manual labour, the school 
 with the workshop, and make one thing of them. But I was 
 the less able to do this as staff, material, and tools were all 
 wanting. A short time only before the close of the establish- 
 ment, a few children had begun to spin ; and I saw clearly 
 that, before any fusion could be effected, the two parts must 
 be firmly established separately — study, that is, on the one 
 hand, and labour on the other. 
 
 " But in the work of the children I was already inclined 
 to care less for the immediate gain than for the physical 
 training which, by developing their strength and skill, was 
 bound to supply them later with a means of livelihood. In 
 the same way I considered that what is generally called the 
 instruction of children should be merely an exercise of the 
 faculties, and I felt it important to exercise the attention, 
 observation, and memory first, so as to strengthen these 
 faculties before calling into play the art of judging and 
 reasoning ; this, in my opinion, was the best way to avoid 
 turning out that sort of superficial and presumptuous talker, 
 whose false judgments are often more fatal to the happiness 
 and progress of humanity than the ignorance of . simple 
 people of good sense. 
 
 " Gruided by these principles, I sought less at first to teach 
 my children to spell, read, and write than to make use of 
 these exercises for the purpose of giving their minds as full 
 and as varied a development as possible. 
 
 " I made them spell by heart before teaching them their 
 A B C, and the whole class could thus spell the hardest words 
 without knowing their letters. It will be evident to every- 
 
1 68 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 body how great a call this made on their attention. I followed 
 at first the order of words in Gedicke's book, but I soon found 
 it more useful to join the five vowels successively to the 
 different consonants, and so form a well graduated series of 
 syllables leading from simple to compound. 1 . . 
 
 " I had gone rapidly through the scraps of geography and 
 natural history in Gedicke's book. Before knowing their 
 letters even, they could say properly the names of the different 
 countries. In natural history they were very quick in cor- 
 roborating what I taught them by their own personal obser- 
 vations on plants and animals. I am quite sure that, by 
 continuing in this way, I should soon have been able not only 
 to give them such a general acquaintance with the subject as 
 would have been useful in any vocation, but also to put them 
 in a position to carry on their education themselves by means 
 of their daily observations and experiences; and I should 
 have been able to do all this without going outside the very 
 restricted sphere to which they were confined by the actual 
 circumstances of their lives. I hold it to be extremely im- 
 portant that men should be encouraged to learn by themselves 
 and allowed to develop freely. It is in this way alone that 
 the diversity of individual talent is produced and made 
 evident. 
 
 u I always made the children learn perfectly even the least 
 important things, and I never allowed them to lose ground ; 
 a word once learnt, for instance, was never to be forgotten, 
 and a letter once well written never to be written badly 
 again. I was very patient with all who were weak or slow, 
 but very severe with those who did anything less well than 
 they had done it before. 
 
 " The number and inequality of my children rendered my 
 task easier. Just as in a family the eldest and cleverest 
 child readily shows what he knows to his younger brothers 
 
 1 We have here suppressed certain details which apply to German 
 only, and can hardly be translated. But it is clear that the syllabaries 
 for teaching reading, which were not employed in the schools till long 
 afterwards, had already at this time been invented by Pestalozzi. He 
 had already begun, too, to connect the teaching of writing with that 
 of reading and spelling, and used to make his children read written 
 characters before printed ones. His views on this subject are explained 
 in his work, How to Teach Spelling and Reading. Gessner, Zurich and 
 Berne, 1801. 
 
PESTAL0ZZ1 AT STANZ. 169 
 
 and sisters, and feels proud and happy to be able to take his 
 mother's place for a moment, so my children were delighted 
 when they knew something that they could teach others. A 
 sentiment of honour awoke in them, and they learned twice 
 as well by making the younger ones repeat their words. In 
 this way I soon had helpers and collaborators amongst the 
 children themselves. When I was teaching them to spell 
 difficult words by heart, I used to allow any child who 
 succeeded in saying one properly to teach it to the others. 
 These child-helpers, whom I had formed from the very out- 
 set, and who had followed my method step by step, were 
 certainly much more useful to me than any regular school- 
 masters could have been. 
 
 " I myself learned with the children. Our whole system 
 was so simple and so natural that I should have had difficulty 
 in finding a master who would not have thought it undignified 
 to learn and teach as I was doing. 
 
 " My aim was so to simplify the means of instruction that 
 it should be quite possible for even the most ordinary man to 
 teach his children himself ; thus schools would gradually 
 almost cease to be necessar}', so far as the first elements are 
 concerned. Just as the mother gives her child its first 
 material food, so is she ordained by God to give it its first 
 spiritual food, and I consider that very great harm is done to 
 the child by taking it away from home too soon and submit- 
 ting it to artificial school methods. The time is drawing near 
 when methods of teaching will be so simplified that each 
 mother will be able not only to teach her children without 
 help, but continue her own education at the same time. And 
 this opinion is justified by my experience, for I found that some 
 of my children developed so well as to be able to follow in my 
 footsteps. And I am more than ever convinced that as 
 soon as we have educational establishments combined with 
 workshops, and conducted on a truly psychological basis, a 
 generation will necessarily be formed which, on the one hand, 
 will show us by experience that our present studies do not 
 require one tenth part of the time or trouble we now give to 
 them, and on the other, that the time and strength this 
 instruction demands, as well as the means of acquiring it, 
 may be made to fit in so perfectly with the conditions of 
 domestic life, that every parent will easily be able to supply 
 it by a member or friend of the family, a result which will 
 13 
 
I70 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 daily become easier, according as the method of instruction 
 is simplified, and the number of educated people increased. 
 
 " I have proved two things which will be of considerable 
 use to us in bringing about this desirable improvement. The 
 first is that it is possible and even easy to teach many 
 children of different ages at once and well ; the second, that 
 many things can be taught to such children even whilst 
 they are engaged in manual labour. This sort of teaching 
 will appear little more than an exercise of memory, as indeed 
 it is ; but when the memory is applied to a series of psycho- 
 logically graduated ideas, it brings all the other faculties into 
 play. Thus, by making children learn at one time spelling, 
 at another exercises on numbers, at another simple songs, we 
 exercise not only their memory, but their power of combina- 
 tion, their judgment, their taste, and many of the best feelings 
 of their hearts. In this way it is possible to stimulate all a 
 child's faculties, even when one seems to be exercising his 
 memory only. 
 
 "These exercises not only gave my children an ever-increas- 
 ing power of attention and discernment, but did very much 
 for their general mental and moral development, and gave 
 that balance to their natures which is the foundation of 
 human wisdom. 
 
 " You yourself have seen, my friend, how the giddiest 
 of them would often burst into tears, how the courage of 
 innocence developed, and how the higher feelings of the most 
 intelligent became gradually more and more active. You 
 must not, however, be deceived, and think that the work was 
 already accomplished. Moments of highest hope alternated 
 with hours of disorder, sorrow, and anxiety. 
 
 " I myself was not always the same. You know what I 
 am when ill-will and spite are in league against me. Like 
 the worm that so easily eats its way into the fast-growing 
 plant, malice attacked the very heart of my work. 
 
 " Certain men would just glance at my immense task, and 
 finding something which was not so well managed as in their 
 own room or kitchen, or in some richly endowed institution, 
 would at once give me the benefit of their advice and wisdom. 
 But, as I could never follow it, they all looked on me as a man 
 upon whom advice was thrown away, and used to say to each 
 other, l There is nothing to be done with him ; he is a little 
 queer in the head.' This was the hardest thing I had to bear. 
 
PESTALOZZI AT STANZ. 171 
 
 " You will hardly believe that it was the Capuchin friars 
 and the nuns of the convent that showed the greatest sym- 
 pathy with my work. Few people, except Truttman, took 
 any active interest in it. Those from whom I had hoped most 
 were too deeply engrossed with their high political affairs to 
 think of our little institution as having the least degree of 
 importance. 
 
 " Such were my dreams ; but at the very moment that I 
 seemed to be on the point of realizing them, I had to leave 
 Stanz." u 
 
 In spite of its great length and many repetitions, this letter 
 seems to us to be one of the most interesting and important 
 documents in the whole field of modern pedagogy. 
 
 It contains first a general sketch of an organic education 
 proceeding from within to without by the development and 
 exercise of the child's faculties and sentiments. It speaks of 
 instruction as the fruit of the child's own activity, which must 
 be directed, from the very first, in view of that growth of his 
 faculties which will enable him to learn by himself. It speaks, 
 besides, of a rational method of teaching reading combined 
 with writing and spelling, of the introduction into the popular 
 school of useful facts of geography and natural history, and 
 of the first attempt at that system of mutual instruction 
 which has since been so badly imitated. 
 
 The conclusions to be drawn from this experiment at Stanz 
 have been summed up by Morf, one of the men who have 
 studied Pestalozzi with the greatest care and the greatest 
 intelligence, and the author of the most complete biography 
 that has been published of this philosopher of education. His 
 summing up is as follows : 
 
 1. "Man's knowledge must be founded on sense-impression. 
 Without this basis, it is but empty verbiage, fraught with more 
 danger even than ignorance for the future happiness of men. 
 
 2. "Each branch of instruction must start from a point 
 which is within reach of the child's earliest powers. From 
 this point he must be led forward by a chain of ideas so care- 
 fully graduated, that he is able to reach each successive link 
 by his own strength. 
 
 3. " The method and means of instruction must be made 
 so clear and so simple as to be capable of adoption by all 
 mothers and teachers, no matter how little talent or education 
 
1 7 2 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 they may have. In no other way can we look for any large 
 diffusion of enlightenment amongst the people. 
 
 4. "In each branch the child must be exercised in the 
 simplest elements till he is entirely master of them, and it 
 must be the same for every step that adds anything new 
 to what is already known. Wherever this principle is not 
 faithfully observed, there can be no true intellectual culture, 
 but merely a confused knowledge, which must remain barren. 
 
 5. "Teaching must be addressed to the whole class, and not 
 mereh r to each individual child ; the chief means for this is 
 to make the whole class repeat the master's words in chorus. 
 In this way everybody is occupied, nobody remains inactive, 
 all are compelled to take part in the common work. 
 
 6. " Time or rhythm, which men find so useful in any com- 
 bined work or game, must also be observed in this exercise. 
 It prevents the confusion which would result from a large 
 number of voices, and strengthens the impression made by 
 the teaching. 
 
 7. " "With this method of instruction, children can practise 
 writing and drawing, even while they are being taught other 
 things. In this way they train their hsnd and eye, and 
 begin to form their taste. Pestalozzi employed slates for this 
 purpose, on which the children wrote with pencils of the same 
 material. The advantages of this latter innovation, which 
 was due to Pestalozzi, and has since rendered so much service 
 in elementary schools, are its cheapness and the ease with 
 which writing can be rubbed out and corrected." 
 
 These propositions, which resume the main points of the 
 letter we have quoted, contain the essential principles upon 
 which, in the present century, the general reform of element- 
 ary education has been conducted, and which have led in 
 particular to the institution of good primary schools. 
 
 We have now to see how Pestalozzi applied and developed 
 these principles in the new openings he found for his inde- 
 fatigable activity. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 PESTALOZZI AT BUEGDOEF. 
 
 After teaching gratuitously in the Non-Burgesses' School, he is 
 appointed to the Burgesses' School. The School Commission 
 report on his method. He presents an account of his doc- 
 trine to the Society of the Friends of Education. His health 
 seriously impaired by overwork. 
 
 Pestalozzi did cot stay long at the Gurnigel. No sooner 
 had his health begun to mend than he was again seized with 
 that impetuous zeal for what he called his work, his work 
 without which he could not live — the raising of the people by 
 education. He impatiently awaited the evacuation of Lower 
 Unterwalden by the French troops, for he wanted to return 
 to Stanz and continue his experiment. We have seen that 
 the decision of the Government made this impossible. 
 
 Once more Pestalozzi saw the destruction of all his hopes. 
 Not in a position to found such an establishment as he had 
 always thought necessary for the realization of his views, and 
 obliged to give up this project that he had cherished for so 
 long, he had now to look for some other way of reaching the 
 same end, and he decided to become a schoolmaster. 
 
 It was to the little town of Burgdorf, in the canton of 
 Berne, that he offered his services ; he asked for no salary, 
 but simply for permission to give lessons to the children of 
 one of the primary schools. This modest request was at first 
 refused, and we can hardly wonder at it. 
 
 Till then Pestalozzi's only real success had been the publi- 
 cation of Leonard and Gertrude. His practical experiments 
 had been very short-lived, and had left nothing behind them 
 calculated to give the public a favourable idea of his talents. 
 " He seems to work well enongh for a few months," people 
 had said when he left Stanz, " but it does not last. We might 
 have known that it would be so ; he knows nothing thoroughly, 
 
174 PESTALOZZl; HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 and is entirely unpractical. Because lie wrote a novel at 
 thirty, it does not follow that he can teach at fifty." 
 
 Charles Monnard describes Pestalozzi at this time as 
 follows : 
 
 " At that time the Burgdorf authorities would not have 
 dared to entrust Pestalozzi with a primary school ; this man, 
 since so celebrated, would have had no chance whatever against 
 even the most ordinary candidates. He had everything 
 against him ; thick, indistinct speech, bad writing, ignorance 
 of drawing, scorn of grammatical learning. He had studied 
 various branches of natural history, but without any par- 
 ticular attention either to classification or terminology. He 
 was conversant with the ordinary numerical operations, but 
 he would have had difficulty to get through a really long sum 
 in multiplication or division, and had probably never tried to 
 work out a problem in geometry. For years this dreamer had 
 read no books. 
 
 " He could not even sing, though, when unusually excited 
 or elated, he would hum snatches of poetry to himself; not, 
 however, with very much tune. 
 
 " But instead of the usual knowledge that any young man 
 of ordinary talent can acquire in two years, he understood 
 thoroughly what most masters were entirely ignorant of — the 
 mind of man and the laws of its development, human affec- 
 tions, and the art of arousing and ennobling them. He seemed 
 to have almost an intuitive insight into the development of 
 human nature, which indeed he was never tired of contem- 
 plating." l 
 
 Two men, however, of a certain influence in the town, 
 Schnell, prefect of Burgdorf, and" Doctor Grimm, recognised 
 Pestalozzi's true merit. They interceded in his favour, and 
 after some trouble, obtained permission for him to teach in 
 a little school in the lower town intended for the children of 
 non-burgesses. 
 
 Burgdorf is situated a few leagues to the north-east of 
 Berne, on the river Emme, where the rich valley of the same 
 name opens into the plain of the river Aar. An ancient 
 
 1 History of the Swiss Confederation, the continuation of Jean de 
 Muller. 
 
PESTALOZZI AT BURGDORF. 175 
 
 castle, the abode of the Bailiffs, crowns the summit of a small 
 hill, round the sides of which the narrow streets of the upper 
 town are built one above the other. This upper town was 
 principally inhabited by rich people and burgesses, those, that 
 is, who had certain rights connected with the town property ; 
 whereas the lower town at the foot of the hill was occupied 
 by the poorer people and non-burgesses. As the latter, who 
 were looked upon as little better than strangers, were not 
 allowed to send their children to the schools of the burgesses, 
 a special school had been established for them in the lower 
 town. At this time, this school contained seventy-three 
 children. The master, Samuel Dysli, was a shoemaker, who 
 taught the children in his own house, and worked at his 
 trade in the intervals of teaching. Siegfried's elements of 
 instruction, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Psalms were 
 the only things taught, and the only means of teaching. And 
 yet at that time Burgdorf was one of the smaller places, not 
 only in Switzerland but in Europe, where most attention 
 was given to popular education. We may judge from this of 
 the necessity and extent of the reforms brought about by 
 Pestalozzi. 
 
 Such was the school, then, into which the old man was ad- 
 mitted to teach towards the end of July, 1799, about half the 
 children being entrusted to his care. His lessons had nothing 
 in common with the ordinary lessons of the day; he used 
 neither books nor copy-books, the Catechism and Psalms were 
 abandoned, the children had nothing to learn by heart, no- 
 thing to prepare or to write, and no questions to answer. 
 Their principal exercise consisted in repeating Pestalozzi's 
 words all together, whilst they drew on their slates, not 
 letters as at Stanz, but anything they liked. 
 
 Samuel Dysli, however, could not bear to see this stranger 
 teaching in his class, and dreaded being supplanted by him. 
 The new method, which he did not in the least understand, 
 he regarded as an utter abomination, and he was especially 
 scandalized by Pestalozzi's neglect of the Heidelberg Cate- 
 chism. He mentioned his dissatisfaction to the parents 
 of the children, and easily succeeded in alarming them, and 
 inducing them to unite and declare that they would not have 
 this intruder in their school. " If the burgesses approve of 
 this new method," they said, " let them adopt it for their own 
 children." 
 
176 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 The authorities had to give way, and once more Pestalozzi 
 found himself condemned to inaction. 
 
 Schnell and Grimm, however, had so thoroughly entered 
 into his views that they did not give up, but spoke in his 
 favour with renewed zeal, and procured his admission into 
 one of the burgess-schools. 
 
 There were at that time at Burgdorf three classes of boys 
 and three of girls ; the girls were under the care of a lady, 
 Miss Stàhli, though they took a certain number of lessons in 
 the classes intended for the boys. Children were admitted 
 into these classes at the age of eight, the younger ones having 
 a sort of preparatory class that was called the spelling and 
 reading school, and was under the direction of Miss Stahli's 
 younger sister. 
 
 It was in this preparatory class that Pestalozzi was now 
 allowed to teach. It contained from twenty to twenty-five 
 children of both sexes, aged from five to eight. 
 
 In his first letter to Gessner {How Gertrude Teaches her 
 Children), Pestalozzi describes his new position in these 
 words : 
 
 "I thought I was fortunate, though at first I was continually 
 afraid of dismissal, and that made me more than usually awk- 
 ward. When I remember with what spirit and ardour I made 
 an enchanted temple of my school at Stanz, and the agony I 
 suffered under my yoke at Burgdorf, I can hardly understand 
 how the same man can have played two such different parts. 
 
 " Here in Burgdorf, the school was subject to rules, reasonable 
 enough as it seemed, yet not entirely free from pretension and 
 pedantry. All that was new to me. Never in my life had I 
 submitted to anything of the kind; but I was anxious to 
 reach my goal, so I put up with it. I once more began cry- 
 ing my ABC from morning till night, following without any 
 plan the empirical method interrupted at Stanz. I was inde- 
 fatigable in putting syllables together and arranging them in 
 a graduated series ; I did the same for numbers ; I filled 
 whole note-books with them; I sought by every means to 
 simplify the elements of reading and arithmetic, and by 
 grouping them psychologically, enable the child to pass easily 
 and surely from the first step to the second, from the second 
 to the third, and so on. The pupils no longer drew letters on 
 their slates, but lines, curves, angles, and squares." 
 
PESTAL0ZZ1 AT BURGDORF. 177 
 
 At the same time Pestalozzi placed before the eyes of his 
 children large drawings of different objects which he taught 
 them to observe and describe. One day he was thus making 
 them study a drawing of a window in which the children 
 were to count the number of panes, bars, etc., when one of 
 them, after looking fixedly at the window of the room, ex- 
 claimed : " Could we not learn as well from the window itself 
 as from this drawing ? " 
 
 This was new light to Pestalozzi. " The child is right," 
 he cried ; " he will not have anything come between Nature 
 and himself," and he forthwith put his drawings away, and 
 made his pupils observe the objects in the room. 
 
 Pestalozzi had been teaching thus in this school for eight 
 months, when in March, 1800, the annual examination took 
 place, the results of which are stated in the following letter 
 addressed to Pestalozzi by the Burgdorf school commission. 
 This is the first public sign of approval given to the method 
 which was soon to acquire so great a reputation. 
 
 " The School Commission of Burgdorf to citizen Pesta- 
 lozzi. 
 
 " Citizen, — 
 
 " You have given us great pleasure in submitting to our 
 examination the children you have been teaching for the 
 past eight months, and we feel it to be our duty, not so much 
 for your sake as for the sake of your work, to put before you 
 in writing the opinions we have formed concerning them. 
 
 " So far as we are able to judge, all that you yourself 
 hoped from your method of teaching has been realized. You 
 have shown what powers already exist in even the youngest 
 child, in what way these powers are to be developed, and how 
 each talent must be sought out and exercised in such a way 
 as to bring it to maturity. The astonishing progress made 
 by all your young pupils, in spite of their many differences in 
 character and disposition, clearly shows that every child is 
 good for something, when the master knows how to find out 
 his talents, and cultivate them in a truly psychological man- 
 ner. Your teaching has brought to light the foundations on 
 which all instruction must be based, if it is ever to be of any 
 real use ; it also shows that from the tender est age, and in a 
 very short time, a child's mind can attain a wonderful breadth 
 of development which must make its influence felt, not only 
 
178 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 during his few years of study, but throughout his whole 
 life. 
 
 " Whereas by the difficult method hitherto in vogue, 
 children from five to eight years old learnt nothing but let- 
 ters, spelling, and reading, your pupils have not only suc- 
 ceeded in these things to a degree which is altogether unpre- 
 cedented, but the cleverest among them are also distinguished 
 for their good writing, and their talent for drawing and 
 arithmetic. In all of them you have aroused and cultivated 
 such a taste for history, natural history, geography, mea- 
 suring, etc., that their future masters will find their task 
 incredibly lightened if they do but know how to turn this 
 preparation to advantage. 
 
 " In future the higher classes will receive from your hands, 
 or from those of a master who follows your method, not 
 children who still require to spend years over the first ele- 
 ments, but children who know them thoroughly, and possess 
 besides a solid foundation of useful knowledge. 
 
 " Your method of teaching has also many other advantages 
 over those that have been employed hitherto. Not only does 
 it increase the rate of the child's progress, and give variety 
 to his knowledge, but it is especially suitable for the home, 
 where the mother, or an elder child, or a sensible servant, 
 could easily carry it out. What an advantage this is both 
 for parents and children ! 
 
 " We do not think it is exceeding our province to say that 
 you have rendered lasting services to our children and schools, 
 and that we are proud to have been chosen by you to help to 
 carry out the noble plans which do you so much honour, and 
 which will make the task of future schoolmasters so much 
 lighter. In your zealous efforts to realize an idea so carefully 
 thought out, and so thoroughly adapted to the needs of 
 humanity, may you not be hampered by the critical position 
 of our country, by any lack of public support, by jealousy or 
 any other passion. May nothing, in short, turn you aside 
 from your favourite work of education and the ennobling of 
 childhood. 
 
 " Would that we might be able to afford j^ou some slight 
 assistance towards this great end. 
 
 " With republican greeting and true regard, 
 
 " In the name of the School Commission, 
 
 " The President : Em. Kupferschmid." 
 
PESTALOZZI AT BURGDORF. 179 
 
 "Burgdorf, March 31st, 1800. 
 
 " Convinced of the truth of this testimony, and in token of 
 my regard, I have affixed the seal of my office to this 
 document. 
 
 " The Prefect of the district of Burgdorf : J. Schnell." 
 
 This testimony does the greatest honour to the Burgdorf 
 Commission. In spite of all the blunders, irregularities, and 
 oddities of the new method, in spite of its evident defects of 
 form, and the many prejudices they excited, the commis- 
 sioners succeeded in discovering the real merit of the work as 
 neither Businger nor Zschokke had been able to do ; and yet 
 Pestalozzi was not less awkward at Burgdorf than at Stanz. 
 
 The document, moreover, contains abundant proof that 
 the old man was not so incapable of teaching as was gener- 
 ally supposed, for it points to real, rapid, and astonishing 
 progress on the part of his scholars. Nor was Pestalozzi so 
 unpractical as he himself believed ; we need no better proof 
 of this than the very practical inventions by which he 
 sought to make teaching easier; the use of slates for writing 
 and drawing for instance, and of large movable letters for 
 reading. The latter accompanied his book for teaching 
 reading already referred to. It was by their means that he 
 so quickly taught the little Burgdorf children to read. 
 Movable letters have since been very generally used, but 
 not always with Pestalozzi's success ; often indeed they have 
 been little more than useless playthings. We must also 
 mention his tables for teaching arithmetic by sense-impres- 
 sion ; the} 1- were not completed till afterwards, but already 
 in his small class at Burgdorf he made use of boards on 
 which units were represented by dots. 
 
 Such was the first success of the " method," the first at 
 least that was publicly proclaimed. But Pestalozzi's joy in it 
 was soon disturbed, for he was called away to Neuhof by 
 the painful news of the dangerous illness of his beloved son, 
 Jacobli. 
 
 In a few days all immediate danger had disappeared, but 
 the patient remained paralyzed. The poor father passed his 
 Easter vacation at the bedside of his dear and only child, 
 and then sadly returned to Burgdorf. 
 
 It was probably in consequence of the favourable report 
 that had just been published on his work in the preparatory 
 
i8o PESTAL0ZZ1 : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 class, that Pestalozzi was now appointed to the second class, 
 which contained about sixty children of both sexes, of ages 
 varying from six to fifteen, who were taught Bible history, 
 geography, Swiss history, arithmetic, and writing. Several 
 of the pupils also received elementary lessons in Latin from 
 the master of the first class. 
 
 It was in this second class that in May, 1800, Pestalozzi 
 resumed his experiments. The activity he now displayed 
 has been curiously described by one of his pupils, who was 
 then a child of ten years old, but who thirty-eight years 
 afterwards published his autobiography, with the title of A 
 Short Sketch of my Pedagogical Life. This was John Ram- 
 sauer, a poor orphan, who, driven from his native place 
 by the misfortunes of the war, had found a home with a 
 charitable lady at Schleumen, near Burgdorf. Trained by 
 Pestalozzi, he became a most successful teacher, and was 
 finally appointed tutor to the princes and princesses of 
 Oldenburg. 
 
 The following is Ramsauer's account of Pestalozzi and his 
 school at Burgdorf during the summer of 1800 : 
 
 " So far as ordinary school knowledge was concerned, 
 neither I nor the other boys learned anything. But his zeal, 
 loVe, and unselfishness, combined with his painful and serious 
 position, evident even to the children, made a most profound 
 impression upon me, and won my child's heart, naturally 
 disposed to be grateful, for ever. And thus, when my bene- 
 factress went away to Berne for the winter, and gave the 
 two children she had rescued the choice of going with her 
 or staying at Burgdorf, I decided at once for the latter course, 
 whereas my companion preferred the beautiful and wealthy 
 capital. 
 
 u It is impossible to draw a clear and complete picture of 
 this school, but here are a few details. According to the 
 ideas of Pestalozzi, all teaching was to start from three 
 elements : language, number, and form. He had no plan of 
 studies and no order of lessons, and as he did not limit him- 
 self to any fixed time, he often followed the same subject for 
 two or three hours together. We were about sixty boys and 
 girls from eight to fifteen years old. Our lessons lasted from 
 eight till eleven in the morning, and from two till four in the 
 afternoon. All the teaching was limited to drawing, arith- 
 
PESTALOZZI AT BURGDORF. 181 
 
 metic, and exercises in language. We neither read nor 
 wrote ; we had neither books nor copy-books ; we learnt 
 nothing by heart. For drawing we were given neither 
 models nor directions ; only slates and red chalk, and while 
 Pestalozzi was making us repeat sentences on natural history 
 as an exercise in language, we had to draw just what we 
 liked. But we did not know what to draw. Some of us 
 drew little men and women, others houses, others lines or 
 arabesques, according to their fancy. Pestalozzi never looked 
 at what we had drawn, or rather scribbled, but from the state 
 of our clothes it was pretty evident that we had been using 
 red chalk. For arithmetic we had little boards divided into 
 squares, in which were dots that we had to count, add, sub- 
 tract, multiply, and divide. It was from this that Krusi and 
 Buss (Pestalozzi's assistants), first took the idea of their 
 " table of units," and afterwards of their " table of fractions." 
 But as Pestalozzi did nothing but make us repeat these 
 exercises one after another, without asking us any questions, 
 this process, excellent as it was, never did us very much 
 good. 
 
 " Our master never had the patience to go back, and, 
 carried away by his excessive zeal, he paid little attention to 
 each individual scholar. The language exercises were the best 
 thing we had, especially those on the wall-paper of the school- 
 room, which were real practice in sense-impression. We spent 
 hours before this old and torn paper, occupied in examining 
 the number, form, position, and colour of the different designs, 
 holes, and rents, and expressing our ideas in more and more 
 enlarged sentences. Thus he would ask : l Boys, what do 
 you see ? ' (He never addressed the girls.) 
 " Answer : 
 
 " l A hole in the paper.' 
 " Pestalozzi : 
 
 " l Very well, say after me : — 
 
 " ' I see a hole in the paper. 
 
 " ■ I see a long hole in the paper. 
 
 " ' Through the hole I see the wall. 
 
 " ' Through the long narrow hole I see the wall. 
 
 " * I see figures on the paper. 
 
 " 1 1 see black figures on the paper. 
 
 " • I see round black figures on the paper. 
 
 " ' I see a square yellow figure on the paper. 
 
i82 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 11 ' By the side of the square yellow figure I see a round 
 black one. 
 
 " ' The square figure is joined to the round figure by a large 
 black stripe, etc.' 
 
 " The exercises on natural history were not so good. 
 
 " As Pestalozzi in his zeal took no notice of time, he often 
 continued till eleven o'clock what he had begun at eight, 
 though by ten he was already hot and tired. We generally 
 knew it was eleven by the noise the children from the other 
 schools made in the street, and we then very often ran out 
 with a rush without asking permission. Although afterwards 
 Pestalozzi always strictly forbade his masters to use corporal 
 punishment, he did not always spare the children himself. 
 It is true that most of them led him a hard life. I felt a 
 great pity for him, and tried to behave better on that account. 
 He very soon noticed it, and often at eleven o'clock, when 
 it was fine, he took me with him in his walks on the banks 
 of the Emme, where he went to search for minerals. I had 
 to help him, but I was very much puzzled to know which to 
 choose among the thousands of stones on the banks. He 
 himself knew very little about it ; but he always filled his 
 handkerchief and pockets with stones, which he carried home 
 and never looked at again." 
 
 After reading this grotesque description, we can hardly 
 wonder that at this time Pestalozzi's work was occasionally 
 looked upon as mere folly. We must not forget, however, 
 that Ramsauer was then only ten years old, and that in all 
 probability the points of Pestalozzi ; s method which made the 
 strongest impressions upon him were its weaknesses and 
 eccentricities. 
 
 It is besides perfectly true that in his school at Burgdorf 
 Pestalozzi's work was still tentative and experimental, and 
 that he concerned himself comparatively little with the 
 immediate instruction of his pupils. He was not yet clear 
 himself as to what his method really was, and could hardly 
 have given an explanation of it. He was, in fact, still seeking 
 a principle. 
 
 It was in this same summer of 1800 that the clue was 
 given him by a word let fall by a member of the Executive 
 Commission, Mr. Gleyre, of the Canton of Vaud. Pestalozzi 
 himself relates the incident in the first letter to Gessner 
 
PESTALOZZI AT BURGDORF. 183 
 
 {How Gertrude Teaches Her Children), dated the 1st of 
 January, 1801 : 
 
 " Whilst, in the dust of the school, I thus sought to fulfil 
 the duties it imposed on me, not superficially, but with my 
 whole strength, I was confronted at each moment by facts 
 which threw increasing light on the physico-mechanical laws 
 by which our mind is rendered capable of receiving and re- 
 taining impressions. Each day I endeavoured more and more 
 to follow these laws in my teaching, although I did not 
 thoroughly grasp the principle upon which they reposed until 
 last summer, when Councillor Grleyre, to whom I was trying 
 to explain my method, suddenly exclaimed : * I see, you want 
 to make education mechanical. ' He had hit the nail on the 
 head, and supplied me with the very word I wanted to express 
 my aim and the means I employed. I might perhaps have 
 remained a long time without finding it, for I had no clear 
 conception of what I was doing, but merely followed a strong 
 though vague feeling which told me what to do without 
 telling me why. It could not, indeed, be otherwise. For 
 thirty years I had read no books ; I was, in fact, no longer 
 able to read. I had little power left of expressing abstract 
 ideas, and lived, as it were, amidst a crowd of intuitive 
 convictions, the outcome of weighty experiences for the most 
 part forgotten." 
 
 It must be added that in the second edition (1821) of the 
 work we have just quoted, Pestalozzi judges differently. He 
 points out that the word mechanical expresses an idea which 
 is contrary to his views, and that if he adopted it at first, it 
 was only because his ignorance of French prevented his 
 understanding its real meaning. 
 
 He had, however, begun by accepting it and using it, and 
 we can imagine the sort of impression strangers must have 
 carried away, when he told them that his aim was to make 
 education mechanical. 
 
 His error was not of long duration. An account of his 
 doctrine, written shortly after his conversation with Grleyre, 
 begins thus : " I want to psychologize education." Thus he 
 is already making a new word to replace the one he now feels 
 to be unfit. 
 
 No one had been more pleased with Pestalozzi's success in 
 
i84 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 the little elementary school than Stapfer. But as, in spite of 
 this success, the old man's views were still comparatively 
 ignored, Stapfer founded, in June, 1800, a Society of Friends 
 of Education, for the purpose of making them more generally 
 known. The Society appointed a Commission, chosen from 
 its own members, to examine Pestalozzi's method and report 
 on it. The Commissioners, amongst whom were such dis- 
 tinguished men as Paul Usteri, of Zurich, and Luthi, of 
 Soleure, asked Pestalozzi to furnish them with a short 
 account of his doctrine and method of working. Pestalozzi 
 at once consented, and drew up the statement of which we 
 have already quoted the opening sentence. 
 
 This document, which is Pestalozzi's first systematic state- 
 ment of his " method," is of very considerable importance, not 
 only because at this time he was still working alone, but 
 because it sets forth his doctrine with a clearness and pre- 
 cision that are hardly to be found in any other of his writings. 
 Unfortunately it was never published, and has remained almost 
 unknown. It is wanting even in the collection published by 
 Seyffarth, at Brandenburg, which is the most complete edition 
 of Pestalozzi's works. Nieclerer, we believe, incorporated it 
 in his Notes on Pestalozzi, Aix-la-Chapelle, 1828, but this 
 book is no longer to be found. 
 
 The author begins by developing the idea contained in his 
 first sentence : " I want to psychologize human education." 
 He explains that his aim is to base all methods of teaching 
 on the eternal laws which regulate the development of the 
 human mind, and that he has endeavoured, by conforming to 
 these laws, to simplify the elements of knowledge, and reduce 
 them to such psychologically connected series of notions as 
 shall ensure even for the lowest classes of society a real 
 physical, intellectual, and moral development. 
 
 He then shows that sense-impression, joined to exercises in 
 language for expressing the different impressions received, 
 must be the foundation of education, and he points to lan- 
 guage, drawing, writing, arithmetic, and the art of measuring 
 as being the most general elements of culture, as well as 
 those that the experience of centuries has consecrated. He 
 then gives a few series of elementary notions which he has 
 already drawn up, and indicates the branches of study for 
 which such work has still to be done. 
 
 In the course of his exposition he often comes back to the 
 
PESTALOZZI AT BURGDORF. 185 
 
 inexact word lie seemed to have abandoned, and speaks of 
 imitating the mechanism of Nature as if he had forgotten 
 the spiritual essence of the heart and mind of man. 
 
 But his real thought is clearly seen in the following 
 extract : 
 
 11 The mechanism of Nature is everywhere sublime, but 
 simple. Imitate it, oh man ! Imitate Nature, that from the 
 seed of the greatest tree produces nothing at first but a 
 scarcely perceptible growth, which, slowly and insensibly 
 increasing from day to day, and hour to hour, gradually 
 develops into trunk, branches, twigs, and leaves. 
 
 " Observe carefully how Nature protects and strengthens 
 each new part as it is developed, that it may serve in its turn 
 as the source of still further development. 
 
 " Observe how the flower only develops after having been 
 formed in the heart of the bud, how the beauty of its first 
 days soon passes away, giving place to the fruit, as yet a 
 feeble growth, but already perfect in its essential features, 
 and how for months this fruit, hanging to the branch which 
 nourishes it, grows and develops till at last ripe and perfected 
 it falls from the tree. 
 
 " Observe how Nature no sooner lifts the first shoot above 
 the ground than it sends forth the first germ of the root, 
 and gradually carries deep into the bosom of the earth the 
 noblest part of the tree ; how by a subtle process it develops 
 the motionless trunk from the heart of the root, the branches 
 from the heart of the trunk, and the twigs from the heart 
 of the branches ; how, to each part, no matter how weak or 
 how insignificant, it supplies the necessary nourishment, yet 
 nothing useless, inappropriate, or superfluous." 
 
 Under the name of the mechanism of Nature, it is evidently 
 the vegetable organism that Pestalozzi is here describing and 
 proposing as a model for the educator. We may conclude, 
 therefore, that whenever, in talking of education, he speaks 
 of mechanism, it is organism that he means us to understand. 
 That the mind and the heart of man, no less than his body, 
 develop according to organic laws, is indeed the fundamental 
 principle of Pestalozzi's doctrine, as we shall see still more 
 clearly presently. The important document we have been 
 quoting, concludes as follows : 
 14 
 
1 86 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK, 
 
 " Do not, oh man, neglect the great psychological law by 
 which the nearness or distance of objects determines their 
 positive effect on your impressions and development. The 
 child who goes miles in search of a tree that grows before 
 his door will never learn to know trees. The child who finds 
 nothing worthy of attention in his home will not easily find 
 airything to interest him in the whole world, nor will he who 
 is not moved to love by his mother's eyes be moved to kindli- 
 ness by the tears of men, though he should roam the world 
 over. Man becomes good when he listens to the calls to 
 virtue and wisdom made on him by his immediate surround- 
 ings ; he becomes the opposite when, neglecting these, he 
 seeks others in distant lands. 
 
 " Nature has two principal and general means of directing 
 human activity towards the cultivation of the arts, and these 
 should be employed, if not before, at least side by side with 
 any particular means. They are singing and the sense of the 
 beautiful, The mother lulls her child with her song, though 
 here, as in everything else, we do not follow the law of 
 Nature. Before the child is a year old, the mother's song 
 ceases ; by that time she is, as a rule, no longer entirely 
 a mother for the child, who is already forgetting his first 
 impressions ; indeed for him, as for everybody else, she is 
 often little more than a busy, overburdened woman. Ah ! 
 why should it be thus ? Why has not the progress of the 
 arts during so many centuries been able to find something 
 to carry on the work of these lullabies in after life ? Why 
 has it not yet given us a series of national songs capable of 
 elevating the very humblest souls and leading from the 
 simple cradle melody to the sublime hymn of praise to God ? 
 I am incapable of supplying the want, alas ! I can only call 
 attention to it. 
 
 "And it is the same with the sense of the beautiful. 
 Nature is full of lovely sights, yet Europe has done nothing 
 either to awaken in the poor a sense for these beauties, or to 
 arrange them in such a way as to produce a series of im- 
 pressions capable of developing this sense. In vain does the 
 sun rise and set; in vain do forest, meadow, mountain, and 
 valley spread their innumerable wonders before our eyes ; all 
 this is nothing to us. 
 
 "And here ngain I can do nothing. But if ever popular 
 education should cease to be the barbarous absurdity it now 
 
PESTALOZZI AT BURGDORF, 187 
 
 is, and put itself into harmony with the real needs of our 
 nature, this want will be supplied. 
 
 " Nature does much for humanity, but we have forsaken 
 its path. The poor especially are far removed from its life- 
 giving springs. I have seen that this is so, and in all my 
 experience I have not seen that it was ever otherwise. 
 Hence the need which impels me not merely to remedy 
 obvious defects, but to get to the very root of the educational 
 evil which in Europe is destroying the most numerous class 
 of the population. 
 
 " I know what I am doing. But neither the difficulties of 
 the undertaking nor the inadequacy of my means can prevent 
 my bringing my grain of sand for the construction of the 
 building of which Europe stands so much in need. And, 
 gentlemen, in offering you the results of the labours which 
 have absorbed my life, I ask you but one thing, and it is 
 this : that in examining my ideas you will rigidly separate 
 anything that seems doubtful from what you feel to be 
 incontestably true." 
 
 During this summer of 1800, Pestalozzi did not obtain 
 in his higher class so much success as had crowned his efforts 
 in the lower class the winter before. It will be remembered 
 that Ramsauer admits that " most of his pupils gave him a 
 very great deal of trouble." Stapfer, too, states that the 
 old man's appearance and manners often compromised his 
 authority in his class, and to such a degree that the prefect 
 Schnell was obliged to intervene. 
 
 It could hardly be otherwise. Pestalozzi's method was at 
 that time exclusively and excessively elementary ; it dealt 
 with human knowledge in its first and simplest principles ; 
 it was only fit, in fact, for quite young beginners. It was 
 therefore almost impossible to apply it to scholars who for 
 many years had been taught on a totally different method. 
 Indeed, as these young people thought themselves already 
 tolerably well educated, these simple, childish exercises, far 
 from interesting them, only served to wound their vanity. 
 The same thing happened again afterwards, and the work 
 which had been so successful at the Burgdorf institute had 
 much less success at Yverdun. 
 
 Whilst Pestalozzi was thus teaching in the second class in 
 Burgdorf, he was also endeavouring, with Stapfer's help, to 
 
i88 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 find some new sphere of activity, for he felt that the excessive 
 labour his work necessitated was wearing him out. 
 
 The Helvetian Directory, that had looked so favourably 
 upon Pestalozzi's educational schemes, had been replaced, on 
 the 7th of January, 1800, by an Executive Commission of 
 seven members. On the 18th of the following February, 
 Stapfer had addressed to this Commission a report drawn up 
 in French, in which, after again calling attention to Pesta- 
 lozzi's views and the success of his teaching at Burgdorf, he 
 continued : 
 
 " It would be unpardonable of the Helvetian Govern- 
 ment not to use the talents of this remarkable man for the 
 benefit of the country, and not to turn to advantage the 
 virtues of an old man whose ardour to alleviate the suffer- 
 ings of his fellow-creatures has not been quenched by years, 
 and whose heart, even in the winter of his life, is still 
 eager to be useful, and still burns with the sacred love of 
 humanity." 
 
 He finishes by asking, in Pestalozzi's name, for permission 
 to publish his writings, and for a loan of some seventy 
 pounds, to be devoted partly to the expenses of printing the 
 elementary books at which he was working, partly to the 
 foundation of a special educational establishment ; lastly, 
 with a view to the building which would be necessary, he 
 asks for a free gift of two hundred trees from the national 
 forests in the neighbourhood of Neuhof. For security Pesta- 
 lozzi offered to deposit his manuscripts, valued by certain 
 impartial publishers at about seventy pounds, and undertook 
 to devote to the new establishment all profits from the sale 
 of his works, and, according to his means, to receive poor 
 children free of charge. 
 
 The Executive Commission had on the 25th of February 
 decided to advance the money on condition that Pestalozzi 
 should pay them back as soon as his institution enabled him 
 to do so, and it had asked the legislative councils to confirm 
 this decision. It had, however, refused the trees for build, 
 ing, on the ground that the forests in Aargau were in a very 
 bad condition, but it had offered to supply him with weed 
 from another part of Switzerland instead. Pestalozzi ex- 
 pressed his thanks in the following letter : 
 
PESTAL0ZZ1 AT BURGDORF. 189 
 
 " Citizen Councillors of State, — 
 
 " Till now I had feared that I should, die without having 
 received any help from my country towards the one great 
 end of my life. You can judge then how your decision, by 
 removing this fear, has restored my courage and filled my 
 heart with gratitude. 
 
 " With respect and patriotic fidelity, 
 
 a "Pp'QTAT 077T 
 
 " JBurgdorf, the 6th of March, 1800." 
 
 The extremely unsatisfactory state of the finances of the 
 Republic, however, interfered with the carrying out of the 
 decision. Even afterwards, when Pestalozzi had really 
 founded and put into working order the Burgdorf institute, 
 he only received twenty-three pounds from the State purse 
 for the first year, fifteen of which were to go towards the 
 expenses of printing his first elementary book, How to Teach 
 Spelling and Reading. Moreover, the refusal of wood at 
 Neuhof had interfered with Pestalozzi's plans, and compelled 
 him to postpone their execution. He was therefore obliged 
 to go on with his fatiguing work in his class ; but his chest 
 was not strong enough to bear the violent strain he put upon 
 it from morning till night, and he was soon as ill as he had 
 been at Stanz. It was about this time that he wrote as follows 
 to his friend Zschokke : 
 
 " For thirty years my life has been a well-nigh hopeless 
 struggle against the most frightful poverty. . . . For 
 thirty years I have had to forego many of the barest neces- 
 saries of life, and have had to shun the society of my fellow- 
 men from sheer lack of decent clothes. Many and many a 
 time have I gone without a dinner, and eaten in bitterness 
 a dry crust of bread on the road, at a time when even the 
 poorest were seated round a table. All this I have suffered, 
 and am still suffering to-day, and with no other object than 
 the realization of my plans for helping the poor." 
 
 Once more disappointed in his hopes, Pestalozzi saw his 
 life and strength apparently wasted, and his most cherished 
 schemes on the point of being ruined for ever, when, happily 
 for humanity, Providence came to his rescue by sending him 
 a helper in every way worthy of him, such a man, indeed, 
 as he never expected to find — Hermann Krusi. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 KRUSI, PESTALOZZfS FIRST FELLOW-WORKER. 
 
 Outer Appenzell and its inhabitants. How Krusi the carrier 
 became a schoolmaster. Eastern Switzerland ruined by the 
 war. Krusi takes twenty-eight poor children to Burgdorf. 
 Fischer employs Krusi in a training-school in Burgdorf 
 Castle. Death of Fischer. Krusi joins Pestalozzi. 
 
 The village of Gais, in which, in 1775, Hermann Krusi was 
 born, is situated in one of the upper valleys of the canton of 
 Appenzell. This district is one of the most remarkable in 
 Switzerland, not so much perhaps for its beautiful scenery as 
 for the manners, industry, character, and natural intelligence 
 of its inhabitants. It has produced not a few distinguished 
 men, and it supplied Pestalozzi with several of his best col- 
 laborators. 
 
 There is very little arable land in the country, which is 
 exceedingly hilly, but its valleys and heights are thickly 
 wooded, and its well-kept pastures always fresh and green. 
 Its fruit-trees, too, are very numerous, and of a small, hardy 
 sort, suited to the harsh climate. Milk, butter, dried fruit, 
 and cider are its chief products, but these alone would not 
 suffice either to feed or occupy the inhabitants, whose com- 
 fort and prosperity are owing rather to the manufacture 
 of stuffs, embroideries, and especially muslins, an industry 
 which has long been associated with agriculture. There is 
 scarcely a house in the district, indeed, but has its cattle- 
 shed and work-room. 
 
 Krusi did not get much schooling, for his father, a poor 
 shopkeeper, soon required his help at home. What he did 
 get was probably worth very little, for the school at Gais, 
 like most of the schools at that time, was of little real value. 
 The children were called up one by one to say their lesson, 
 and for the rest of the time were left inactive. Their work 
 consisted of spelling, and reading, and repeating the catechism, 
 
PESTALOZZPS FIRST FELLOW-WORKER. 191 
 
 only a few of the elder ones being taught to write. If little 
 Hermann ever learnt anything there, it was soon forgotten, 
 for at twelve years of age he was going about the district for 
 his father from village to village, entirely ignorant of the 
 things generally taught in school. 
 
 But the child was sharp and observant, and passionately 
 fond of study ; and though he had to work hard for a living, 
 he still found time for self-improvement. As his father sent 
 him to make sales or purchases in the different villages, he 
 often found himself the bearer of considerable sums of money ; 
 and as he had to keep a strict account of this money, he 
 gradually taught himself to count. He learned at the same 
 time to distinguish the various qualities of different sorts of 
 goods. He was in the habit, too, of botanizing as he went 
 along, and so became familiar with the names and characters 
 of the most useful plants. He had, besides, that deep appre- 
 ciation of Nature which is so rare amongst those whose daily 
 struggles for a living leave them little or no real leisure. To 
 his admiration for the beauties of his country 1 was joined a 
 fervent inborn piety, which, even amid his mercantile pursuits, 
 always held the first place in his simple, pure, and loving 
 heart. 
 
 Hermann Krusi was eighteen years old when a chance 
 encounter resulted in his taking up teaching, work for which 
 he was eminently fitted, but of which he would probably 
 never have thought had not the idea been suggested to him. 
 Here, for a moment, we must let him speak for himself, for it 
 was from his own lips that we first heard the story : 
 
 1 A very good general view of the country is to be had from the top 
 of the Gâbris, which lies to the north of the village of Gais, and can 
 be reached in rather less than an hour. At this height, hills and woods 
 lie stretched out below, and between them the numerous villages, with 
 their large painted houses of carved wood, and their high, red church 
 steeples. To the south the view extends to the mountains of the Catholic 
 canton of Inner Appenzell, no longer connected with Outer Appenzell, 
 which, on embracing the reform, was made into a separate half-canton. 
 The glaciers of the Sentis crown this side of the picture. To the east 
 lies the Ehine valley, with the river winding like a silver ribbon ; beyond 
 are the Austrian Alps of the Vorarlberg. To the north is the plain of 
 Thurgau, so thickly covered with fine trees as to be like an immense 
 orchard. On this side the view is bounded by the lake of Constance, and 
 beyond the lake, as ar as the eye can reach, by the mountains of the 
 Black Forest. 
 
192 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK 
 
 a One hot summer's day I was crossing the Gâbris on my 
 way back from Trogen with a heavy load of thread. It was 
 just at the top of the mountain where the path changes its 
 direction that my thoughts and my life also changed theirs. 
 I had set down my pack to wipe my forehead, when I was 
 met by Mr. Gruber, at that time State Treasurer, who recog- 
 nized me. 
 
 " * It's very hot, Hermann,' he said. 
 
 " ' Yes, very hot.' 
 
 " ' As Hoerlen, the schoolmaster, is leaving Gais, you might 
 perhaps earn your living without working quite so hard. 
 Wouldn't you like to try for his place ? ' 
 
 " ' It isn't merely a question of what I should like. A 
 schoolmaster must know things of which I am entirely 
 ignorant.' 
 
 " ' At your age you could easily learn all that we expect a 
 village schoolmaster to know.' 
 
 " ' But where and how ? I see no possibility of such a 
 thing.' 
 
 "'A way will easily be found if you would like to do it. 
 Think about it, and lose no time.' 
 
 11 Whereupon he left me. 
 
 " I thought and thought, but could not see how it was to 
 be done. However, I rapidly descended the mountain, hardly 
 conscious of my load. 
 
 " My friend Sonderegger procured me a specimen of writing 
 from a clever caligraphist, of Altstàtten, which I copied more 
 than a hundred times. This was my only preparation. Never- 
 theless, I sent in my name, though with little hope of suc- 
 ceeding. 
 
 " There was only one other candidate. The chief test was 
 to write the Lord's Prayer, which I did with the greatest 
 care. 
 
 " I had noticed that capital letters were used here and there, 
 but I knew nothing of the rules, 1 and took them for an orna- 
 ment. I accordingly arranged mine symmetrically, so that 
 some of them came even in the middle of a word. The fact 
 is that we neither of us knew anything. 
 
 " Soon after the examination was over I was sent for, and 
 told that the examiners thought us both very weak ; that my 
 
 1 In German all nouns are written with a capital letter. 
 
PESTALOZZrS FIRST FELLOW-WORKER. 193 
 
 rival read better than I did. but that my writing was better 
 than his ; that as I was only eighteen, whereas he was forty, 
 I could more easily acquire the necessary knowledge ; that, 
 moreover, my room, being bigger than his, was more suitable 
 for a schoolroom; and, lastly, that I was appointed to the 
 vacant post." 
 
 Krusi's room was therefore cleared of some old furniture to 
 make room for the hundred children who formed the school. 
 This was in 1793. 
 
 There he was, then, with a hundred children in his room, 
 much perplexed as to how to keep them in order, how to 
 occupy them, and how to teach them. Another man, in his 
 place, would have bethought himself of what was done in the 
 school where he had been taught, and would have imitated 
 his former master. But not so Krusi ; he had been attracted 
 to this new career not so much by the insignificant salary as 
 by the opportunity it afforded him of satisfying his passion 
 for study ; he knew that he had much to learn, and now, 
 instead of trying to show his scholars what he already knew, 
 he set himself to learn with them. 
 
 He was much helped by the pastor Schiess, who, struck 
 by the vices of the old routine-system of the primary school, 
 was endeavouring to find something better to replace it. This 
 worthy man gave Krusi his personal assistance for the first 
 eight weeks. The children were divided into three classes, 
 and every effort was made to keep them constantly occupied. 
 A new reading-book had just been introduced into the school, 
 containing Bible stories and a few facts of geography and 
 natural history. The children were questioned on what they 
 read to make sure that they had thoroughly understood. 
 
 Krusi worked very hard ; he was very happy in his new 
 position, partly because he was gaining knowledge, but chiefly 
 because he really loved his children. He cared not only for 
 their future welfare, but for their present contentment. He 
 knew how necessary activity was for them, and he did all he 
 could not to cause them a moment's weariness. Amongst the 
 varied exercises of his class, he was not afraid to introduce 
 the personal experiences by which he had gained, sometimes 
 indeed to his cost, useful knowledge of things connected with 
 the everyday life of the country, and so he often talked of 
 weaving and cattle, plants and merchandise, to the great 
 
194 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 delight of the children, who were not a little surprised to 
 hear in school about the very things in which they were most 
 interested. 
 
 It was impossible that such a change in school methods 
 should be understood and approved by everybody. It excited, 
 indeed, considerable opposition in the district, an opposition 
 which became stronger after the Revolution of 1798. Krusi 
 was in favour of the new order of things, because he thought 
 it more likely than the old to encourage work amongst the 
 people, and the development of public instruction. He thus 
 lost the goodwill of many who remained faithful to the old 
 system. 
 
 It was then that, thanks to a combination of circumstances 
 which we must briefly explain, a new career was thrown open 
 to him. 
 
 Towards the end of last century, the famous pedagogical 
 establishment conducted by Salzmann at Schnepfenthal had 
 excited in the minds of several of its best students an ardent 
 desire for the reform and progress of public instruction. 
 Amongst them was a young Swiss, called Fischer, who, after 
 completing his theological studies, had obtained a post of 
 deputy-minister. But in the Revolution of 1798 he gave up 
 this post for the secretaryship of the Science and Art Depart- 
 ment under the new Swiss Government. 
 
 Fischer's views, like those of Pestalozzi, were lofty, generous, 
 and patriotic ; like him, he felt the need of raising the schools 
 of Switzerland ; but it was by the foundation of a normal 
 school that he sought to reach his end, whereas Pestalozzi 
 was anxious, first of all, to apply his method to the education 
 of poor children. 
 
 Fischer's views were shared by the minister Stapfer, who 
 induced the Government to adopt them. The state of the 
 finances, however, did not admit of any practical steps being 
 taken, and the Government merely promised to support 
 Fischer should he succeed in founding a normal school, and 
 held out the hope that it might perhaps later on become a 
 State institution. 
 
 For the carrying out of his plans, Fischer had chosen the 
 Castle of Burgdorf, and the Government had granted him the 
 use of a certain part of it. The future director accordingly 
 went and settled there. He was well received by the inhabit- 
 ants of the town, who entrusted him with the reorganization 
 
 
PESTALOZZrS FIRST FELLOW-WORKER. 195 
 
 and direction of their schools, a work into which he threw 
 himself with zeal, whilst waiting for an opportunity of found- 
 ing his own school. 
 
 This was in the autumn of 1799. Disasters like that of 
 the year before at Stanz had just overtaken eastern Switzer- 
 land, where the war that the French were carrying on against 
 the Austrians and Prussians had entirely destroyed the 
 resources of the country, which was in consequence a prey 
 to the most horrible famine. In the districts of the Linth 
 and Sentis especially there were hundreds of mothers with 
 absolutely nothing to give their children. The inhabitants 
 of those parts of Switzerland which had escaped this terrible 
 scourge were moved with compassion, and took the children 
 of their ruined countrymen into their homes to care for them, 
 and bring them up as their own. 
 
 The chief mover in this generous action at Burgdorf was 
 Fischer. He heard so much sympathy expressed on every 
 side that in the month of December he wrote to his friend 
 Steinmuller, of Glarus, then pastor of Gais, asking him to 
 send to Burgdorf thirty poor children, for whom he undertook 
 to find comfortable homes. He asked further that they should 
 be accompanied by a young man capable of looking after them 
 and fond of teaching, whom he promised to train himself and 
 turn into a good schoolmaster. 
 
 Steinmuller accordingly set off as soon as possible for 
 Glarus, his native place, which was the district that had 
 suffered most. But eighty poor children of this canton had 
 already been sent away, and, by the kindness of the Literary 
 Society of Berne, placed in homes in the province of Vaud, 
 then the canton of Leman, not, it must be confessed, with the 
 entire approval of many of the inhabitants of Glarus, who 
 traced all their misfortunes to the action of the people of Vaud 
 in calling in the French. 
 
 On his return to Gais, Steinmuller announced to his 
 parishioners that he could place a certain number of children 
 in comfortable homes in the canton of Berne, and such was 
 the state of distress in the country that the very first day he 
 had no less than forty applications. 
 
 He proposed to Krusi that he should accompany the emi- 
 grant children, pointing out to him the advantage it would 
 be to be instructed by Fischer, perhaps even by Pestalozzi. 
 Although the latter was already very famous, the young 
 
196 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 schoolmaster had never heard of him, but he unhesitatingly 
 accepted the offer, being eager to proceed with his own educa- 
 tion, and cultivate his talent for teaching. 
 
 In the letter he wrote to Fischer, on the 16th of January, 
 1800, Steinnmller speaks of Krusi in the following terms : 
 
 " I have found the man I wanted, and hope he will satisfy 
 you. He is twenty-four years old, has nothing but what he 
 earns, is willing, docile, and energetic ; he already possesses 
 a fair amount of that sort of knowledge which is most useful 
 for a schoolmaster, and has an ardent love for his profession. 
 He is certain to meet with considerable success. His character 
 is blameless. His name is Hermann Krusi, and he is one of 
 my parishioners and schoolmasters. He is very anxious to 
 come to you, knowing how much he has to gain from you and 
 Pestalozzi. If he should not suit you, he can come back 
 here." 
 
 On the 21st of January, 1800, Krusi left Gais with twenty- 
 eight children of both sexes. He has left us a few details of 
 the journey, which show with what sympathy the little band 
 was everywhere received : 
 
 " At Winterthur, whilst we were taking some food that 
 had been provided for us, the excellent pastor Hanhart came 
 in. On hearing the reason of our journey, he hurried out 
 and soon came back with a little money, which, in his zeal, 
 he had collected, and which he gave us with his blessing and 
 best wishes for our welfare. 
 
 " At Bassersdorf , where we arrived somewhat late, we had 
 to go to the inns. All the beds were taken, however, on 
 account of the fair at Zurich, so we were put into some big 
 rooms covered with straw. The tribunal of the district hap- 
 pened to be sitting in the town, and its president made a 
 collection for us, and himself brought us the proceeds, with 
 his bcsb wishes for a prosperous journey." 
 
 On the 27th of January the little band arrived at Burgdorf, 
 and the children were placed with different families in the 
 neighbourhood. A room was found for Krusi in the Castle, 
 where Fischer and Pestalozzi were already living, and meals 
 were provided for him in the house of one of the towns- 
 people 
 
PESTALOZZrS FIRST FELLOW-WORKER. 197 
 
 This emigration of the poor children of the small cantons 
 into other parts of Switzerland is a striking fact in connection 
 with those troublous times. The distress which induced so 
 many parents to part with their children must have been great 
 indeed ; we cannot but admire the generous sympathy of those 
 who received them into their homes. 
 
 The number of children thus provided for was very great. 
 In the beginning of February, 1800, a second party of forty- 
 four, from ten to fourteen years old, was despatched from 
 Appenzell. One of the youngest of these was John Ramsauer, 
 to whom we have already referred. In his memoirs he has 
 left us a curious account of this journey, from which we quote 
 the following passage : 
 
 " We journeyed in two open waggons. The treatment we 
 received at the different places we stopped at depended, 
 more or less, upon the political opinions of the people of the 
 place. I noticed that it was always the poorest, the most- 
 neglected, and the most ignorant children who were the 
 loudest in their complaints; whilst those who had been 
 accustomed to a certain degree of comfort, or had had a little 
 education, cheerfully accepted the hardships of their position. 1 
 Our first stopping-place was at Wyl, in the canton of Thur- 
 gau; it was late, and snowing fast, and we were obliged 
 to wander about for a long time with lanterns looking for our 
 night quarters ; I slept with two other children in a very 
 humble house ; we went to bed without supper, and our room 
 kept out neither wind nor snow. At Zurich, which was full 
 of foreign soldiers, we found no other shelter but a hospital, 
 with straw for beds. Most of the children did nothing but 
 complain the whole night long, and the next morning many 
 of them were quite ill. At Morgenthal, in the canton of 
 Berne, nobody would take us in, and we had to go on through 
 the night for some miles till we found refuge in a lonely 
 cottage already full of soldiers and camp followers. Gene- 
 rally, however, we were treated with kindness and consider- 
 
 1 The spoiled children of rich parents, had there been any, would 
 probably have complained louder even than the poor. Eamsauer's 
 remark shows the advantage, from an educational point of view, of those 
 modest but happy homes where comfort is the outcome of labour. 
 A urea mediocritas ! 
 
i 9 8 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 ation. We were never tired of talking of the warm welcome 
 we received at Lenzburg, where we were so well lodged, and 
 at Suhr, where we had snch a good dinner. 
 
 "Our destination was Oberburg, about three miles to the 
 south of Burgdorf. It took us a week to reach it. On our 
 arrival we were drawn up in a public square, and exhibited 
 to the generous people who had agreed to adopt us. The 
 richer people chose the prettiest children ; the peasants took 
 the healthiest and strongest. Fifteen, myself among the 
 number, were not chosen by anybody. We were therefore 
 sent off to Schleumen, a little to the west of Burgdorf. There, 
 once more ranged in order, we were awaiting our fate, when 
 a lady, who had promised to take two children, came out 
 of a pretty house to examine us. All the rest were gloomy 
 and silent, but I turned and cried merrily, ' I know how 
 old that house is ! ' The date was over the door. My 
 quickness pleased the lady, and she took me and one of my 
 companions home with her. The others were taken to the 
 village of Hindelbank." 
 
 Not long afterwards the same small district of Appenzell 
 sent away a third, and even a fourth party of children. 
 Nor were they sent merely from Glarus, but from Uri, 
 Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, and Saint Gallen, and they were 
 received in every part of Western Switzerland, from Basle 
 to Geneva. 
 
 Krusi now settled at Burgdorf, and continued to teach 
 the children he had brought with him, for all of whom 
 homes had been found somewhere in the town or neighbour- 
 hood. When the School Commission was asked what he 
 was to be paid, they replied : 
 
 " The schoolmaster Krusi, besides continuing to instruct 
 the children of his native parish, as he was in the habit of 
 doing at home, is ready to take other pupils. He is entitled 
 to charge four shillings a month for any lessons given out- 
 side the school ; but as we do not wish to impose an 
 additional burden upon the generous people who have 
 adopted these poor children, we must leave those who wish 
 to make him some return to fix the amount for themselves. ,, 
 
 Pestalozzi, Fischer, and Krusi lived together, not only in 
 perfect sympathy, but in perfect harmon}^. Pestalozzi and 
 
PESTALOZZPS FIRST FELLOW-WORKER. 199 
 
 Fischer, although their views were not in every respect 
 identical, loved and esteemed each other very highly. It 
 was Fischer, however, who by his lessons, his example, and 
 his advice, exercised the greatest influence on Krusi's work. 
 In April, 1800, as the opportunity for founding a normal 
 school did not arrive, Fischer, unable to wait any longer, 
 accepted a post at Berne, where he was appointed professor 
 of philosophy and pedagogy, with a seat on the Council of 
 Education. 
 
 Krusi felt his loss very much, but endeavoured to make 
 up for it by going to Berne every Sunday to receive advice, 
 and render an account of the week's work. 
 
 Before long, however, Fischer fell ill and died. It was 
 Pestalozzi who brought Krusi the sad news, and he proposed 
 that they should unite their schools, and pursue together 
 their common work. 
 
 Krusi unhesitatingly accepted, for he had already learned 
 to understand Pestalozzi, and to see the importance of his 
 educational views, which were similar in many respects to 
 the opinions at which, in the course of his self-instruction, 
 he had himself arrived. 
 
 And thus Pestalozzi found the very collaborator he was 
 in need of, a man, that is, who was warm-hearted, intelli- 
 gent, energetic, and devoted to teaching, and at the same 
 time entirely free from routine and old-fashioned prejudices. 
 Krusi differed also from most other teachers in underrating 
 his own attainments. He remained with Pestalozzi till the 
 decay of the Yverdun institute, successfully teaching the 
 various elementary subjects, and winning especial distinction 
 for his lessons in language and natural history. 
 
 His old pupils will always remember him with affection : 
 the fine, dignified head ; the high, open forehead and curly 
 hair ; the kind, intelligent eyes ; and, above all, the never- 
 changing expression of gentleness, simplicity, and goodwill. 
 It was he especially that we liked to have for our guide in 
 our mountain walks and excursions at Yverdun, when he 
 would look after those of us who were small and weak 
 not only like a father, but with all the care of the tenderest 
 mother. 
 
 Whilst at Yverdun, Krusi married an under-mistress in 
 Niederer's school, a lady in every respect worthy of him. 
 Af^er the fall of Pestalozzi's establishment, he went back 
 
200 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 to his native place, where he was entrusted first with the 
 direction of the district school at Trogen, then with that of 
 the normal school at Gais. It was at the latter place that 
 in October, 1837, we had the pleasure of seeing our old 
 master again, and spending some days with him. 
 
 He had acquired a large house situated a little above the 
 village at the foot of the Gâbris. He and his family occupied 
 the first floor ; on the second, his eldest daughter, a pupil 
 of Mrs. Niederer's, conducted a school for girls, and on the 
 ground floor was the class-room of his training students, who 
 lived, however, in the village. Next to the class-room was 
 a model primary school, where Krusi taught the grand- 
 children of many who had been his pupils forty-four years 
 before. He was now sixty-two years old; it was twenty 
 years since we had left him, and he was scarcely altered. 
 His energy seemed no whit abated. Lessons, games, walks, 
 everything was the better for his goodness, ardour, and 
 simple piety, which filled the house with harmony and joy, 
 and encouraged earnestness in thought and work. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 PESTALOZZl'S INSTITUTE AT BURGDORF. 
 
 Pestalozzi and Krusi unite their Schools in Burgdorf Castle. 
 Tobler, Buss, and Naef join them. Appreciation of the 
 new institution by the Society of the Friends of Education. 
 Great success of the school. Its reputation in other 
 countries. Visitors of note. The Government appoints a 
 Commission to examine it. Official reports. The Petty 
 Council decides to convert it into a training college for 
 Switzerland. Counter-revolution in Switzerland. Pesta- 
 lozzi deputed to attend the Considta in Paris. Bona- 
 parte and the Pestalozzian method. The Bernese Govern- 
 ment resumes possession of Burgdorf Castle. Pestalozzï 1 s 
 institute transferred first to Munchenbachsee, then to 
 Yverdun. 
 
 Pestalozzi was now safe, for lie had found in Krusi a 
 man who not only thoroughly entered into his ideas, and 
 eagerly acted on his suggestions, but who had besides 
 the strength and knowledge of the world that he himself 
 lacked. 
 
 To unite the poor refugees from Appenzell with the 
 children that the well-to-do families of Burgdorf had en- 
 trusted to him, Pestalozzi had need of much more room than 
 had hitherto sufficed him. Thanks to the efforts of Stapfer, 
 the Executive Council, by a decree of the 23rd of July, 1800, 
 granted to Pestalozzi the gratuitous use of as much of the 
 castle of Burgdorf as was necessary for his purpose, as 
 well as that of a certain portion of the garden. They 
 also agreed to supply him with a considerable quantity of 
 wood. 
 
 The two little schools were then brought together in the 
 rooms of the castle, and the two new friends began their 
 work in common. 
 
 Krusi's account of their first efforts is as follows : 
 15 
 
202 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 "Pestalozzi left me quite free. I was filled with admira- 
 tion for his views, his work, and his past life. I felt myself 
 encouraged by his trust, and was proud of his friendship. 
 The appearance of our combined schools became more and 
 more satisfactory every day, and the happiness of the 
 children and their eagerness to learn soon attracted a good 
 deal of attention." 
 
 Pestalozzi himself was less satisfied; he found himself 
 hampered by the many differences of age, education, charac- 
 ter, habits, and origin in the children thus united under his 
 care. He felt the need, too, of more help, not only for his 
 own greater freedom of action, but for the sake of his ele- 
 mentary instruction books, at which he was already working, 
 and of which we shall have to say something further on, 
 though neither the plan nor the execution was, in our opinion, 
 at all satisfactory. 
 
 As soon as the summer holida}^ arrived, Krusi took the 
 opportunity of paying a visit to his friend and compatriot, 
 Tobler, who was a tutor in a family at Basle, and who, from 
 his correspondence with Fischer, had already learned to 
 know something of Pestalozzi. Krusi gave him an account 
 of the new undertaking at Burgdorf and suggested that he 
 should take part in it. 
 
 Tobler at once accepted. He had talent and imagination, 
 and a great taste for study and teaching. His early educa- 
 tion had been much neglected, but at twenty-two years of 
 age, having suddenly decided to become a minister of the 
 Gospel, he had begun to work seriously. Obliged, however, 
 to earn his own living, he was fortunate enough to obtain a 
 tutorship in Basle which left him leisure for private work. 
 He had been working in this way for ten years with unflag- 
 ging perseverance, when he became acquainted with Pesta- 
 lozzi. He had never succeeded to his own satisfaction in 
 imparting his knowledge to his pupils, and now he seemed 
 to see in this man the very power that he himself lacked. 
 He gladly embraced the opportunity of working with him, 
 and hastened to Burgdorf. 
 
 Pestalozzi was still in need of a master to teach drawing 
 and singing. Tobler recommended him a young man named 
 Buss, who was at that time apprenticed to a bookbinder in 
 Basle. 
 
PESTALOZZPS INSTITUTE AT BURGDORF. 203 
 
 Buss had had a strange existence. His father was em- 
 ployed in the theological school at Tubingen, and had made 
 him follow the Latin lessons from the time he was three till 
 he was thirteen. When he was eight years old, a student 
 taught him the piano. The student left however in six 
 months' time, and the boy had to continue his music alone. 
 He succeeded so well that, by the time he was twelve, he 
 was sufficiently advanced to be able to take pupils. At 
 eleven he had taken drawing-lessons, and was already study- 
 ing Greek, Hebrew, logic, and rhetoric. His father hoped 
 that he would be able to finish his studies without payment 
 in the academy of science and art of Stuttgart, but this 
 was declared to be impossible, " because he was of too low 
 extraction." Greatly disheartened, and obliged to put his 
 hand to something for a living, he became a bookbinder. 
 In spite of this, however, he continued to cultivate his 
 talent for music and drawing. 
 
 He was working in this way at Basle, with little taste for 
 the trade he had chosen, when Tobler brought him Pesta- 
 lozzi's offer. His friends advised him not to accept it, for 
 they only knew the great teacher by his weak side. " He's 
 all but a mad man," they said, " with whom it is better to 
 have nothing to do ; he never quite knows what he wants, and 
 has even been seen in the streets of Basle with his shoes 
 tied on with straw." This was a fact, for one day Pestalozzi, 
 being anxious to help a poor man outside the town gates, 
 and having no money, had given him his shoe-buckles. But 
 Buss had read Leonard and Gertrude, and that was enough. 
 
 When Buss arrived at Burgdorf, Pestalozzi, who hurried 
 to meet him, his hair and clothes in the greatest disorder, his 
 stockings down, and his shoes covered with dust, pro uced 
 for a moment anything but a favourable impression. Soon, 
 however, the quickness of his intellect, together with his 
 extreme kindliness and simpleness, had entirely won the 
 sympathy and trust of the new comer. 
 
 On entering the schoolroom, Buss found nothing at first 
 but noise and confusion, and it was some little time before 
 he could understand what was going on. His first impres- 
 sion was that the children were kept too long at the ele- 
 ments ; but when he saw how much power this gave them 
 afterwards, he could not help feeling that if he himself had 
 been taught in this way, he would have been in a position 
 
204 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 to carry on his studies by himself, and need never have been 
 prevented from rising in the world. 
 
 Krusi's account of the masters with whom the Burgdorf 
 institute opened is as follows : 
 
 " Our society thus consisted of four very different men, 
 brought together by a strange combination of circumstances: 
 the founder, whose chief literary reputation was that of a 
 dreamer, incapable in practical life, and three young men, 
 one a private tutor, whose youth had been much neglected, 
 who had begun to study late, and whose pedagogical efforts 
 had never produced the results that his character and 
 talents seemed to promise, another a bookbinder, who de- 
 voted his leisure to singing and drawing, and the third a 
 village schoolmaster, who carried out the duties of his office 
 as best he could without having been in any way prepared 
 for them. Those who looked on this group of men, scarce 
 one of them with a home of his own, naturally formed but 
 a small opinion of their capabilities. And yet our work 
 succeeded, and won the public confidence beyond the expec- 
 tation of those who knew us, and even beyond our own." 
 
 This confidence was also excited from the very outset by 
 a public testimony to the value of Pestalozzi's work, a testi- 
 mony indeed of such importance, that we must lay it before 
 our readers before we proceed to give the history of the 
 Burgdorf institute. 
 
 The Commission that had been appointed by the Society 
 of the Friends of Education to report on Pestalozzi's doc- 
 trine paid a visit to his school very shortly after Krusi had 
 joined him. The results of their inquiry were drawn up by 
 the secretary Luthi, and presented on the 1st of October, 
 1800, to a general meeting of the Society, held in the house 
 of the Minister of Arts and Science, no longer Stapfer, but 
 Mohr, of Lucerne. The report runs as follows : 
 
 " The first thing we noticed was that Pestalozzi's children 
 learn to spell, read, write, and calculate quickly and well, 
 arriving in six months at results which an ordinary village 
 schoolmaster would hardly bring them to in three years. 
 
 " It is true that schoolmasters are not generally men like 
 Pestalozzi, nor do they find assistants like those of our 
 
PESTALOZZPS INSTITUTE AT BURGDORF. 205 
 
 friend. But it seems to us that this extraordinary progress 
 depends not so much upon the teachers as upon the method 
 of teaching. 
 
 " And what is this method ? It is a method which simply 
 follows the path of Nature, or, in other words, which 
 leads the child slowly, and by his own efforts, from sense- 
 impressions to abstract ideas. Another advantage of this 
 method is that it does not unduly exalt the master, inas- 
 much as he never appears as a superior being, but, like 
 kindly Nature, lives and works with the children, his equals, 
 seeming rather to learn with them than to teach them with 
 authority. 
 
 " Who does not know how ready the youngest children 
 are to give everything a name, to put things together, and 
 then take them to pieces again for the sake of new combina- 
 tions? Who does not remember that he liked drawing 
 better than writing? W T ho does not know that the most 
 unlearned men are often the quickest ' at mental calcula- 
 tions ? W T ho is ignorant that children, boys and girls, 
 almost as soon as they can walk, delight in playing at 
 soldiers, and in other forms of exercise ? 
 
 " It is on these simple and well-known facts that Pestalozzi 
 bases his method of instruction. Were it not for the fact that 
 other men are daily making the same mistakes as teachers, 
 we should be inclined to ask how it is that this idea never 
 occurred to anybody before/' 
 
 The report then goes on to speak of the use of movable 
 letters for spelling and reading, slates for writing, and 
 visible objects for teaching the children to count, and men- 
 tions that singing and walking often take the place of the 
 regular lessons. It concludes as follows : 
 
 " So far as we have been able to judge, it is impossible to 
 grasp the general idea of the method without having fol- 
 lowed the exercises from the very beginning. It results 
 from what we have said that Pestalozzi' s system ought to be 
 introduced into the whole of Switzerland ; the advantages 
 of such a step would be incalculable. Pestalozzi's earnest 
 desire is that he may be able, with the help of his worthy 
 collaborators, to make his method generally known, and in- 
 struct all schoolmasters in its use. The Commission cannot 
 
2o6 PESTAL0ZZ1: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 but join heartily in this desire, and would urge the Society 
 to use all its influence towards enabling Pestalozzi to found 
 in Burgdorf a normal school for primary teachers, to which, 
 for the practical preparation of the pupils, a model school 
 would be attached." 
 
 In consequence of this report, and the request of the Society 
 of the Friends of Education, the Executive Council granted 
 to Pestalozzi the sum of twenty pounds for the winter 
 session which was about to commence. 
 
 At the same time, Schnell, the prefect of Burgdorf, pub- 
 lished a pamphlet, in which he gave a more complete and 
 appreciative exposition of Pestalozzi's views than had been 
 contained in the report of the Commission. 
 
 It was on the 24th of October, 1800, that Pestalozzi 
 announced the opening of his educational institution in the 
 castle of Burgdorf, with a normal school for training teachers 
 attached. Children of the middle class, living in the insti- 
 tution, would pay from sixteen to twenty pounds, according 
 to the position of their parents. 
 
 The Society of the Friends of Education, seeing that the 
 help furnished by the State would be far from sufficient for 
 the needs of the new institution, had appointed a Commis- 
 sion to make a public appeal for subscriptions throughout 
 Switzerland, emphasizing Pestalozzi's exceptional merits, 
 and calling attention to the great advantages which would 
 result to the country if his undertaking were properly 
 supported. 
 
 This appeal appeared on the 20th of November. It states 
 that Pestalozzi's desire is to found a poor-school in connec- 
 tion with the institution for middle-class children ; it promises 
 that there shall be religious observances for Catholics as 
 well as Protestants, and entire liberty of conscience both 
 for the children and teacher-students ; it gives finally the 
 names of certain people in each canton authorized to receive 
 subscriptions. It is signed by the minister Hengger, and 
 by Luthi, Usteri, and Fussli, members of the Legislative 
 Council. 
 
 The Swiss newspapers which spoke of the enterprise ap- 
 proved or condemned it according to their political opinions. 
 The very advanced ideas of Pestalozzi's youth were not yet 
 forgotten, and he was generally looked on rather as an 
 
PESTALOZZPS INSTITUTE AT BURGDORF. 207 
 
 ardent friend of the revolution than as a man of genius and 
 a devoted philanthropist. 
 
 In the critical condition of the country, the public sub- 
 scription produced but very poor results. But Pestalozzi 
 would not be beaten ; and in spite of his poverty, he at once 
 received the poor refugee children free of charge. Chil- 
 dren who were able to pay had to wait till the place 
 was ready for them. 
 
 The Burgdorf institute opened early in January, 1801. 
 Pestalozzi himself had been obliged to help pay for the 
 necessary repairs and furnishing, and now had to practise 
 the strictest economy. Of all the establishments he founded, 
 however, this is the one which most fully realized his views, 
 and bore the most unmistakable stamp of his original genius, 
 and it is this one that we must study if we wish to see the 
 master's doctrine carried out in all its purity. We shall 
 begin with the internal history of this institution, which 
 only lasted three years and a half, but which carried afar 
 the pedagogical reputation of its head. In another chapter 
 we shall examine the educational principles on which it was 
 founded, and the new works by which Pestalozzi sought to 
 make them better known. 
 
 B-amsauer's memoirs, from which we have already quoted, 
 contain certain graphic details about this period of Pesta- 
 lozzi's life which are not to be found elsewhere, and which 
 we therefore give in full : 
 
 " Of all Pestalozzi's pupils I was the first to be received 
 into the establishment, and lodged in the castle ; the 
 second was my friend Egger, a refugee like myself, who 
 was also received gratuitously. Once more this noble- 
 hearted man thought more of others than of himself. Por 
 us, indeed, he was always loving and true as a father. My 
 position being rather different from the rest, I was brought 
 into special relations with him. As a pupil I had to be 
 trained and educated, but as a child of the house I had to 
 perform certain services for him. Under the name of " table- 
 boy " I was entrusted with the various small domestic duties 
 of which a child is capable, some of which, however, were 
 by no means light, and some even scarcely suitable. 
 
 " Amongst the first was the duty of drawing water for use 
 in the castle. The well was three hundred and eighty feet 
 
2o8 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 deep, and the water was drawn by walking in a hollow 
 wheel of some twenty-four feet in diameter. This had to 
 be done in all weathers, and was by no means a light task, 
 especially in winter, when a bitter wind was blowing 
 through the wheel. 
 
 " Whenever I think of that period of my life, I cannot 
 help thanking God for His goodness in preserving us from 
 evil amidst the conversation that the men and maidservants 
 used to indulge in when we children were helping them, 
 which we often did till midnight. Their unseemly beha- 
 viour might have done us all the more harm from the fact 
 that in spite of our extreme youth we were left almost 
 entirely to ourselves, and, after finishing our domestic duties, 
 might, had we felt so inclined, have remained idle. But 
 two of the other table-boys and myself (there were often six 
 or eight of us) were happily so eager to learn that a spare 
 quarter of an hour was always well employed. We looked 
 on study indeed as our chief work, though at least half our 
 day was always taken up with manual labour. 
 
 " But when on summer days we saw the troop of masters 
 and children going down the castle hill, either to bathe in 
 the limpid river below, or to climb the rocks on its banks, 
 whilst we table-boys had to stay behind to work in the 
 kitchen or cellar, or elsewhere, then often I could not keep 
 back my tears. But now for many years I have thanked 
 God that I so soon learned to obey, to do useful work, and 
 to overcome my desires. Besides, I was all the happier when 
 I did take part in these pleasures. 
 
 " And yet my occasional discouragement might perhaps 
 have become intolerable, and prompted me to run away, if I 
 had not had, besides Pestalozzi, another good genius to hold 
 me fast, and make me forget my troubles. This was the 
 widow of Pestalozzi's only son, Jacobli, an excellent woman, 
 whose own sufferings had strengthened her, and filled her 
 with compassion for the sufferings of others. 
 
 "For everybody in the institute she was a friend and 
 protector, but for us table-boys she was a guardian angel. 
 Afterwards, even when she had become the wife of kind 
 Mr. Kuster, she continued for many years to share the 
 household cares and labours of Pestalozzi's establishment, 
 and was besides an invaluable friend to the girls' insti- 
 tute." 
 
PESTAL0ZZ1 S INSTITUTE AT BURGDORF. 209 
 
 Rarasauer goes on to relate how his education progressed 
 in spite of the small number and irregularity of the lessons 
 in which he took part, how his eagerness to learn and Pes- 
 talozzi's kind attention made up for everything, and how at 
 twelve years of age he himself was set to teach in certain 
 small elementary classes. He then continues : 
 
 " During my stay at Burgdorf, I paid a visit every sum- 
 mer to my kind benefactress at Schleumen, who each time 
 presented me with new clothes. These were all the more 
 acceptable, from the fact that Pestalozzi was obliged to use 
 what money he had to keep his institute going and could 
 not possibly have afforded to give me any. 
 
 "I have said above how much progress I had made in 
 drawing, arithmetic, and what was called the A B C of 
 sense-impression. 1 Nor must I forget to mention singing. 
 Although I was never called on to teach it, either from want 
 of talent or want of time, it was one of the lessons which 
 had the greatest charm for me, especially as it was taught in 
 the early days of the institute. 
 
 " The thirty or forty children of both sexes of Pestalozzi's 
 old school came from the town to the castle to take part in 
 the singing lessons. Buss made his pupils sing as they 
 walked up and down the big corridors of the castle, two 
 and two, and holding each other's hands. That was our 
 greatest pleasure ; but our joy reached its height when our 
 gymnastic master Naef, who was a most original man, joined 
 us. He was an old soldier, who had seen service in nearly 
 every part of the world. He looked a rough, bearded, surly 
 giant enough, but as a matter of fact he was kindness itself. 
 "When he marched with a military air at the head of some 
 sixty or eighty children, loudly singing a Swiss song as he 
 went, nobody could help following him. 
 
 11 Indeed, singing was one of our chief sources of pleasure 
 in the institute. We sang everywhere — out of doors, on 
 our walks, and, in the evening, in the court of the castle ; 
 and this singing together contributed in no small measure 
 to the harmony and good feeling which prevailed amongst 
 us. I must add that in spite of his rough exterior, Naef 
 
 1 Exercises in which the children made their own remarks on the 
 objects placed before them. 
 
2io PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 was the chief favourite with the children, for the simple 
 reason that, as he was never so happy as in their society, 
 he was always with them. He used to play, drill, walk, 
 bathe, climb, throw stones with them, just like a big child, 
 and in this way gained almost unlimited authority over 
 them. And yet he had nothing of the pedagogue about him 
 but the heart. . . . 
 
 " I must further say that in the first years of the Burgdorf 
 institute, nothing like a systematic plan of lessons was 
 followed, and that the whole life of the place was so simple 
 and home-like, that in the half-hour's recreation which fol- 
 lowed breakfast, Pestalozzi would often become so interested 
 in the spirited games of the children in the playground as to 
 allow them to go on undisturbed till ten o'clock. And on 
 summer evenings, after bathing in the Emme, instead of 
 beginning work again, we often stayed out till eight or nine 
 o'clock looking for plants and minerals." 
 
 This testimony of Ramsauer as to the family life at Burg- 
 dorf is confirmed by an anecdote which deserves mention. A 
 peasant, the father of a pupil, had come one day to visit the 
 establishment. Very surprised at what he saw, he cried : 
 " Why, this is not a school, but a family." " That is the 
 greatest praise j^ou can give me," answered Pestalozzi ; " I 
 have succeeded, thank God, in showing the world that there 
 must be no gulf between the home and the school, and that 
 the latter is only useful to education in so far as it develops 
 the sentiments and the virtues which lend the charm and 
 value to family life." 
 
 If the Burgdorf school thus presented the picture of a 
 great family, it was only because Pestalozzi was a father for 
 everybody, and lived but for others. His activity and love 
 inspired the whole household. His assistants, who had a 
 profound affection and veneration for him, were Ivrusi for 
 language and arithmetic, Tobler for geography and history, 
 Buss for geometry, drawing, and singing, and Naef for gym- 
 nastics and one or two elementary subjects. 
 
 Even the financial difficulty which weighed upon the 
 establishment exercised a wholesome moral iofluence. The 
 masters had refused good offers to remain with Pestalozzi, 
 and went so far as to give up a portion of their salary, 
 small as it was, to make up for his want of means. The 
 
PESTALOZZPS INSTITUTE AT BURGDORF. 211 
 
 pupils, on their side, contented themselves with little, and 
 did all they could to keep down the" expenses. It was in- 
 deed a practical school of sacrifice and renunciation. 
 
 The children's trust in their masters, their love and 
 gratitude for them, took the place of rules and discipline ; 
 there were no rewards, and, except in very exceptional cases, 
 no punishments ; obedience was perfect because it was 
 spontaneous. The children were lively and happy, they 
 liked their lessons almost as well as their games, and it was 
 not rare to see some of them stop in the middle of their play 
 to go and work together before a blackboard or a map. 
 
 It was at Burgdorf that those sense-impressing lessons in 
 natural history began which played so large and useful 
 a part in all Pestalozzi's establishments. Such lessons are 
 liked by the children, render their walks interesting, and 
 help to develop tastes which may afterwards prove of ex- 
 treme value. Krusi afterwards became a first-rate mineral- 
 ogist, and gave most enjoyable and useful lessons ; but in 
 the early days at Burgdorf the masters were almost as 
 ignorant of natural history as the children. Minerals and 
 plants were indeed collected, examined, and described, but 
 their classification was entirely a matter of individual taste. 
 It was John Conrad Escher, of Zurich, 1 who first showed 
 Krusi the differences between quartz, granite, etc., when on 
 a visit to Burgdorf. 
 
 In spite of the success of the institute, the supply of 
 money was small, and Pestalozzi's own resources were soon 
 exhausted. As early as the 18th of February, 1801, the 
 Executive Council had, at the request of the minister Mohr, 
 agreed to continue yearly the grant of twenty pounds that 
 had been voted to the Burgdorf institute on the 8th of 
 October, 1800, and had further ordered that Pestalozzi 
 should be supplied with twenty measures of firewood from 
 the State forests in the canton of Berne. But on the 19th 
 of April, Mohr, after spending a day at the Castle, made 
 such a favourable report to the Council, that it was decided 
 to raise the State grant to seventy pounds a year, payable 
 quarterly. Many donations also came in from private people, 
 
 l This was the engineer who, on account of his successful draining 
 operations, was known as Escher of the Linth. 
 
212 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 amongst others one of twenty pounds from the wife of the 
 French minister. 
 
 At the same time the reputation of the institute was 
 spreading ; the leading newspapers of the district spoke of 
 it in the highest terms, the number of pupils steadily con- 
 tinued to increase, and before very long applications had to 
 be refused for want of room. 
 
 On the 22nd of September, 1801, Mohr, in his report to the 
 Executive Council, says: 
 
 "Pestalozzi's institute in Burgdorf Castle, the first and 
 only one of its kind, is attracting, by its now generally 
 recognized usefulness, numerous pupils, whom the director, 
 for want of habitable space, is obliged to refuse, to his own 
 great regret, and to the prejudice of public education. It is 
 urgent that the buildings already occupied by Pestalozzi 
 should be enlarged by the addition of two large dormitories 
 for pupils, and six small rooms for masters." 
 
 Although the Council had decided on the 5th of the pre- 
 ceding August that, considering the low state of the treasury, 
 no repairs should be executed that year on any public build- 
 ing, it agreed to carry out the necessary improvements in 
 Burgdorf Castle, which, it was estimated, would cost about a 
 hundred and twenty pounds. 
 
 In October of the same year, Pestalozzi published How 
 Gertrude Teaches her Children, a book which was intended 
 to give the public a full and complete account of his doctrine 
 and of his work. As this book is of such high importance, 
 we must reserve a detailed examination of it for another 
 chapter ; we can only say here that it gained considerable 
 notoriety in German-speaking countries, and attracted to 
 Burgdorf numerous visitors, amongst whom were several 
 very distinguished men. 
 
 The very next month, for instance, there arrived together 
 Wessenberg and Charles Victor von Bonstetten. The latter 
 speaks of his visit in a letter to Prederic Brun, written the 
 evening of his arrival. The letter confirms all we have 
 said above, and contains besides some very interesting com- 
 ments. As it is, unfortunately, too long to quote in full, the 
 following extracts must suffice : 
 
 " I cannot understand why Pestalozzi should saj*- that all 
 
PESTALOZZl'S INSTITUTE AT BURGDORF. 213 
 
 instruction is based on three chief elements — number, form, 
 and language ; but what I do see, and see clearly, is that his 
 forty-eight children, of ages varying from five to twelve, 
 have learned, in from six to ten months, writing, reading, 
 drawing, and a little geography and French, and have besides 
 made marvellous progress in arithmetic. They do every- 
 thing cheerfully, and their health seems perfect. I know not 
 whether Pestalozzi's method is good, nor whether, indeed, 
 he has any reasoned-out method, but I see plainly that he is 
 walking in unknown ways, and arriving at hitherto un- 
 known results, and that, after all, is the most important 
 consideration. . . . 
 
 " I look upon Pestalozzi's method as a precious seed, still 
 young and undeveloped, but full of promise. The success 
 the method has already obtained should suffice to convince 
 any impartial thinker of its excellence. . . . 
 
 " As it will be long before there is another Pestalozzi, I 
 fear that the rich harvest his discovery seems to promise 
 will be reserved for future ages. It is a pity that he should 
 have expressed his political opinions with so much warmth ; 
 in these revolutionary times it will but add another difficulty 
 to those which have always to be overcome before complete 
 justice can be done to an exceptional man. For forty years 
 Pestalozzi has devoted his life to the education of poor chil- 
 dren ; let him who has done more for humanity cast the first 
 stone ! . . . 
 
 "The children know little, but what they know they know 
 well. In my opinion, there could be nothing better than 
 the Burgdorf school for children of eight or nine. But it 
 will not bear fruit till upon this basis and in the light of 
 this experience a new storey has been added to the edi- 
 fice. . . . 
 
 " The children are very happy, and evidently take great 
 pleasure in their lessons, which says a great deal for the 
 method." 
 
 In December, 1801, a distinguished Swiss, who had lately 
 visited the institute, published a very favourable account of 
 it in a series of unsigned articles in an Augsburg paper, 
 For the sake of avoiding repetition, we shall only quote the 
 following few lines : 
 
 " I must confess that I arrived at Burgdorf with grave 
 
214 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 doubts as to the fitness, usefulness or success of the experi- 
 ment which was being carried on there. But my fears gave 
 place to confidence and joy when I saw how Pestalozzi and 
 his helpers treated the children. On reaching home, I said 
 to my friends : ' There is that going on at Burgdorf which 
 deserves the respectful attention and support of all those 
 who are interested in the happiness of humanity, and in the 
 progress of public education.' " 
 
 The numerous visitors to the institute were particularly 
 astonished by the children's progress in drawing and in the 
 elements of geometry. A distinguished Nuremberg merchant, 
 who had at first been much prejudiced against Pestalozzi's 
 work, speaks thus : 
 
 " I was amazed when I saw these children treating the 
 most complicated calculations of fractions as the simplest 
 thing in the world. Problems which I myself could not 
 solve without careful work on paper, they did easily in 
 their heads, giving the correct answer in a few moments, 
 and explaining the process with ease and readiness. They 
 seemed to have no idea that they were doing anything 
 extraordinary." 
 
 " At the Burgdorf institute," says another visitor, " chil- 
 dren of from six to eight years draw difficult geometrical 
 figures without rule or compass so correctly that no one would 
 believe it who had not seen it." 
 
 " I have seen," says another, " a child of ten, who had 
 only been a pupil of Pestalozzi's for ten months, reduce a 
 map of Scandinavia to a smaller scale in an hour with such 
 exactness as to def}'' the most searching examination." 
 
 These accounts may, indeed, be somewhat overdrawn, but 
 the} 7- prove, at any rate, that Pestalozzi's method of teaching 
 arithmetic had succeeded under Krusi's direction long before 
 Joseph Schmidt took charge of this branch of instruction. 
 This general consensus of opinion in favour of the new school 
 still further increased its reputation, and made it more and 
 more an object of public attention. 
 
 "An institute," it was said, "which produces these impor- 
 tant results with such slender means is surely deserving of 
 
PESTALOZZPS INSTITUTE AT BURG DO RF. 215 
 
 such support from the Government as will guarantee its con- 
 tinuance. Ought it not even to be utilized for a reform of 
 public elementary education throughout Switzerland ? " 
 
 Since the revolution of the 18th of October, 1801, Mohr had 
 no longer been minister, and the Executive Council of the 
 Republic had been replaced by a Petty Council. The latter, 
 feeling the necessity of doing something for Pestalozzi, had 
 appointed a Commission to visit the institute, in order that, 
 before taking any decisive step, it might be in possession of 
 reliable and detailed information as to its working. 
 
 The report of this Commission, drawn up by Ith, the 
 president of the Council of Public Education in Berne, was 
 presented in June, 1802. 1 
 
 " On my first visit," he says, " I was full of distrust, and 
 had thoroughly made up my mind not to let myself be 
 dazzled by a brilliant theory, or carried away by the novelty 
 of a few striking results." (p. 76.) 
 
 At that time there were some eighty children in the in- 
 stitute, of ages ranging from five to eighteen, and of almost 
 every social condition. Amongst the number were twelve 
 poor children, supported entirely by the establishment. 
 
 The report first endeavours to make clear the principles 
 of the method invented by Pestalozzi, " who has discovered 
 the real and universal laws of all elementary teaching." It 
 then points to the excellence of the results already obtained, 
 as established by the Commission in its late careful and 
 thorough examination of the pupils, and especially praises 
 the moral and religious life of the establishment, and the dis- 
 cipline, which, it points out, is entirely based upon affection. 
 It recommends finally that the institute shall be turned into 
 a normal school, to be supported by the State ; that fixed 
 salaries shall be allowed to all the masters, and that the 
 projected new edition of Pestalozzi 's works on elementary 
 education shall be helped forward by a large subscription. 
 
 For Pestalozzi himself the Commission asked but one 
 thiDg, which was that help should be given him to found a 
 new home for orphans on his land at Neuhof, as soon as the 
 
 1 Official Eeport on Pestalozzi's Institute, etc., Berne and Zurich, 1802. 
 
2i6 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 opportunity offered. The fact is that Pestalozzi, satisfied with 
 having made his method known, and with having found men 
 capable of applying it, thought that his presence would soon 
 be no longer needed at Burgdorf, and was already beginning 
 to think of leaving the future management of the institute 
 in the hands of his collaborators, and once more taking up 
 the work to which he had always believed himself to be 
 especially called. As rest from his long labours he looked 
 forward to ending his days amid poor and destitute children, 
 to whom he might be as a father. 
 
 In August, 1802, Burgdorf was visited by Soyaux, of 
 Berlin, whom the Jena Literary Gazette reckoned amongst 
 the opponents of the Pestalozzian method. And yet Soj^aux 
 has given an account of his visit in a pamphlet, which con- 
 firms the favourable testimony we have already quoted. He 
 begins by summing up Pestalozzi's personality and character 
 with wonderful insight and power of analysis. He then 
 describes the different lessons at which he was present, and 
 points out the remarkable development of the pupils' powers 
 in arithmetic and drawing. Here again we can only give 
 one or two short quotations: 
 
 " Pestalozzi's method will, perhaps, meet with little appro- 
 bation, but his principles and the tendency of his method 
 will certainly have a most valuable influence. 
 
 " His discipline is based upon the principle that children 
 must be allowed the greatest possible liberty, and that 
 only when they abuse this liberty must they be interfered 
 with. . . . 
 
 "The establishment contains in all a hundred and two 
 persons, seventy-two of whom are pupils. These are mostly 
 Swiss, and are drawn from every canton in the country, 
 Catholic and Protestant alike. They are taught by ten 
 masters. There are also a certain number of foreigners in 
 the Castle, who are there to study the method. 
 
 " The institute is young, and Pestalozzi's principles are 
 still in process of development. As they are not yet come 
 to maturity, it follows that the organization of the establish- 
 ment is still incomplete. Director and assistants are working 
 with all their might to perfect the edifice. One tries to im- 
 prove certain appliances, another seeks a natural way of 
 teaching reading, numbers, etc. Would that all educational 
 
PESTALOZZPS INSTITUTE AT BURGDORF. 217 
 
 establishments might present such a picture of concord and 
 harmony, and betray the same zeal in advancing from pro- 
 gress to progress." 
 
 Meanwhile the Petty Council had adopted the suggestions 
 of the Commission. A small salary had been granted to 
 Pestalozzi and each of his masters ; a normal school had been 
 instituted in the Castle to which every month a dozen school- 
 masters were to come for lessons ; and lastly, with the help 
 of the State, a second and cheap edition was being prepared 
 of the books compiled in the institute. 
 
 Pestalozzi already saw the future of his work assured, and 
 was on the point of realizing his most cherished desire, when 
 the unitary Government was overthrown by a fresh revolu- 
 tion, and he found himself robbed, at one blow, not only of all 
 his hopes, but of the position he had already acquired. It 
 seemed, indeed, as though this man was fated to see the 
 ground fail beneath his feet whenever he felt himself within 
 reach of his end. 
 
 On the 17th of April, 1802, the Council had convoked in 
 Berne an assembly of " notables," chosen by itself, for the 
 purpose of drawing up in the name of the Republic a scheme 
 for a new constitution. This scheme was unanimously 
 adopted by the Assembly on the 19th of May, and on being 
 submitted to the votes of the electors throughout Switzer- 
 land, was accepted by two hundred and twenty-eight thousand 
 citizens out of three hundred and two thousand entitled to 
 vote, those who abstained from voting being counted as 
 accepting. On the 3rd of July, the acceptance of the consti- 
 tution was proclaimed at Berne and the new Government 
 was formed. As a consequence of this, the country was soon 
 afterwards evacuated by the French troops that had hitherto 
 occupied it. 
 
 This was the signal for a rising which spread from the 
 smaller cantons over well-nigh the whole of Switzerland. 
 The Swiss army had to retreat before the insurgent troops, 
 and the Grovernment, that on the 2nd of September had 
 decided to ask for "the kind services and intervention of the 
 French Government," was compelled, on the 19th, to with- 
 draw from Berne. It had taken refuge at Lausanne, where 
 its only protectors were the Vaudese militia, when a pro- 
 clamation from the First Consul Bonaparte arrived and put an 
 1G 
 
2i8 PESTAL0ZZ1: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 end to the hostilities. The French Government consented 
 to act as mediator, and with a view to ascertaining the best 
 means of restoring union and tranquillity amongst all parties, 
 convoked at Paris a " Consulta," composed of deputies from 
 the Helvetian Senate, the cantons, and any communes that 
 wished to send them. 
 
 Pestalozzi had just published a conciliatory political 
 pamphlet, and was now chosen by the village of Kirch- 
 berg to represent it at the Consulta. He was also chosen 
 by canton Zurich, in company with Usteri and ex-director 
 Laharpe. 
 
 The first meeting of the Consulta took place in Paris on 
 the 10th of December, 1802. The First Consul had appointed 
 a Commission to confer with the Swiss deputies, composed 
 of Barthélémy, the president of the Conservative Senate, and 
 formerly ambassador in Switzerland ; Fouché, of Nantes ; 
 and Hoederer and Desmeuniers, councillors of state. There 
 were two opposing parties in the Consulta: one composed of 
 forty-five members, amongst whom was Pestalozzi, for the 
 most part favourable to the new ideas ; the other, a minority 
 of sixteen, who asked more or less explicitly for a return to 
 the old state of things. 
 
 Pestalozzi's almost unintelligible French and his eccentric 
 appearance were much against his getting a hearing in 
 Paris; nor could he confine himself to the political questions 
 under discussion, but tried to make the occasion an opportu- 
 nity for expounding his educational ideas in France. He 
 therefore exercised little or no influence in the Consulta, 
 although Hoederer was at that time displaying both zeal 
 and talent in the matter of public instruction. 
 
 Pestalozzi was eager to obtain an audience of the First 
 Consul, but his request was refused, Bonaparte saying that 
 he had something else to do than consider questions of A 
 B C. He instructed Senator Monge, however, to hear what 
 Pestalozzi had to say. 
 
 Monge, the inventor of descriptive geometry, and the 
 founder of the Polytechnic school, was a man of large mind 
 and keen intellect. He listened patiently to Pestalozzi, 
 asking question after question till he was satisfied that he 
 had thoroughly understood him, but after carefully consider- 
 ing the plans the old man had proposed, he replied in half- 
 a-dozen words : " It is too much for us." 
 
PESTALOZZPS INSTITUTE AT BURGDORF. 219 
 
 As soon as Pestalozzi saw that lie could do nothing in 
 Paris, he forsook the Consulta to return to his work at 
 Burgdorf. As he entered the Castle, Buss said to him : 
 " Well, did you see Bonaparte ? " " No," replied Pesta- 
 lozzi ; " nor he me.'' 1 These words, though they were 
 spoken with a smile, may perhaps appear presumptuous. 
 And yet, if Pestalozzi merely expressed his sense of his own 
 worth by them, he was not deceived, for of these two men 
 there is one whose memory will be blessed by posterity in 
 ail lands, and it is not he whom his contemporaries called 
 " the great." Bonaparte did France an immense wrong by 
 rejecting Pestalozzi's ideas, ideas so soon to be accepted by 
 Prussia. But Bonaparte's desire was to be master of the 
 people, whereas Pestalozzi's one effort was to set them free. 
 
 We may here mention an anecdote related by Pompée in 
 the book already quoted, and, so far as we are aware, to be 
 found nowhere else. We give it in his own words : 
 
 " General Ney, the French ambassador in Berne, was in 
 the habit of paying not infrequent visits to the Burgdorf 
 institute, of which he had formed a very high opinion, and 
 of which he gave an account to the First Consul. . . . 
 (p. 127.) 
 
 "If Bonaparte had been unwilling to concern himself 
 with Pestalozzi's questions of A B C when the latter was in 
 Paris as a Swiss deputy, he had at any rate readily accepted 
 Ney's suggestion that the new system should be introduced 
 into French schools. Naef, one of the Burgdorf masters, 
 was accordingly sent to Paris. He commenced his teaching 
 in an orphan asylum, where a certain number of children 
 were entrusted to him by the commissioners of charitable 
 institutions. Napoleon was anxious to see for himself the 
 results obtained, and visited the asylum, accompanied by 
 Talleyrand, the United States ambassador, and several other 
 distinguished personages. He watched several lessons, and 
 was very satisfied with all he saw. A Commission was then 
 appointed to render an account of the experiment, and De 
 Wailly, the head of the Lycée Napoléon, expressed in his 
 report the opinion that the method might prove to be very 
 useful for children intended for the mechanical arts. 
 
 1 This was told us by Buss himself. 
 
220 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 " After this, Maine, of Biran, the sub-prefect of Bergerac, 
 had brought into Dordogne a Burgdorf master named Bar- 
 raud, whom he had entrusted with the management of an 
 establishment in which he was greatly interested. Public 
 servant and philosopher, he used all his influence against 
 routine, never losing an opportunity of recommending the 
 application of Pestalozzi's principles and of making known 
 in public meetings and elsewhere what had already been done. 
 
 " ' We have just seen,' he says, on one of these occasions, 
 1 that this school, still in its infancy, has nevertheless 
 adopted educational methods of a very high order, methods, 
 indeed, which are entirely in accordance with man's nature 
 and the progressive development of his faculties.' (p. 254 
 and following.) 
 
 " Whilst every Government in Europe was thus seeking 
 to introduce a new system of instruction into its elementary 
 schools, a private American citizen, Mr. MacLure, endowed 
 his native country with such an establishment of public 
 instruction as would have compared favourably with any of 
 the best European schools. A strange chance put him in 
 the way of thus effecting these great improvements in the 
 educational system of his country. Being in Paris in 1804, 
 and having a great desire to see Napoleon, he applied for 
 assistance to the United States ambassador, who accordingly 
 took him with him on the occasion of the First Consul's visit 
 to Naef to test the results of his experiment on the orphan 
 children that had been entrusted to him. 
 
 " During the time that the lessons lasted, MacLure was 
 entirely absorbed in the contemplation of Napoleon, and saw 
 nothing else ; but on going out, he heard Talleyrand say, 
 'This is too much for the people.' Struck by these words, 
 he went back into the room and ascertained from Naef the 
 object of the meeting. As he was profoundly convinced of 
 the necessity of improving the condition of the poor, he at 
 once saw how much might be done in this direction by Pesta- 
 lozzi's system, and offered Naef the most favourable terms if 
 he would go to Philadelphia and found a Pestalozzian insti- 
 tute." (p. 270 and following.) 
 
 We have spoken of Pestalozzi's success at Burgdorf, and of 
 the great reputation his institute had acquired in Switzerland 
 and elsewhere. He himself, however, did not share in the 
 
PESTALOZZPS INSTITUTE AT BURGDORF. 221 
 
 general admiration, and was by no means satisfied with what 
 he had done. At the end of his life he declared publicly 
 that in founding the Burgdorf institute he had made a mis- 
 take. It may be thought that this opinion was not formed 
 till later, and was the result of his many troubles, but, as a 
 matter of fact, as early as 1803 he felt himself out of place 
 at Burgdorf, and, still faithful to the dreams of his youth, 
 longed to leave the institute and devote himself to founding 
 another poor-school. That this was his state of mind is 
 evident from a letter he wrote to his friend Fellenberg, who 
 had asked him to visit him. 
 
 Pestalozzi replied in these words : 
 
 " A thousand thanks for j 7 our warm invitation, but I will 
 not and, indeed, cannot thrust my troubles upon my friends. 
 It is my duty, and it is within my power, to see to my own 
 cure. When I have done so, I shall be able to enjoy the 
 friendship of men; but till I am entirely satisfied with myself 
 no one can soothe my troubled heart. Help me to sell my 
 books, so as to forward the one object of my life, my poor- 
 school. There, in silence and retirement, I shall look for 
 such repose as is to be found behind bolts and bars. Oh, 
 my friend, I can hardly express to you the state of internal 
 discord in which I am living. The means, however, of my 
 deliverance increase daily. Farewell ; I am a prey to such 
 melancholy as I have never before experienced, but it will 
 pass away." 
 
 Meanwhile the act of mediation which had been signed on 
 the 19th of February, 1803, had re-established Federalism in 
 Switzerland. The unitary Government ceased to exist, and 
 with it vanished all Pestalozzi's hopes of future support. 
 But his work was by this time too" well known to be thus 
 easily destroyed. The Governments of Aargau, Lucerne, 
 and Zurich showed a disposition to support the institute, the 
 last-named voting a sum of forty pounds towards the publi- 
 cation of the elementary books. The Swiss Diet, assembled 
 at Freiburg, instructed a Commission to examine what could 
 be done to help on the fulfilment of Pestalozzi's philan- 
 thropic views, but we have not been able to discover 
 whether it ever published a report. 
 
 The newly constituted Government of canton Berne, how- 
 
222 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 ever, had resumed possession of the castle of Burgdorf and 
 made it once more the residence of the prefect of the district. 
 Although the Government had little sympathy for Pestalozzi, 
 whom it considered a revolutionar} 7 " and a friend of unitar- 
 ism, it had not been able to leave his institute without a 
 home, and had made over to him the use of an old convent 
 at Munchenbuchsee, about three miles from Berne, and near 
 Emmanuel Eellenberg's agricultural and philanthropical 
 establishment at Hofwyl. It was in June, 1804, that Pesta- 
 lozzi left Burgdorf, and transferred his institute to Mun- 
 chenbuchsee. 
 
 Before following him to this new centre of activity, we 
 must add a few details of his life at Burgdorf, where he 
 spent, as it seems to us, his happiest years. 
 
 After the death of his son in 1801, his wife had left 
 Neuhof and rejoined him at Burgdorf. She was low-spirited 
 and in ill-health : and, being unable to bear all the bustle 
 and noise of such a large establishment, hardly ever left her 
 room. She managed the accounts, however, as well as a 
 certain portion of the correspondence, for Pestalozzi was too 
 preoccupied and absent-minded, too busy and too impatient, 
 to be trusted with any work demanding regular and close 
 attention. 
 
 Mrs. Pestalozzi's room was next to the large refectory, 
 where Pestalozzi and the masters took their meals with the 
 pupils. From this room, as well as from the balconies and 
 terraces of the Castle, there was a splendid view. At one's 
 feet lay the green valley of the Emme, with its rich and 
 varied cultivation, and far away in the distance were the 
 snowy summits of the Oberland Alps. 
 
 At this time a part of the Castle buildings was still used 
 as a prison for the unfortunate criminals of the district. 
 In this connection Ramsauer tells a most characteristic 
 story : 
 
 " There was a famous criminal called Bernhard, big and 
 strong as a giant, who had several times escaped from 
 prison, and each time been brought back to the Castle and 
 confined in a still deeper dungeon. On these occasions 
 Pestalozzi would slip a piece of money into his hands, say- 
 ing : ' If you had received a good education, and had learned 
 to use your powers for good ends, you would now be a useful 
 
PESTALOZZPS INSTITUTE AT BURGDORF. 223 
 
 member of society, and instead of being obliged to put you 
 in a hole and chain you up like a dog, people would honour 
 and respect you.' I myself, when I could obtain permission 
 from Pestalozzi and the gaoler, used sometimes to visit 
 Bernhard, and, in spite of his horrible underground cell, I 
 always did so with pleasure, for he was a candid, straight- 
 forward, and remarkably intelligent man." 1 
 
 There is another anecdote of this period, which shows 
 with what energy Pestalozzi could overcome sickness and 
 suffering, One day, when he was confined to his bed by a 
 sharp attack of rheumatism, the French ambassador, Bern- 
 hardt, came to the Castle to visit the institute. In spite of 
 doctor and friends, Pestalozzi insisted on getting up. As he 
 could scarcely stand, and could only be dressed with extreme 
 difficulty, everybody implored him to go to bed again, point- 
 ing out how little fit he was to do what he wanted ; but he 
 turned a deaf ear to all their entreaties, and, supported by 
 friendly arms, painfully dragged himself out of his room. As 
 soon as he saw the ambassador, however, he shook himself 
 free, and began eagerly to expound his doctrine. The more 
 he talked, the more he seemed to regain strength and bright- 
 ness, and when at last he ceased, his rheumatism had dis- 
 appeared. 
 
 At the time of which we are speaking, Fellenberg and 
 Pestalozzi had been friends for twenty years ; it will be re- 
 membered that portions of their correspondence have already 
 been quoted. Now it happened one day that some of 
 Fellenberg's workmen brought him a poorly dressed man, 
 whom they had found, they said, in the fields, half dead 
 with hunger and fatigue. This man turned out to be no 
 other than Pestalozzi, who, carried away by his passion 
 for minerals, had wandered such a long distance filling his 
 handkerchief and pockets with them, that he had lost his 
 way, and, at last, fallen down dead-tired beside a ditch. It 
 wasabout the same time, too, that Pestalozzi, dragging wearily 
 along one evening near the gates of Soleure, with his handker- 
 chief full of stones, was arrested by the police as a beggar 
 and suspicious character, and taken before the judge. The 
 
 1 Notes on Pestalozzi, Eamsauer and Zahn, vol. i., p. 27. Elberfeld and 
 Meurs, 1846. 
 
224 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 judge was out, and the old man had to wait a long time in 
 the ante-chamber with his custodian. Great was the latter's 
 astonishment when the judge, on his return, recognized 
 Pestalozzi, and, after greeting him warmly, invited him to 
 supper. 
 
 Fellenberg was a skilful agriculturist and an excellent ad- 
 ministrator. Though a man of noble and lofty views, he 
 was eminently practical, and his activity was always wisely 
 directed. He possessed, indeed, in a marked degree the 
 very qualities which Pestalozzi lacked. He had voluntarily 
 renounced the brilliant career that his birth and talents 
 would assuredly have thrown open to him, in order to 
 devote his fortune and ability to undertakings of public 
 utility. 
 
 His establishments at Hofwyl had the double object of 
 forming active, intelligent, and honest workmen amongst 
 the poor, and skilled agriculturists amongst the rich. It was 
 obvious, therefore, that tho two friends could be of much 
 assistance to each other in their respective undertakings, 
 and Fellenberg suggested to the old man that they should 
 work together, Fellenberg taking entire control of the 
 financial department, and Pestalozzi, freed from responsi- 
 bilities for which he had neither taste nor capacity, con- 
 trolling the combined establishments in all educational 
 matters. 
 
 At first Pestalozzi accepted ; but he and Fellenberg were 
 made rather to respect each other than to live together. 
 There was as much difference in their characters and ways 
 of thinking and feeling as in their habits and outward 
 appearance. Fellenberg, though at bottom kind and gener- 
 ous, had a stern, masterful manner. Pestalozzi, who used to 
 call him " the man of iron," found the partnership anything 
 but helpful, and could not make up his mind to remain at 
 Munchenbuchsee. 
 
 Several towns were anxious to receive him, amongst 
 others Payerne, Yverdun, and Rolle in the canton of Vaud. 
 Thinking that to be established in a French-speaking coun- 
 try would encourage the spread of his method, he chose 
 Yverdun. 
 
 " He left Munchenbuchsee, then, on the 18th of October, 
 1804, after having taken a touching farewell of his masters 
 
PESTALOZZI'S INSTITUTE AT BURGDORF. 225 
 
 and pupils. He arrived at Yverdun without knowing what 
 would "become of him, and so entirely destitute of resources, 
 that he had to share a single room with Krusi and Niederer. 
 He was living thus when he received a present of four 
 pounds from the King of Denmark, as a token of gratitude 
 for the hospitality that he had shown to two Danes (Torlitz 
 and Strohm) who had been sent by their Government to 
 Burgdorf to study his method. 
 
 " But however pressing his personal needs may have been, 
 his first thought was for his friendless children, whom 
 Fellenberg had been very reluctant to keep. He now sent 
 for them, and placed them with Buss and Barraud, who at 
 that time were laying the foundations of a Pestalozzian 
 institute at Yverdun." (Pompée, p. 141.) 
 
 The castle of Yverdun needed thorough repair before an 
 institute could be opened in it. The work, however, pro- 
 ceeded so slowly, that Pestalozzi decided, in the meantime, 
 to open a temporary school in a small set of rooms looking 
 on the Rue du Four, in a house which to-day is No. 51, Eue 
 du Milieu. 
 
 Pestalozzi had left behind him at Munchenbuchsee about 
 seventy pupils, with Tobler, de Murait, Schmidt, von Turck, 1 
 Steiner, and a few under-masters. Tobler, who was per- 
 fectly capable in every respect, had been entrusted with the 
 management of all educational matters, but Fellenberg, 
 though he was only supposed to control the finance, soon 
 began to exercise an undue influence in everything. 
 
 To show the effect of this influence on the institute we 
 cannot do better than quote the following passage from 
 Bamsauer : 
 
 " At Munchenbuchsee I was unhappy for the first time in 
 my life. I was still table-boy and under-master, but I had 
 nobody to comfort my heart. We missed particularly the 
 love and warmth which pervaded everything at Burgdorf, 
 
 1 Von Tûrck, an Oldenburg magistrate, had been sent by the Grand Duke 
 to Burgdorf. He published a book called Letters from Munchenbuchsee, 
 which was one of the first works to give a clear account of Pestalozzi's 
 method., and one of those that most helped to make it known in Ger- 
 many. He afterwards opened a boarding-school in Yverdun, the pupils 
 of which attended the day-classes in Pestalozzi's institute. 
 
226 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 and made vis all so happy. With Pestalozzi the heart was 
 first, with Fellenberg, the mind. . . . 
 
 " And yet Munchenbnchsee had its good points too ; there 
 was more order there, and we learned more than at Burg- 
 dorf. . . . 
 
 " In February, 1805, to my great joy, Pestalozzi sent for 
 me to go back to him to Yverdun, where I once more found 
 a father's love, and my dear masters, Krusi and Buss. A 
 few months later the whole institute had rejoined Pestalozzi 
 in Yverdun Castle." 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 PESTALOZZI'S BOOKS AND METHOD AT BURGDORF. 
 
 " How Gertrude Teaches Her Children." " How to Teach 
 Spelling and Reading" " Book for Mothers" Elementary 
 Teaching on Number and Form. " The Natural School- 
 master." 
 
 Pestalozzi had no sooner opened his institute at Burgdorf 
 than he was anxious to give the public some more complete 
 account than they had yet had of his life work and of the 
 views which he was endeavouring to put into practice. He 
 accordingly published the book entitled: How Gertrude 
 Teaches Her Children; an Attempt to Show Mothers how 
 they can Teach their Children Themselves. 
 
 Morf, whose estimate of Pestalozzi's work at Stanz we 
 have already quoted, speaks of this book as follows : 
 
 " This book is the most important and the most carefully 
 thought out of all Pestalozzi's pedagogical writings. Not 
 only was its importance great at the time at which it 
 appeared, but it will remain great for ever. The true char- 
 acteristics of his genius stand out free as yet from all foreign 
 influence. His own thoughts, expressed in his own words, 
 give us the most faithful picture of this noble heart. We 
 are filled with admiration at the fulness of his intuitions — ■ 
 I might almost say of the revelations of which Providence 
 had made him the instrument. From the beginning to the 
 end of this work our attention and interest never flag. 
 Here and there we may object to certain of his methods, 
 but never to his principles and conclusions. And even 
 though experience has enabled us to improve on certain 
 points, we are bound to admit with gratitude that this 
 improvement has only been reached by following the 
 lines originally laid down by Pestalozzi. This book is 
 to-day and will ever remain the foundation stone of all 
 
228 PESTAL0ZZ1: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 instruction for the people, but its hidden treasures are still 
 far from having been all put into practice, and we cannot 
 too earnestly urge all those who are engaged or interested 
 in education to make a serious study of it." 
 
 We must, however, add that this book is by no means 
 free from the defects of most of Pestalozzi's writings. The 
 author is too easily carried away by his heart and imagina- 
 tion; the wealth and abundance of his ideas interfere with the 
 order of the general plan and the proportion of the various 
 parts. The digressions and repetitions are innumerable, 
 though it is fair to say that when the same ideas reappear, 
 it is always in a new light. 
 
 A simple analysis of the work would give but a very 
 imperfect idea of it ; we prefer to run rapidly through it 
 with our readers, calling attention to the most essential 
 principles, and translating the most characteristic passages. 
 
 The book consists of fifteen letters addressed to Gessner. 
 The first, which briefly reviews the author's life and work, 
 and his efforts towards raising the people, begins thus : 
 
 " My dear Gessner, you say that it is time I made some 
 public statement of my ideas about the education of the 
 people. I shall be only too glad to do so, and will en- 
 deavour in a series of letters to set forth my views as 
 clearly as possible. 
 
 " Seeing popular education lying before me like an im- 
 measurable swamp, I plunged into its slime, and, by ex- 
 erting all my strength, waded toilsomely through, till I 
 at last discovered the sources of its waters, the reason of 
 their stagnation, and the means of reclaiming the ground. 
 
 " I will now take you with me for a moment into this 
 labyrinth, from which, by good fortune rather than by good 
 judgment, I have at last found a way out." 
 
 After giving a description of the intellectual poverty 
 in which the schools of his time left the people, and the 
 history of his various unsuccessful attempts to remedy it, 
 Pestalozzi proceeds to sum up the aim of his work as 
 follows : 
 
 " Ah, how happy I shall be in my grave if in what I am 
 doing for popular education I can succeed in uniting Nature 
 

 BOOKS AND METHOD AT BURGDORF. 229 
 
 and Art, now so widely separated ! That they should be 
 separated at all is sad enough, but that the wickedness of 
 men should have so opposed them to each other as to render 
 them utterly incompatible, fills me with indignation." 
 
 The second and third letters relate Pestalozzi's meeting 
 with Krusi, Tobler, and Buss, and the valuable assistance 
 that these men had rendered to him and his work. 
 
 The fourth, fifth, and sixth set forth the general prin- 
 ciples of his method. 
 
 In the fourth he endeavours to formulate the laws of 
 instruction. 
 
 In the fifth he begins by declaring that these laws do not 
 satisfy him because he cannot find any general principle 
 to express their essential character. He then goes on to 
 search for the natural sources of human knowledge. 
 
 In the sixth letter Pestalozzi says that in spite of the 
 trouble he is taking to explain his views, he is doing it 
 very imperfectly, because for twenty years he has lost the 
 power of philosophizing ; that is, of expressing his ideas in 
 a philosophical manner. He points out that for many 
 centuries, reading, writing, and arithmetic have been 
 regarded as the elements of instruction, but that they are 
 not really the elements. His investigations have shown 
 him that the true elements are sound (language), number, 
 and form. At every new appearance, we ask : What is it ? 
 (name), How many objects ? (number), What is it like ? 
 (form). In thus reducing instruction to its really simplest 
 elements, we bring Art into harmony with Nature, for in 
 this way all knowledge is made to result from the very first 
 manifestations by which Nature acts on men. 
 
 The seventh letter is devoted to the elementary teaching 
 of language, but Pestalozzi afterwards considerably modi- 
 fied, and in many cases entirely abandoned, the methods 
 which are here described. 
 
 The eighth is concerned with the elementary teaching 
 of form by sense-impression, from which the child learns to 
 judge of size, to draw, and to write. 
 
 He must first be made familiar with the simple elements 
 of all form: straight lines, angles, etc., and be taught to 
 measure their length and size with his eye. Only when he 
 has done this will he be able to draw successfully, reproduce 
 
23o PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 on his slate, that is, the various lines, angles, and simple 
 figures which are put before him. 
 
 These first lessons in linear drawing serve to train his 
 eye and hand, and are thus a preparation for writing. He 
 writes at first on his slate, beginning with the easiest letters, 
 and with words formed from them. Before very long, how- 
 ever, he will be able to use pen and paper. 
 
 In teaching drawing, Pestalozzi makes great use of the 
 square, which possesses several important advantages : 
 
 In the first place, it serves in ordinary drawing as a sort 
 of basis for an infinite number of rectangular figures and 
 patterns that the child can invent, vary, and develop, ac- 
 cording to his fancy. In the next place, if divided into 
 smaller squares or rectangles, it furnishes an admirable sense- 
 impressing introduction to the study of geometry and the 
 measurement of surfaces. 
 
 Lastly, this division of the square produces the table of 
 fractions of fractions, by the help of which children acquire 
 great facility in mental calculations with fractions. 
 
 Pestalozzi then speaks of the elementary books that he 
 is planning : The ABC of Sense-Impression, and the Book 
 for Mothers. He hopes that these books will enable mothers 
 to instruct their children themselves. 
 
 It must be observed that these sense-impressing lessons 
 in form, as they are described in this letter, were somewhat 
 modified by Pestalozzi as his experiment progressed. 
 
 The ninth letter treats of the elementary teaching of 
 numbers by sense-impression. The author begins by pointing 
 out that, in the study of language and form, certain means 
 and ideas have to be made use of which are foreign to the 
 particular end. Amongst these is the testimony of the 
 senses, often so liable to error. On the other hand, operations 
 with numbers need no outside help, and alwa}~s furnish us 
 with exact results. Certain other sciences furnish us with 
 exact results, too ; but this is only because they depend on 
 the science of numbers. Hence the immense importance 
 of this subject of instruction, which not only develops the 
 intellect, but is of such great practical utility. 
 
 Pestalozzi then shows that all arithmetical calculation 
 consists in increasing or decreasing numbers by various 
 methods which are simply intended to shorten the repetition 
 of the formula : one and one are two, one from two is one 
 
BOOKS AND METHOD AT BURGDORF. 231 
 
 But these abbreviations, which are all that is learnt in the 
 school, have the disadvantage of becoming a mere matter 
 of memory, and of destroying the intuitive conception of 
 number. Thus we may have learnt by heart that four and 
 three are seven, and feel that we have reached a certain 
 definite result ; but this result is not really ours, we have 
 accepted it on trust, possibly without even knowing what 
 the number seven represents. Without sense-impressing 
 exercises the child can know nothing of numbers themselves ; 
 he can only know their names, and these may remain entirely 
 without meaning for him for a long time. 
 
 For these exercises Pestalozzi first employs his " table of 
 units," in which each unit is represented by a line, so that 
 up to a hundred the child can make all operations of addition, 
 subtraction, multiplication and division, as it were by sight. 
 And so afterwards, when he works in his head, he has a 
 clear and exact idea of the numbers he uses, because he 
 always thinks of them as collections of lines, and sees the 
 numbers themselves instead of the conventional figures which 
 represent them. 
 
 Then comes the " table of fractions," which was composed 
 of squares, some whole, others divided horizontally into 
 two, three, or even ten equal parts. From this the child 
 learnt by sense-impression to count these parts of the unit, 
 to form them into wholes, etc. 
 
 Then comes a " table of fractions of fractions," in which 
 the squares were divided not only horizontally, but vertically, 
 so that the method for reducing two fractions to the same 
 denominator was self-evident. 
 
 In all these sense-impressing exercises on numbers, it is 
 chiefly the attention, observation, and judgment of the child 
 which are brought into play, and which, with a little help 
 from the master, teach him to find out for himself what he 
 has to learn, and state it in his own words. It would be a 
 great mistake to see nothing but an exercise of memory in 
 all this. 
 
 This part of the method was still further developed and 
 improved by Pestalozzi after the publication of the work 
 we are considering. 
 
 The tenth letter treats of sense-impression, as Pestalozzi 
 calls all direct and experimental perception, whether in the 
 physical or moral world. Sense-impressed ideas are those 
 
232 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 which result immediately from these perceptions. Descrip- 
 tions, explanations, and definitions will all remain without 
 effect on the child's mind, unless he has already acquired 
 a basis of sense-impressed ideas for them to rest upon. That 
 being granted, we can sum up this whole letter in a few lines. 
 
 Sense-impression is the only basis of instruction, but for 
 a very long time it has been completely neglected in educa- 
 tion. After the invention of printing, the value of books 
 was strangely exaggerated. Books were confused with 
 knowledge, words with ideas. Nothing but books was 
 employed in the schools, and men thought that by teaching 
 the child to read— articulate, that is, the sound of different 
 groups of letters — they were throwing open to him the gate 
 of universal knowledge. And so men of books and words 
 were made, — men of letters, indeed, but in the narrowest 
 and most literal acceptation of the term, — and that un- 
 ceasing and irrational love of talk began, which misleads 
 and bewilders us by a deluge of words to which, in most 
 men's mincls, there are no precise ideas to correspond. 
 
 It was the same, too, for the moral and religious develop- 
 ment. After the Reformation, the mania for dogmatizing 
 was carried even into the education of little children, in 
 order that they might be trained betimes in the methods 
 of controversy. Instead of trying to open their hearts to 
 the sentiments of faith, piety and virtue, people began by 
 making them commit a catechism to memory; a set of 
 abstract doctrines, that is, which could do little either for 
 the minds or hearts of young children. Here again teaching 
 is concerned with nothing but words. 
 
 In acting thus for so long, the schools were not only 
 forsaking the path of Nature, but entirely neglecting the 
 valuable impressions that spring from the direct observation 
 of things and life, as well as all questions of personal and 
 practical virtue. 
 
 Pestalozzi finishes this letter in the following words : 
 
 •' Europe, with its system of popular instruction, was 
 bound sooner or later to fall into error, or rather into the 
 disorder which is threatening to ruin society. On the one 
 hand, an immense height has been reached in science and 
 art ; on the other, the very foundations of a natural culture 
 for the mass of the people have been lost. Just as no part 
 
BOOKS AND METHOD AT BURGDORF. 233 
 
 of the world has ever before risen so high, so none has 
 ever fallen so low. Our continent is like the colossus 
 spoken of by the prophet ; its head of gold reaches to 
 the clouds, but the feet which should support it are of 
 clay. . . . 
 
 " In Europe the culture of the people has ended by becoming 
 an empty chattering, fatal alike to real faith and real know- 
 ledge ; an instruction of mere words and outward show, 
 unsubstantial as a dream, and not only absolutely incapable 
 of giving us the quiet wisdom of faith and love, but bound, 
 sooner or later, to lead us into incredulity and supersti- 
 tion, egotism and hardness of heart. But however this 
 may be, the development of the mania for words and books, 
 which pervades our whole system of pop alar education, 
 has undoubtedly taught us at least one thing, and that 
 is, that it is impossible for us to remain any longer as we 
 are. 
 
 " Everything confirms me in my opinion that the only 
 way of escaping a civil, moral and religious degradation, 
 is to have done with the superficiality, narrowness, and 
 other errors of our popular instruction, and recognize sense- 
 impression as the real foundation of all knowledge." 
 
 In the eleventh letter, Pestalozzi speaks of self-impression 
 as being the method employed by a mother. Prompted by 
 her instinct and her affection, she introduces her child to 
 Nature, now leading it nearer to distant objects, now 
 bringing it those by which it is attracted. She does this 
 either to soothe her child or amuse it ; she has as yet 
 no thought of teaching, and yet she is thus supplying the 
 first and most indispensable element of all instruction. 
 Why does the art of teaching refuse to build upon these 
 simp]e and precious foundations ? The Swiss mother hangs 
 over her child's cradle a coloured paper-bird, which thus 
 becomes the object of its first regards, first gestures and 
 first games. In doing this she is opening a path in which 
 we should do well to follow. The first part of the Book 
 for Mothers (it was not yet written) will show how this 
 good beginning may be continued by sense-impressing 
 exercises in form, number and language. Words that are 
 imperfectly understood may affect the whole future develop- 
 ment of the child, for they introduce an element of confusion 
 17 
 
234 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK, 
 
 into his mental conceptions, an element of unsoundness into 
 his judgments. Many of our contemporaries are striking 
 instances of this. 
 
 " The course of Nature in the development of humanity- 
 is invariable, it is therefore impossible that there should 
 be two equally good methods of teaching. One only is 
 good, and it is that which is entirely based upon the eternal 
 laws of Nature ; the others are bad precisely in proportion 
 to their neglect of these laws. Neither I nor any other 
 man am as yet in possession of this one good method, nor 
 can we hope to do more than reach it slowly and gradually." 
 
 Further on, after saying that the child must first be 
 taught to see properly and properly describe what he sees, 
 and that definitions should not come till afterwards, Pesta- 
 lozzi adds : 
 
 " The wisdom produced by premature definitions is like 
 the mushroom, which grows fast in the rain, but dies at the 
 first touch of the sun. 
 
 " The child must learn the first elements perfectly and 
 completely. 
 
 " Any incompleteness will be a defect that will always 
 make itself felt, and tend to prevent his nature from de- 
 veloping in its entirety. This is as true of the mind as 
 of a garden. 
 
 u The empire of the senses must be subordinated to the 
 essential end of our nature ; that is, to the moral spiritual 
 law. . . . It is only his inner spiritual life that can 
 give a man self-control, freedom and contentment. . . . 
 The education of our race, then, must be dissociated from 
 our sensual nature ; which is, blind, and leads only to death, 
 and entrusted to our moral and spiritual nature, which is 
 Divine and eternal." 
 
 In the twelfth letter, Pestalozzi begins by calling attention 
 to what he had said twenty years before, in the preface to 
 Leonard and Gertrude : 
 
 " I stand aloof from men's quarrels about their opinions ; 
 but whatever makes them pious, honest, believing, and 
 gentle, whatever can bring the love of God and their 
 
BOOKS AND METHOD AT BURGDORF. 235 
 
 neighbour into their hearts, and happiness and blessing into 
 their homes, that, I fancy, is beyond dispute, and is accepted 
 by all." 
 
 He then points out that his educational work is indepen- 
 dent of the opinions by which men are divided, and that, 
 his method is therefore beneficial for all nations, no matter 
 what their religious faith or form of government. This 
 explains why he henceforth avoids all dogmatism in speak- 
 ing of religion. And yet, in all he does he relies on God's 
 providence, often even, though with less definiteness, on 
 redemption through Jesus Christ. He knew that, in the 
 minds of that portion of humanity to which he was address- 
 ing himself, these two points were " beyond dispute," but 
 to-day, when such an illusion would no longer be possible, 
 what would he do ? Wo aid he think it possible to do with- 
 out Grod in education ? We cannot believe it. So far as 
 instruction in the proper sense of the word is concerned, 
 his method is, it is true, independent of religion, but in the 
 school, as in the home, it is impossible to give even in- 
 struction without the help of the child's will, and the will 
 depends upon the moral development. Moral education, 
 therefore, is intimately connected with the rest of the 
 master's work ; it is an integral, necessary part of an in- 
 divisible organism. " And this moral development," says 
 Pestalozzi, "results from the influence of a pious mother 
 who prays with her child." 
 
 Further on, Pestalozzi declares that he is far from having 
 settled the whole question of education ; that in his endeavour 
 to help the people he has only discovered a few leading 
 principles, and that he deplores his incapacity to formulate 
 and apply them more thoroughly. 
 
 " And so when I affirm positively that all a man's powers 
 are part of an organic whole, I by no means wish to imply 
 that I am thoroughly acquainted either with this organism 
 or its laws ; and when I say that, in teaching, a rational 
 method must be followed, I do not pretend either to have 
 always pursued this method, or to have worked out all its 
 details." 
 
 Pestalozzi then goes on to say that though lie has devoted 
 
236 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK, 
 
 his life to efforts to help the people, he has never yet 
 succeeded. He recognizes that the fault is his own, and, 
 deeply repentant, concludes sorrowfully thus : 
 
 " I have lost everything and lost myself ; and yet, 
 God, Thou hast kept my life's desire alive within me. Thou 
 hast not blotted out before me the aim which has caused 
 my sorrows, as Thou dost before so many thousands who 
 ruin their own lives, but Thou hast preserved my work in 
 spite of my errors. I was drawing near to my tomb in hope- 
 lessness, but Thou hast filled my evening with brightness and 
 softened the sorrows of my life. I am not worthy, Lord, 
 of Thy compassion and trust. Thou alone hast had pity on 
 the crushed worm ; Thou hast not broken the bruised reed, 
 nor quenched the smoking flax, nor hast Thou ever averted 
 Thy face from the offering which, from my childhood, I have 
 striven, but striven in vain, to bring to the outcasts of the 
 world." 
 
 The thirteenth letter begins with a digression upon the 
 abuse of language. When from the outset language is the 
 spontaneous and faithful expression of thought, it is at the 
 same time its principal means of development, and gives it 
 force and precision ; but when from childhood it is but the 
 repetition or imitation of other people's language, when the 
 words it employs express ideas which are still unfamiliar 
 to him who pronounces them, then language does little to 
 develop thought, nay, it paralyzes and destroys it. Hence 
 the empty, idle babbling that fills the world. 
 
 Pestalozzi then comes back to the reform of elementary 
 education, and points out yet another need which it must 
 satisfy. 
 
 Knowledge is not everything ; judgment and readiness 
 in action are also necessary. The practical powers also 
 require that the senses and limbs should be subjected to 
 a graduated series of exercises, beginning with what is 
 simplest and easiest. The power of applying what we 
 know depends for its development upon the same organic 
 laws as regulate the acquisition of knowledge. 
 
 The organism of Nature is the same in man as in plants 
 and animals ; it regulates alike his physical nature, his 
 moral nature, and the development of his practical powers. 
 
BOOKS AND METHOD AT BURGDORF. 237 
 
 Humanity in its deepest degradation never loses the 
 sense of the need there is for developing its practical side 
 for the purpose of obtaining the necessaries of life. 
 
 Just as an A B C of intellectual development is necessary, 
 so must we have an ABC of practical development ; for as 
 a child's knowledge and intelligence are confused by putting 
 definitions before actual experience, so his heart and 
 conscience are confused by talking to him of faith and 
 virtue before he has had any actual experience of what 
 faith and virtue really are. 
 
 The fourteenth and fifteenth letters, which end the work, 
 are devoted to the question of moral and religious develop- 
 ment. Here we must let Pestalozzi speak for himself : 
 
 " I am unwilling to bring these letters to an end without 
 touching on what I may call the key-stone of my whole 
 system. Is the love of God encouraged by these principles 
 which I hold to be the only sound basis for the development 
 of humanity ? 
 
 " Once again I look into my own heart for an answer to 
 my question, and ask myself : ' How does the idea of God 
 take root in my soul ? Whence comes it that I believe in 
 God, that I abandon myself to Him, and feel happy when 
 I love Him and trust Him, thank Him and obey Him ? ' 
 
 " Then I soon see that the sentiments of love, trust, grati- 
 tude and obedience must first exist in my heart before I 
 can feel them for God. I must love men, trust them, thank 
 them and obey them, before I can rise to loving, thanking, 
 trusting and obeying God. ' For he who loveth not his 
 brother whom he hath seen, how shall he love his Father 
 in heaven whom he hath not seen ? ' 
 
 " I next ask myself, ' How is it that I come to love men, 
 to trust them, to thank them and obey them? How do 
 these sentiments take root in my heart ? ' And I find that 
 it is principally through the relations which exist between 
 a mother and her infant child. 
 
 " The mother must care for her child, feed it, protect it, 
 amuse it. She cannot do otherwise ; her strongest instincts 
 impel her to this course. And so she provides for its needs, 
 and in every possible way makes up for its powerlessness. 
 Thus the child is cared for and made happy, and the first 
 seed of love is sown within him. 
 
2 3 8 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 " Presently the child's eyes fall on something he has never 
 yet seen ; seized with wonder and fear, he utters a cry ; his 
 mother presses him to her bosom, plays with him, diverts 
 his attention, and his tears cease, though his eyes long 
 remain wet. Should the unfamiliar object be seen again, 
 the mother shelters the child in her arms, and smiles at him 
 as before. This time, instead of crying, he answers his 
 mother's smile by smiling himself, and the first seed of 
 trust is sown. 
 
 " His mother runs to his cradle at his least sign ; if he is 
 hungry, she is there ; if thirsty, she satisfies him ; when he 
 hears her step, he is content; when he sees her, he stretches 
 out his hand and fastens his eyes upon her bosom ; to him, 
 his mother and the satisfaction of his hunger are one and 
 the same thing ; he is grateful. 
 
 " These germs of love, trust and gratitude soon develop. 
 The child knows his mother's step; he smiles at her shadow; 
 he loves whatever is like her; a creature of the same 
 appearance as his mother is, in his eyes, a good creature. 
 Those whom his mother loves, he loves ; those whom she 
 kisses, he kisses. This smile at the likeness of his mother 
 is a smile at humanity, and the seed of brotherly love, the 
 love of his fellow-men, is sown. 
 
 " Obedience, in its origin, is opposed to the child's first 
 instincts, and would never result from them naturally; and 
 yet it is upon these instincts that the educator must base 
 his efforts to teach it. . . . 
 
 " The child cries before he has learnt patience ; he is 
 impatient before he has learnt to obey. Patience comes 
 before obedience, and is necessary to the child before he 
 can obey. The first manifestations of obedience are of a 
 purely passive character, and result chiefly from the sense 
 of necessity. But this sense may be developed by the 
 mother's influence. The child must wait to be fed, to be 
 taken to her arms. It is not till much later that he is 
 capable of active obedience, and even then it is some time 
 before he feels that it is good to obey his mother. 
 
 "Nature cares nothing for the child's anger; he may 
 strike wood or stone as he pleases, but Nature will pay no 
 heed, and he will soon cease to strike. Similarly, the 
 mother must pay no heed to his unreasonable desires ; 
 though he may storm and cry, she must remain unmoved, 
 
BOOKS AND METHOD AT BURGDORF. 239 
 
 and presently his crying will stop. He thns learns to sub- 
 ordinate his will to hers, and the first seeds of patience and 
 obedience are sown. 
 
 " Obedience, gratitude, trust, and love combined, are the 
 beginnings of conscience ; that is, of a first vague feeling in 
 the child's mind that it is not well for him to be angry 
 with his mother, who loves him ; that his mother is not in 
 the world solely for him ; that everything is not in the 
 world for him ; that even he is not in the world for himself 
 alone. A first ray of duty and justice has reached his 
 heart. 
 
 "Such are the first elements of moral development 
 awakened by a mother's relations with her infant. They 
 are also the elements of religious development, and it is by 
 faith in its mother that the child rises to faith in God. . . . 
 
 " The moment will soon come when these first powerful 
 springs of faith and action will disappear. The child's own 
 strength already allows him to leave his mother's hand, a 
 feeling of independence grows from day to day, and slowly 
 the thought rises in his inmost heart, ' I no longer need my 
 mother.' But she reads this thought in his eyes, presses 
 her dear one still more closely to her breast, and says, in a 
 tone which he has never heard before : ' My dear child, there 
 is a God whom you need when you no longer need me, who 
 will take you in His arms when I can no longer protect you, 
 who will prepare joy and happiness for you when I can give 
 you neither any more.' Then in the child's heart rises an 
 inexpressible feeling of comfort, a readiness to believe which 
 lifts him out of himself. He no sooner hears God's name 
 from his mother's lips than he glows with gladness. The 
 sentiments of love, gratitude and trust, first felt on his 
 mother's bosom, are felt now still more deeply for God, 
 whom he loves and trusts as a father or mother. His 
 faculty of obeying grows too ; the child now feels God's 
 eye upon him as he formerly felt his mother's, and does 
 good in God's sight as he used to do it in hers. 
 
 " This first attempt of a loving, simple-minded mother to 
 subordinate the child's growing feeling of independence 
 to faith in God, by connecting faith with certain moral ten- 
 dencies that are already more or less developed, furnishes 
 education with the fundamental principles from which it 
 must start, if it is to succeed in ennobling men. 
 
240 PESTAL0ZZ1 : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 11 The first germs, then, of love, gratitude, faith, and 
 obedience grow out of certain instinctive relations between 
 the mother and child, but the after-development of these 
 germs requires most careful art. And even your most careful 
 art, educator, will remain barren if you lose sight for a 
 moment of their starting-point, for you will then be break- 
 ing the thread which unites the growing sentiments to their 
 first germs. This is a very great danger, and must be 
 guarded against at the outset. The child called for his 
 mother's help, loved her, thanked her, trusted her, obeyed her. 
 He called for God's help, loved Him, thanked Him, trusted 
 Him, and obeyed Him. But the first sources of these senti- 
 ments have now ceased to exist ; he needs his mother no more, 
 and the new world which surrounds him is crying with all 
 its sensuous charm, ' Now, you are mine ! ' 
 
 " The child hears this voice. The instincts of his cradle 
 have disappeared ; those of his growing powers have replaced 
 them. The moral sentiments which were the product of his 
 first impressions will soon disappear too, if they are not 
 now indissolubly bound up with the supreme aspirations of 
 our nature, with the duties of life, and the will of the 
 Creator. The world is now beginning to loosen the child 
 from the mother's heart, and if at this time no one is found 
 to reconcile the noblest sentiments of his nature with this 
 new and seductive world, it is all over with him. The 
 child, I say, is snatched from the loving heart ; the world is 
 now his mother, its sensual pleasures and proud spirit of 
 dominion are now his god. 
 
 " Here, for the first time, you can no longer trust Nature ; 
 you must, on the other hand, do your utmost to preserve 
 your child from his own blind strength, and give him such 
 rules, principles and powers as the experience of centuries 
 has shown us to be good. The world which is now before 
 his eyes, is no longer as God first created it ; not only have 
 its pleasures lost their innocence, but human nature has lost 
 its nobility, and everywhere is war, revolt, usurpation, 
 violence, selfishness, lying and deceit." . . . 
 
 We have no space for further quotations from this im- 
 portant work. What we have already quoted furnishes a 
 good example of Pestalozzi's tendency to digress. He took 
 up his pen to set forth the views which the Burgdorf insti- 
 
BOOKS AND METHOD AT BURGDORF. 241 
 
 tute was intended to realize ; but, as the work proceeded, 
 fresh, ideas crowded so thick and fast upon him, that at last, 
 carried away by his feeling and imagination, he launched 
 out into entirely new regions of thought. This explains how 
 it is that the book contains so much more than its title 
 seemed to promise. Morf, who has analyzed the work with 
 much care and penetration, thus resumes its pedagogical 
 principles : 
 
 1. " Sense-impression is the foundation of instruction. 
 
 2. " Language must be connected with sense-impression. 
 3 " The time for learning is not the time for judgment 
 
 and criticism. 
 
 4. " In each branch, instruction must begin with the 
 simplest elements, and proceed gradually by following the 
 child's development ; that is, by a series of steps which are 
 pyschologically connected. 
 
 5. " A pause must be made at each stage of the instruc- 
 tion sufficiently long for the child to get the new matter 
 thoroughly into his grasp and under his control. 
 
 6. " Teaching must follow the path of development, and 
 not that of dogmatic exposition. 
 
 7. " The individuality of the pupil must be sacred for the 
 teacher. 
 
 8. " The chief aim of elementary instruction is not to 
 furnish the child with knowledge and talents, but to develop 
 and increase the powers of his mind. 
 
 9. " To knowledge must be joined power ; to what is 
 known, the ability to turn it to account. 
 
 10. "The relations between master and pupil, especially 
 so far as discipline is concerned, must be established and 
 regulated by love. 
 
 11. " Instruction must be subordinated to the higher end 
 of education." 
 
 We shall not here undertake an examination of the "method," 
 as it is still in course of formation. Pestalozzi's own ex- 
 periences at Burgdorf tended to modify it somewhat, and, 
 later on, the labours of his assistants had a considerable 
 effect in developing and extending it. Moreover, Pestalozzi 
 worked at it with almost unimpaired intellectual vigour till 
 quite the end of his life, as we see in the Song of the Swan, 
 
242 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 written when he was eighty years of age. Not till we have 
 related his whole life, therefore, can we examine the educa- 
 tional method bequeathed to us by his genius and marvellous 
 mental activity. 
 
 But what we are in a position to state at once is, that in 
 this book, in which Pestalozzi endeavoured to set forth his 
 educational doctrine at a time when it could not possibly 
 have been affected by any foreign influence, he constantly 
 returns to the idea, so often expressed already in his writings, 
 that the intellectual and moral development of the child is 
 governed by the same organic laws as his physical develop- 
 ment or that of the plant or animal ; in other words, that 
 there is a human organism which comprises a material, an 
 intellectual, and a moral organism. It is our belief that if 
 Pestalozzi had investigated and formulated the laws of 
 organism so as to be able to apply them to the object of his 
 labours, he would have succeeded in giving his method more 
 clearness and precision. 1 
 
 We must now give some account of the elementary books 
 to which we have referred in a previous chapter, and which 
 were published during the existence of the Burgdorf insti- 
 tute. 
 
 The first, which appeared in 1801, and received some 
 pecuniary support from the Helvetian Government, was the 
 Guide for Teaching Spelling and Reading. It was originally 
 supplemented by large letters, which were intended to be 
 gummed on cardboard. The use of these movable letters 
 seems to have constituted Pestalozzi's first real public 
 success, so that it is to him we owe this practical method, 
 still employed in so many families. 
 
 His Book for Mothers was printed in 1803 ; it came far 
 short of what he had intended to make it, and not only 
 failed to produce the good effect he had expected, but was 
 ignored by the very people for whom it was written. 
 
 This failure seems to us to depend upon an error that had 
 crept into Pestalozzi's thought, an error which we must now 
 endeavour to explain, since its consequences were lasting 
 and fatal. This error not only rendered many of the efforts 
 
 1 We have given an account of the laws of organism and their appli- 
 cation to physical, moral and intellectual education in our first work, 
 Philosophy and Practice of Education. Paris, 1860. 
 
BOOKS AND METHOD AT BURG DO RF. 243 
 
 of Pestalozzi and his helpers quite futile, but also served 
 to spread a false idea of his method, and compromised the 
 success and utility of the various elementary books which 
 were afterwards published in his name. 
 
 "We must say at once that it was not an error of doctrine, 
 but simply a want of due appreciation of the difficulties 
 which the mothers of his time were bound to meet with, in 
 attempting to apply his method to the instruction of their 
 children. 
 
 It was assuredly a beautiful and noble thought to ask 
 mothers themselves to begin the reform of education by 
 teaching their children by a method which was to be but a 
 continuation of the natural method suggested to them by 
 the first inspirations of the maternal instinct. But to 
 succeed, it would have been necessary for them to forget the 
 methods by which they had been taught themselves, to break 
 away from those they saw in use around them, and to be as 
 fervently devoted to the new method as they would have 
 been if they had been brought up themselves by Pestalozzi, 
 or even in the spirit of his teaching. 
 
 Pestalozzi thought he could avoid this difficulty by sim- 
 plifying the elements of instruction and multiplying the 
 successive steps, so as to form a series of minute gradations. 
 His idea was to explain the course to be followed in all its 
 details, and supply mothers word for word with all they 
 would have to say to their children. But such a work was 
 too long and monotonous for a mind like Pestalozzi's, so 
 easily carried away by new ideas, and it was left, in a great 
 measure, to his collaborators. 
 
 According to the original plan of its author, the Book for 
 Mothers was to lead the child not only to a precise know- 
 ledge of the various objects of Nature or of art which were 
 presented to him, but also to an understanding of the 
 relations both of numbers and forms. 
 
 The study of that part of the sensible world which lay 
 within the child's comprehension included an infinite variety 
 of objects. Some order was necessary, and a starting-point 
 which should be everywhere the same — a first object of 
 observation, that is, which every mother who was anxious 
 to use these exercises would invariably have before her 
 eyes. 
 
 Pestalozzi chose the body of the child itself. He had 
 
244 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 indeed said elsewhere : " All I am, all I wish, and all I can 
 do, comes from myself." After the child were to come 
 animals, then plants, then the inorganic world, and then, 
 after the works of God, the works of man. 
 
 It was Krnsi who wrote the Book for Mothers, under 
 Pestalozzi's directions; but the study of the external parts 
 of the human body, their names, number, relative position, 
 relations, functions, etc., filled a volume, and there the work 
 stopped. 
 
 Pestalozzi had written the preface, in which he announced 
 a series of ten exercises, seven only of which were even- 
 tually carried out. The seventh, which was drawn up by 
 Pestalozzi himself, consists of a collection of instructive 
 remarks on the functions of the child's various organs, and 
 well repays perusal. The following quotation from an article 
 entitled, Seeing with the Eyes, will give a sufficient idea 
 of it: 
 
 11 When the child is still but a babe, his mother takes him 
 to the open window, and he sees the sky and earth, the 
 garden before the house, trees, houses, men and animals ; 
 he sees things near and things in the distance, great things 
 and small things, some standing alone, some in groups ; he 
 also sees white and blue and red and black. But he has 
 no idea of nearness or distance ; he knows nothing of size, 
 number, and colour. 
 
 " Some weeks later his mother carries him in her arms 
 into the garden, where he finds himself close to the same 
 tree that he had seen from the window. Dogs, cats, cows 
 and sheep pass near him ; he sees the fowls peck the grains 
 his mother scatters ; he sees the water flowing from the 
 fountain. His mother picks flowers of different colours for 
 him, and putting them into his hand, teaches him to smell 
 them. 
 
 " As the months go by, his mother takes him about with 
 her still more ; he at last comes quite near to the houses, 
 trees, or steeples, that hitherto he has seen only from afar. 
 Almost before he can walk he is prompted by the twofold 
 desire for pleasure and knowledge to crawl over the paternal 
 threshold, and go and breathe the fresh air and feel the 
 pleasant warmth of the sun in some sheltered nook behind 
 the house. He tries to take hold of everything he sees ; he 
 
BOOKS AND METHOD AT BURGDORF. 245 
 
 picks up stones, and breaks the bright, scented flowers from 
 their stalks, putting both stones and flowers into his mouth. 
 He would fain stop the worm on its way, the butterfly as it 
 flies past him, the lambs in the meadows. Nature is unfold- 
 ing before his eyes and he is eager to enjoy everything; 
 each day he learns something new, each day gives him a 
 clearer conception of size, distance, and number. . . . 
 
 " And now, mothers, what have you to do all this time ? 
 Nothing but follow the course that Nature and Providence 
 are laying down for you. You see what objects God presents 
 to your child as soon as he opens his eyes, you see the effect 
 of his involuntary and, so to speak, inevitable perceptions, you 
 see what pleases and amuses him. Let your whole conduct 
 be regulated then by what you see ; take your child near 
 the object which strikes him and attracts him the most, ^ 
 show him his favourite objects again and again, search 
 amongst everything within your reach — in the garden, the 
 house, the meadows and fields — for those objects which, by 
 their colour, shape, motion or brilliancy, have most in com- 
 mon with what he likes best. Surround his cradle with 
 them and place them on the table where he takes his food. ' 
 Give him full time to examine their properties at his ease, 
 and let him observe that by putting new flowers into the 
 vase where others have faded, by calling back the dog, or 
 by picking up the fallen toy, you are often able to reproduce 
 them when they disappear. This will be doing something 
 for his heart and judgment ; but you must never forget, 
 young mothers, that the one essential thing is that your 
 child shall love you better than everything else, that his 4 
 happiest smiles, his most eager attentions shall be for you 
 alone, and that you, on your side, shall love nothing better 
 than him." 
 
 Already, in the preface, Pestalozzi had appealed to the 
 feelings of mothers. He there exhorts them and encourages 
 them, and points out that they are not to follow these exer- 
 cises from one end to the other without any variation, but 
 that they must lose no opportunity of fixing the attention of 
 their child on any object that may attract him — that, in 
 short, the guide which he is giving them is but an example 
 of how the child is to be taught to see properly and to 
 express clearly what he has seen. 
 
246 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 He then adds : 
 
 " I know too well how it will be ; this poor husk, which 
 is but the mere outward form of my method, will appear to 
 be its real substance to a great number of men, who will 
 endeavour to introduce this form into the narrow circle of 
 their own ideas, and will judge of the value of the method 
 according to the effects it produces in this strange associa- 
 tion. I cannot prevent the forms of my method from having 
 the same fate as all other forms, which inevitably perish in 
 the hands of men who are neither desirous nor capable of 
 grasping their spirit." 
 
 In spite of all these warnings, Pestalozzi's predictions 
 were fulfilled. The Book for Mothers did not succeed ; 
 some of his critics even did not understand what his inten- 
 tion had been in publishing it, and looked on it merely as an 
 absurd experiment. Dussault, a celebrated and witty French 
 journalist, gave the following humorous account of it : 
 
 " Pestalozzi takes a world of trouble to teach a child that 
 his nose is in the middle of his face." 
 
 These words are actually to be found in the book, in the 
 chapter on the relative positions of the parts of the body, 
 which was drawn up by Krusi. Those, however, who 
 already knew something of Pestalozzi and his doctrine, took 
 a considerable interest in the book in spite of its defects. 
 A French translation of it was published at Geneva, in 1821, 
 but the translator withheld his name. 
 
 After the Book for Mothers came the books intended for 
 sense-impressing exercises on number and form, that is, for 
 the first instruction in arithmetic and geometry. They were 
 begun by Krusi and Buss, but were afterwards completed 
 by Schmidt. 
 
 These books were just as overburdened with details, just 
 as prolix and tedious as the Book for Mothers, nor were 
 they any more successful or any more useful, although the 
 path to be followed is minutely mapped out. 
 
 These elementary books, as we have said, gave a false 
 impression of Pestalozzi's method. People did not sufficiently 
 understand that these series of statements were to result 
 
BOOKS AND METHOD AT BURG DORK 247 
 
 from the child's own observation and experience ; slaves to 
 tradition, they only saw in them a lesson to be learned by 
 heart and repeated mechanically. And thus, not without 
 some show of reason, Pestalozzi's method has been blamed 
 for a defect which is precisely the defect it was intended to 
 cure. 
 
 Pestalozzi's method is spirit and life, and before we can 
 apply it we must be inspired by this spirit and this life ; 
 his work cannot be carried on by a mere stereotyped imita- 
 tion of his procedure. And yet, since Pestalozzi's time, 
 some of his less important principles have spread and taken 
 root, and already, in nearly every country, effected a certain 
 improvement in educational methods. This progress is both 
 slight and incomplete, and very far indeed from what we 
 should have been justified in expecting. But Pestalozzi's 
 method will not produce its full results until his philosophy 
 has been still further popularized, and all educationalists are 
 thoroughly imbued with its spirit. 
 
 We have still to speak of a work that Pestalozzi wrote at 
 this time (that is, between 1802 and 1805), but which he 
 never published. The manuscript, written throughout in 
 Pestalozzi's hand, is in the possession of Mr. Morf, of Win- 
 terthur, so that its authenticity is incontestable. It is called 
 The Natural Schoolmaster, and was printed for the first time 
 in 1872, in Seyffarth's collection. Its history is as follows : 
 
 The Book for Mothers, as it was published in 1803, was 
 but a first instalment, and that a very unsatisfactory one, of 
 a much more important work projected by its author. Pesta- 
 lozzi's view was that, after having accustomed the child to 
 talk about his physical impressions, it would be well to go 
 on and accustom him to talk about his moral impressions. 
 "With this object, he took as his text the language itself, or 
 rather, those words in the language which express such 
 moral sentiments as the child is capable of understanding 
 and from the explanation of which he is likely to profit. It 
 was to this new work, which seems to have been undertaken 
 at the same time as the first, that Pestalozzi gave the title, 
 The Natural Schoolmaster. The book, both in plan and form, 
 was entirely different from the Book for Mothers. 
 
 Whether the author was dissatisfied with his work, or 
 whether time failed him to correct and complete it, we do 
 not know ; but this, at least, is certain, that he abandoned 
 
248 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 his idea, and gave his manuscript to Krusi, with permission 
 to make whatever use of it he thought best. 
 
 In putting this book on one side, Pestalozzi was far from 
 giving up his intention of writing a work on the elementary 
 teaching of language ; a subject, indeed, at which he con- 
 tinued to work steadily till the end of his life, and on which 
 he left a great quantity of manuscripts, which, however, 
 with many others, were unfortunately lost some few years 
 after his death. Schmidt, who was then in Paris, having 
 asked to see them, Gottlieb sent them off to him. But they 
 never reached their destination. Inquiries were made, and 
 they were traced to Mulhouse, but, in spite of every effort, 
 it was impossible to discover what became of them after- 
 wards. 
 
 In 1829, Krusi, at that time the director of the Cantonal 
 School at Trogen, decided to utilize for the public benefit 
 the documents that had been entrusted to him. After 
 studying the manuscript, therefore, and reducing it to order, 
 he published a selection of passages in a pamphlet of some 
 hundred and twenty pages, entitled : Paternal Instructions 
 on the Moral Signification of Words ; a Legacy from Father 
 Pestalozzi to his Pupils. 
 
 In the preface, Krusi gives the history of the manuscript, 
 and quotes the following passage from Pestalozzi's letters to 
 Gessner : 
 
 ** I hope to complete my reading-lessons by a legacy to 
 my pupils, in which, after my death, they will find, connected 
 with the principal verbs in the language, and stated in 
 such a way as to strike them as they struck me, a certain 
 number of moral instructions, all drawn from my own ex- 
 perience." 
 
 The paternal instructions are indeed based on the mean- 
 ings of a series of words, nearly all of which are verbs. 
 
 The body of the work is preceded by a number of 
 detached thoughts and notes, jotted down without any 
 attempt at order, like so much material for a building that 
 has never been completed. It is amongst these notes that 
 we come across the title of the work : The Natural School- 
 master ; or, Practical Instructions based on the Simplest 
 Principles of Education for Teaching Children all they 
 
BOOKS AND METHOD AT BURGDORF. 249 
 
 need know up to the age of six years. Then follows the 
 dedication : 
 
 " To the People of Helvetia ! 
 
 " I have seen thy degradation, thy terrible degradation, 
 and I have had pity on thee, and long to help thee. I have 
 neither talent nor knowledge, and I am of no account in the 
 world, but I know thy needs. I give thee, then, myself and 
 all that I have been able to accomplish for thee by the pain- 
 ful labours of my life. 
 
 "Read what I say without prejudice, and if any one should 
 offer anything better, throw me aside, and let me sink back 
 into the obscurity in which I have passed my life. But if 
 no one can tell thee what I tell thee, if no one can help thee 
 as I can, then give a tear to my memory and to the life I 
 have lost for thy sake." 
 
 Amongst the preliminary notes we find some striking 
 ideas as to the moral importance of good language-teaching 
 which put us in mind of the work of Father Girard twenty 
 years later ; there are also plans for the study of language, 
 and criticisms of the methods then in use. After speaking 
 of the mischief done by the bad methods of so many school- 
 masters, the author exclaims, u Jesus Christ, the only 
 Master i " That, then, is where Pestalozzi looked for his 
 model. 
 
 As we have said, the body of the work is a collection of 
 instructions founded on the meanings of words. The words 
 are arranged alphabetically, each word being accompanied 
 by its derivatives, and each being taken successively in its 
 different acceptations. To be thoroughly understood, the 
 book must, of course, be read in German, but we will endea- 
 vour to give our readers some idea of it by translating the 
 first paragraph 1 
 
 "I. Achten, achtend, geachtet, erachten, beobachten, hoch- 
 achten, verachten, sick selbstachten ; die Achtung, die 
 Selbstachtung. 
 
 " Children, the first word I am going to explain to you is 
 Selbstachtung (attention to self, respect for self). 
 
 a It is this that makes you blush when you have done 
 wrong; that makes you love virtue, pray to Grod, believe in 
 18 
 
25o PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 eternal life, and overcome sin. It is this that makes you 
 honour age and wisdom, and prevents your turning aside 
 from poverty and distress ; it is this that enables you to 
 repel error and falsehood, and teaches you to love truth. 
 Children, it is this that makes the coward a hero, the idler 
 a man of action ; that makes us honour the stranger, and 
 come to the rescue of the outcast and the fallen." 
 
 The manuscript in the hands of Mr. Morf is not all that 
 Pestalozzi entrusted to Krusi ; there were also a number of 
 separate sheets, made use of by Krusi for his publication, 
 which have since been lost. But everything contained in 
 The Natural Schoolmaster and the Paternal Instructions 
 has been published by Seyffarth in the sixteenth volume 
 of his collection of Pestalozzi's works, a volume which any 
 one who was thinking of preparing a manual of language- 
 exercises for young children would do well to read. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 FIRST TEARS AT YVERDUN. 
 
 Helpers. Vulliemiri *s reminiscences. Prussia adopts the Pesta- 
 lozzian Method. Great reputation of the Institute. Testi- 
 mony of Bitter, Eaumer, etc. School for girls. School for 
 deaf-mutes. Life in the institute. A printing-press in the 
 Castle. " Weekly Journal of Education." Other publica- 
 tions. Games, manual labour, festivities. 
 
 Once installed in the old Castle of Yverdun, 1 the institute 
 grew rapidly ; the pupils were soon much more numerous 
 than they had been at Burgdorf, and the number of masters 
 was considerably increased. Many of the latter had been 
 pupils at Burgdorf, and now, as under-masters entrusted 
 with the teaching of the most elementary subjects, they 
 faithfully applied the method by which they had themselves 
 been formed. The others were men of various attainments 
 and capacity, who had eagerly accepted work under Pesta- 
 lozzi. 
 
 Amongst the new helpers we must mention : 
 John Niederer, of Outer Appenzell, Doctor of Philo- 
 sophy, who when the Burgdorf institute was opened was 
 the pastor of Sennwald, in the Eheinthal. In the letters 
 which he wrote at the time to his intimate friend Tobler, 
 and which have since been published by his widow, he 
 expresses sincere admiration for Pestalozzi, and a great 
 desire to join him. This desire, however, was not satisfied 
 till some years later, for he would not leave his parish till 
 he was satisfied that it would not suffer from his absence. 
 Niedei-er has been called the philosopher of the " method," 
 
 1 Once the residence of the Bailiffs of Canton Berne, it had become 
 the property of the Vaudese Government, and had been sold in 1804 to 
 the town of Yverdun, on condition that Pestalozzi, during his life, should 
 have the gratuitous use of it for his educational institution. 
 
2 5 2 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 because lie put Pestalozzi's ideas into a more philosophical 
 form. At Yverdun he revised everything that the master 
 wrote for publication, correcting the chief defects, and, it 
 must be added, somewhat spoiling the originality of both 
 matter and form. Indeed, if Pestalozzi's thought is to be 
 thoroughly understood, it must be examined in those of his 
 writings which were not touched by anybody but himself. 
 
 De Murault, 1 of Zurich, a well-informed man, of large 
 views and good administrative ability ; simple and kindly 
 with children. He had lived in Paris, and spoke French 
 fairly well ; and as all the singing in the institute was in 
 German, he won the hearts of all the French-speaking boys 
 by taking us for walks, and teaching us songs in our mother- 
 tongue.' 4 He afterwards became the head of an important 
 educational establishment in St. Petersburg. 
 
 Mieg, a capable man ; kind, but very firm. After Murault's 
 departure, Pestalozzi entrusted him for some time with the 
 general management of the discipline of the institute. 
 
 Von Turck, of a noble family in the north of Germany. He 
 gave up a good position in the Oldenburg magistracy to come 
 and study Pestalozzi's work, of which he afterwards pub- 
 lished an account, with the title : Letters from Munchen- 
 buchsee on Pestalozzi and his Elementary Method of Educa- 
 tion. This man, distinguished alike for his talents, his high 
 aims, and his extraordinary strength of will, after having 
 conducted a school in Yverdun in connection with Pesta- 
 lozzi's institute, was appointed a Councillor of State in 
 Potsdam, where he zealously worked for thirty years at the 
 application and propagation of the master's doctrine. 
 
 Barraud, soon called away by Maine de Biran to Ber- 
 gerac, in Dordogne, where he founded an educational insti- 
 tute based on Pestalozzi's principles. 
 
 Amongst the poor children who had been received at 
 Burgdorf, and who afterwards became masters at Yverdun, 
 the three most distinguished were : 
 
 Ramsauer, of whom mention has already been made, and 
 whom we shall have occasion to quote again. 
 
 1 He had been teaching in a family in Paris at the time of the Con- 
 sulta, and having become acquainted with Pestalozzi, had expressed a 
 desire to work with him. 
 
 2 The author Avas an old Yverdun pupil. [Tr.] 
 
FIRST YEARS AT Y VERDUN. 253 
 
 Joseph Schmidt, a shepherd-boy from the Tyrol, who had 
 had no early education whatever. Burgdorf had a greater 
 influence on his intellect than on his heart. He soon showed 
 a remarkable talent for mathematics, which he taught at 
 Yverdun with great skill and astonishing success. With a 
 glance like an eagle and a will of iron, he was crafty, 
 domineering, and utterly devoid of sensibility. He gradu- 
 ally obtained complete ascendancy over Pestalozzi's mind, 
 and was finally the cause of the departure of the other 
 masters, and of the ruin of the institute. It was he who 
 drew up the Elementary Lessons in Number and Form, which 
 are printed in volumes xiv. and xv. of the very incomplete 
 edition of Pestalozzi's works published by Cotta from 1820 
 to 1826. 
 
 Steiner, a neglected child, who received all his education 
 from Pestalozzi at Burgdorf. He was an under-master at 
 Yverdun, and was one of the pupils who did the greatest 
 credit to the " method." Much later he became a professor 
 of mathematics in Berlin, and published works which have 
 had a very considerable effect in popularizing and improv- 
 ing the study of that science. 
 
 Such were now Pestalozzi's chief helpers. There were 
 many others afterwards, but it must be remembered that we 
 are speaking of a time when the Yverdun institute was still 
 in its infancy. 
 
 To give our readers a clear idea of the life of the institute 
 in these early days, we cannot do better than quote the 
 interesting writer who has lately published, for his family 
 and friends, as he says, the memories of his childhood. We 
 refer to Professor Vulliemin, the eminent historian and con- 
 tinuator of Jean de Muller. He entered Pestalozzi's institute 
 in 1805, at the age of eight, and remained there two years. 
 His account of the place is as follows : 
 
 " Imagine, my children, a very ugly man, with rough, 
 bristling hair, his face scarred with small-pox and covered 
 with freckles, a pointed, untidy beard, no neck-tie, ill-fitting 
 trousers, stockings down, and enormous shoes ; add to this 
 a breathless, shuffling gait, eyes either large and flashing, 
 or half-closed as though turned within, features expressing 
 either a profound sadness or the most peaceful happiness, 
 speech now slow and musical, now thundering and hurried, 
 
254 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 and you will have some idea of the man we called ' Father 
 Pestalozzi.' 
 
 " Such as I have described him to you, we loved him ; 
 yes, we all loved him, for he loved us all ; we loved him so 
 much that when we lost sight of him for a time we felt sad 
 and lonely, and when he came back to us again we could 
 not turn our eyes away from him. 
 
 " We knew that at the time when the wars of the Swiss 
 Revolution had so largely increased the number of poor and 
 orphan children, he had taken a great number of them into 
 his house and cared for them as a father, and we felt that 
 he vv as the true friend of children, and of all who were in 
 trouble or misfortune. 
 
 " My fellow-citizens of Yverdun, my native town, had 
 generously placed at his disposal the old Castle. It was 
 built in the shape of a huge square, and its great rooms and 
 courts were admirably adapted for the games as well as the 
 studies of a large school. Within its walls were assembled 
 from a hundred and fifty to two hundred children of all 
 nations, who divided their time between lessons and happy 
 play. It often happened that a game of prisoner's base, begun 
 in the Castle court, would be finished on the grass near the 
 lake. In winter we used to make a mighty snow-fortress, 
 which was attacked and defended with equal heroism. Sick- 
 ness was hardly known among us. 
 
 " Early every morning we went in turns and had a shower 
 of cold water thrown over us. We were generally bare- 
 headed, but once, when a bitterly cold wind was blowing, 
 my father took pity upon me, and gave me a hat. My com- 
 panions had no sooner perceived it than a hue and cry was 
 raised : ' A hat, a hat ! ' It was soon knocked off my head 
 and a hundred hands sent it flying about the playground and 
 corridors, till at last it went spinning through a window, 
 and fell into the river that flows under the walls of the 
 Castle. It was carried away to the lake and I never saw 
 it again. 
 
 " Our masters were for the most part young men, and 
 nearly all children of the revolutionary period, who had 
 grown up round Pestalozzi, their father and ours. There 
 were, indeed, a few educated men and scholars who had 
 come to share his task ; but, taken altogether, there was not 
 much learning I myself have heard Pestalozzi boast, when 
 
FIRST YEARS AT Y VERDUN. 255 
 
 an old man, of not having read anything for forty years. Nor 
 did our masters, his first pupils, read much more than 
 Pestalozzi himself. Their teaching was addressed to the 
 understanding rather than the memory, and had for its aim 
 the harmonious ciiltivation of the germs implanted in us 
 by Providence. ' Make it your aim to develop the child,' 
 Pestalozzi was never tired of repeating, ' and do not merely 
 train him as you would train a dog, and as so many children 
 in our schools often are trained.' 
 
 " Our studies were almost entirely based on number, form, 
 and language. Language was taught us by the he]p of 
 sense-impression ; we were taught to see correctly, and in 
 that way to form for ourselves a just idea of the relations of 
 things. "What we had thoroughly understood we had no 
 trouble to express clearly. 
 
 " The first elements of geography were taught us from the 
 land itself. We were first taken to a narrow valley not far 
 from Yverdun, where the river Buron runs. After taking 
 a general view of the valley, we were made to examine the 
 details, until we had obtained an exact and complete idea 
 of it. We were then told to take some of the clay which 
 lay in beds on one side of the valley, and fill the baskets 
 which we had brought for the purpose. On our return to 
 the Castle, we took our places at the long tables, and repro- 
 duced in relief the valley we had just studied, each one 
 doing the part which had been allotted to him. In the 
 course of the next few days more walks and more explora- 
 tions, each day on higher ground and each time with a 
 further extension of our work. Only when our relief was 
 finished were we shown the map, which by this means we 
 did not see till we were in a position to understand it. 
 
 " We had to discover the truths of geometry for ourselves. 
 After being once put in the way of it, the end to be reached 
 was pointed out to us, and we were left to work alone. It 
 was the same with arithmetic, which we did aloud, without 
 paper. Some of us became wonderfully quick at this, and 
 as charlatanism penetrates everywhere, these only were 
 brought before the numerous strangers that the name of 
 Pestalozzi daily attracted to Yverdun. We were told over 
 and over again that a great work was going on in our midst, 
 that the eyes of the world were upon us, and we readily 
 believed it. 
 
256 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 " The Pestalozzian Method, as it was somewhat ostenta- 
 tiously called, was, it is true, an enigma, not only to us but 
 to our teachers, who, like the disciples of Socrates, each 
 interpreted the master's doctrine in his own way. But we 
 were still far from the time when these divergencies resulted 
 in discord, and when the chief masters, after each claiming 
 to be the only one who had understood Pestalozzi, ended 
 by declaring that Pestalozzi had not understood himself. 
 
 " At the time of my first appearance among the healthy, 
 happy children gathered within these walls, scenes like 
 those in Molière's he Bourgeois Gentilhomme, which were 
 destined ultimately to result in the ruin of the institute, 
 had not yet taken place. At this time, indeed, belief in 
 Pestalozzi still united the members of his large family. Not 
 that he had not already given signs of that lack of adminis- 
 trative ability which afterwards became so evident. He 
 had no sense of order, no gift for managing. In his childish 
 simplicity he could not be suspicious. Having no belief in 
 evil, he was easily deceived, and bound, sooner or later, to 
 have serious disappointments ; but at the time of which I 
 speak, he commanded devotion and obedience from all. 
 
 " One instance will show you the kind of spirit that pre- 
 vailed in the early days of the institute. 
 
 " These educators, who afterwards filled the world with 
 their quarrels, received no payment in money. Their daily 
 wants were provided for, and they asked nothing more. The 
 money received from the pupils was kept in Pestalozzi's 
 room, and all the masters had access to it, so that if one of 
 them wanted a coat, or a pair of boots, he just took what 
 he needed. This state of things lasted nearly a year without 
 any serious inconvenience. It was almost a return to the 
 communism of the early Christians." 
 
 Soon after Vulliemin left the institute, its outward 
 splendour and reputation were still further increased, the 
 propagation of its method received a new and powerful im- 
 petus, and some of its principles began to take definite root 
 in the educational system of a whole nation. This was a 
 consequence of the battle of Jena, after which, Prussia, 
 smarting under her defeat and humiliation, resolved to adopt 
 the remedial measures that Pestalozzi had so long been 
 preaching, 
 
FIRST YEARS AT YVERDUN. 257 
 
 When Frederick William the Third saw his monarchy 
 crushed by the loss of a single battle, he boldly made up his 
 mind for the slow and laborious, but only sure method of 
 restoring it, exclaiming : 
 
 " We have lost in territory, in power, and in splendour ; 
 but what we have lost abroad we must endeavour to make 
 up for at home, and hence my chief desire is that the very 
 greatest attention be paid to the instruction of the people." 
 
 The king was not alone in Prussia in desiring a reform 
 of public education. Many of the best minds had been con- 
 sidering the question and making plans and suggestions for 
 a long time, but nothing had as yet been done. 
 
 Queen Louisa also used her influence in the matter. An 
 entry in her private diary runs thus : " I am reading 
 Leonard and Gertrude , and enjoy transporting myself to 
 this Swiss village. If I were my own mistress, I should at 
 once go to Switzerland and see Pestalozzi. Would that I 
 could take his hand, and that he might read nry gratitude 
 in my eyes ! . . . With what kindness and ardour he 
 works for the good of his fellow-men ! Yes, in the name of 
 humanity, I thank him with my whole heart." Later on, 
 when Zeller was sent to Koenigsberg to teach according to 
 Pestalozzi's method, the queen took a keen interest in the 
 experiment, and often visited the new school. 
 
 During the winter of 1807-8, Fichte delivered in Berlin 
 his Discourses to the German Nation. It will be remem- 
 bered that he had visited Pestalozzi in 1793, and that, struck 
 by the truth of his views, he had promised to make them 
 known in Germany. In these discourses he kept his word, 
 and without any hesitancy, for he was fully convinced of 
 the truth of what he urged, and knew that by speaking thus 
 he was doing a philanthropic and patriotic act. After show- 
 ing that education is the only means of raising a nation, he 
 gave an account of Pestalozzi and his work, and declared 
 that no reform of public instruction could be efficacious and 
 salutary unless based on Pestalozzi's teaching. 1 
 
 On the 11th of September, 1808, Altenstein, of Koenigs- 
 berg, one of the king's ministers, wrote to Pestalozzi : 
 
 1 Discourses IX. and X. 
 
258 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 " His Majesty the King, being anxious that some active 
 efforts should be made to improve the state of popular educa- 
 tion, which I am aware is the object of your constant solici- 
 tude, has entrusted me, as minister, with the management 
 of educational matters in the Prussian provinces of his states. 
 Being fully convinced of the great value of the method you 
 have invented and so successfully practised, I hope that, by 
 introducing it into our elementary schools, I may be enabled 
 to bring about a complete reform of public instruction in 
 our royal provinces, a reform from which I shall look for the 
 most valuable results on the development of the people. 
 
 " Amongst the various steps towards this end that I am 
 thinking of taking, one of the most important will certainly 
 be the sending of two young men to you to study } T our system 
 of education and methods of teaching at the very fountain- 
 head. They will not confine themselves merely to the con- 
 sideration of a few particular points, but they will endeavour 
 to understand your system as a whole and in all its different 
 bearings. Under the direction of its venerable inventor and 
 his worthy colleagues, they will be prepared, not only in 
 mind and judgment, but also in heart, for the noble vocation 
 which the}? - are to follow, and they will be filled with a sense 
 of the holiness of their task, and with new zeal for the work 
 to which you have devoted your life. To ensure the success 
 of the step we are taking, I am anxious to know from you 
 yourself under what conditions these young men will be 
 best able to absorb your method ; of what age and character 
 they should be, for instance, and how much instruction they 
 should already possess. This information will enable us to 
 send you only such persons as you would desire to receive." 
 
 This letter shows us with what serious decision and with 
 what scrupulous care Prussia now set out on the path which 
 was, in time, to restore it to its former position. And it 
 was not merely two pupils that were sent to Pestalozzi, 
 but seventeen, all of whom spent three years at Yverdun, 
 at the expense of their government. Most of them after- 
 wards became distinguished men ; amongst others, we may 
 mention the well-known names of Henning, Dreist and 
 Kaverau. 1 Prussia was not the only country that sent 
 
 1 An idea of the results of the experiment may be gathered from 
 V. Cousin's report on public instruction in Prussia 
 
FIRST YEARS AT YVERDUN. 259 
 
 student-teachers to Pestalozzi ; the kings of Denmark and 
 Holland also sent two each, and many came from other parts 
 of Grermany. Sometimes Pestalozzi had as many as forty 
 aboxit him at a time. 
 
 But, in onr opinion, it was Saxony that most successfully 
 carried out its educational reforms. For a long time the 
 man in whom the control of the Saxon schools was vested 
 was Justus Blochmann, a former pupil and distinguished 
 collaborator of Pestalozzi, and it was probably owing to his 
 influence that the tone of popular instruction in Saxony 
 became more distinctly moral and religious and more 
 thoroughly Christian than it did in Prussia. In the great 
 international competition of a few years ago, it was the 
 primary schools of Saxony that took the first place. 
 
 The ardour with which Germany, and especially Prussia, 
 adopted Pestalozzi's method, attracted the attention of many 
 other countries to the institute of Yverdun ; pupils poured 
 in from all parts of the globe, visitors became more numerous 
 than ever, and included not only those who took a serious 
 interest in education, but mere sight-seers, princes, generals, 
 bankers, and a host of others, who made a point of seeing 
 Pestalozzi, as they made a point of seeing a lake or a glacier. 
 Such people as these generally went away disappointed. 
 
 This great and unintelligent popularity, unparalleled in 
 the history of any educational establishment before that 
 time, had the most unfortunate consequences. Not only were 
 the lessons daily troubled by the numerous visitors, but 
 parents came from different countries and begged for an 
 instruction for their children adapted to the customs and 
 circumstances of their homes, a demand which Pestalozzi, 
 anxious to lose no opportunity of spreading his doctrine, 
 was often unwise enough to attempt to satisfy. This was 
 undoubtedly one of the causes of the confusion which after- 
 wards invaded the system of studies at Yverdun. 
 
 But the reputation of the institute also brought visitors 
 of another sort to Pestalozzi — men of ability, that is, who 
 were capable of turning what they learnt from him to good 
 advantage. Amongst these we must mention Charles Bitter, 
 who exercised so great an influence on the development of 
 geographical science. The account given by this eminent 
 man of the state of the institute of Yverdun in 1807 and 
 1809 is particularly valuable. It has lately been made 
 
 
26o PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 public by Professor Vulliemin in an article in the Evangelical 
 Christian^ from which we borrow the following passages : 
 
 " In September, 1807, a German tutor arrived at Yverclun 
 with two pupils and their mother. The tutor was Charles 
 Hitter, his pupils the young Hollwegs, of Frankfort, members 
 of a great banking family, whose subsequent fame lias been 
 due in no small measure to these very boys. Hitter was not 
 an ordinary tourist. As it was known that he was very 
 eager to become acquainted with Pestalozzi and his method, 
 he was warmly welcomed at the institute, and spent a busy 
 week of educational investigation in the society of the head 
 of this large family and his chief colleagues, Niederer, 
 Tobler, Murait and Krusi. Not a day passed without lec- 
 tures and discussions, in the course of which education was 
 looked at from very many different sides. It was at the 
 time of Pestalozzi's greatest prosperity; and although his 
 sensitive heart had already detected the germs of those 
 dissensions which were afterwards to destroy his work at 
 Yverdun, he still retained many of his earlier illusions, and 
 it was with the most complete faith in the power of his 
 method that, with Niederer's help, he had just made a public 
 report on the state of his institution. What Hitter saw at 
 Yverdun filled him with admiration and respect. He felt 
 that he was in the presence of an exceptional nature, of a 
 great-souled, self-sacrificing man, who was entirely possessed 
 by a stimulating and original idea, and in whom child-like 
 simpleness and humility mingled with unbounded confidence 
 in the greatness of the task he had set himself to do. Trans- 
 ported thus into a world that was new to him, Hitter could 
 not but feel its elevating and ennobling influence. 
 
 " Two years later (the 1st of October, 1809) he repeated 
 his visit to Yverdun. * After journeying in rain and sun,' 
 he writes to a friend, ' I once more came to my dear Yverdun, 
 where I was received like an old friend of the family. 
 Amongst the many joys that Providence has bestowed upon 
 me, and for which, on account of their great influence on 
 my development, I shall never cease to be thankful, I set 
 the highest store by those that I have tasted in the society 
 
 1 Charles Hitter, the Geographer ; biographical fragments {Evangelical 
 Christian, 1869, p. 21). 
 
FIRST YEARS AT YVERDUN. 261 
 
 of my good friends Pestalozzi, Niederer, Mieg, von Tiirck, 
 Schmidt, and others, men who, in different degrees, are very 
 dear to me, since we are all striving for the same great end, 
 the raising of humanity by education.' 
 
 " Great changes had taken place in the institution ; but 
 though their sphere of action had considerably increased, 
 these energetic men still remained the same. The noble 
 old man, always a child in heart, was kept by his eager 
 enthusiasm in an almost constant state of feverish activity ; 
 his wife was a model of unassuming virtue, delicacy and 
 kind-heartedness. ' In their company,' says Hitter, { my 
 hours pass like minutes. When evening comes, seated 
 between the father and mother of this great family, I share 
 with my friends a simple repast, at which dishes are passed 
 and glasses filled amid many a pleasant jest. 
 
 " ' The work has grown to such proportions that its founder 
 can no longer attend to the whole of it. There are more 
 than a hundred and fifty pupils, and as many as forty 
 student-teachers of various ages, some of whom are already 
 engaged in active work outside the institute, and all of whom 
 apply themselves diligently to the study of the ' method.' I 
 have not been able to ascertain the number of masters. Add 
 to all this a school for girls, two private establishments, and 
 a number of teachers who live with their pupils in the town, 
 but give and receive lessons in the institute, and you will 
 have some idea of what is going on here. 
 
 " l Pestalozzi himself is unable to apply his own method 
 in any of the simplest subjects of instruction. He is quick 
 in grasping principles, but is helpless in matters of detail ; 
 he possesses the faculty, however, of putting his views with 
 such force and clearness that he has no difficulty iu getting 
 them carried out. He was right, indeed, when he said to 
 me, speaking of himself : ' I cannot say that it is I who have 
 created what you see before you. Niederer, Krusi and 
 Schmidt would laugh at me if I called myself their master ; 
 I am good neither at figures nor writing ; I know nothing 
 about grammar, mathematics, or any other science ; the 
 most ignorant of our pupils knows more of these things than 
 I do ; I am but the initiator of the institute, and depend 
 on others to carry out my views.' 
 
 " ' He spoke the truth, and yet without him nothing that 
 is here would exist. He has no gift for guiding or govern- 
 
262 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 ing this great undertaking, and yet it continues. He has 
 sacrificed everything he possessed to this end ; even now 
 he knows nothing of the value of money, and is as ignorant 
 of accounts as a child. Even his speech, which is neither 
 German nor French, is scarcely intelligible, and yet in every- 
 thing he is the soul of this vast establishment. All his 
 words, and more especially his religious utterances, sink 
 deep into the hearts of his pupils, who love and venerate 
 him as a father.' 
 
 " Bitter continues : ' If Pestalozzi is the inspirer, Niederer 
 is the philosopher of the enterprise, for it is he that develops 
 all Pestalozzi's ideas, and he does so in a way which would 
 do honour to the very greatest teachers of philosophy. To 
 him, however, philosophy is inseparable from religion, and 
 the only wisdom is in Jesus Christ. His conversation is 
 elevating, inspiring and comforting. Inferior as I am to 
 him in depth and power, he is attracted by me, because, in 
 spite of all I can say to the contrary, he finds in me a certain 
 harmony which he is conscious of lacking. His thoughts 
 give him no repose, and he frequently suffers from the 
 effects of overwork. He is, indeed, always in a state either 
 of intense mental activity or of complete mental exhaustion. 
 His wealth of ideas is most striking when he is talking of 
 the history of religion, of the life and teaching of Christ, of 
 the Gospel of St. John, or, in another connection, of the open 
 nature of the child, and of the intimate connection between 
 psychology and the study of languages. Were he inclined 
 to give the results of his studies to the world, he would 
 have much to say on these subjects that would be very valu- 
 able ; but always dissatisfied with what he does, he will not 
 consent to publish what he feels to be imperfect. 
 
 " ' Pestalozzi's most energetic helper in the development 
 of his system is Schmidt, a Tyrolese, whose method of teach- 
 ing drawing and geometry has been published, and is to be 
 followed by that for arithmetic and algebra. The { method ' 
 has been more fully applied to these branches than to any 
 other. Problems in geometry, trigonometry and measure- 
 ment of solids are nothing to Schmidt's pupils. In a large 
 class, containing from fifteen to twenty groups of boys, all 
 at different stages of progress, I have seen Schmidt teaching 
 alone, encouraging and helping everybody, and keeping every- 
 body occupied, without a single false step. This man, the 
 
FIRST YEARS AT YVERDUN. 263 
 
 son of a peasant, is but twenty-three years of age ; he is 
 religious and simple-hearted, but with a will of iron.' 
 
 " Such was Bitter's opinion of the Yverdun institute in 
 1809. But his enthusiasm, as is evident, got the better of 
 his judgment. Niederer's characteristic cordiality had kept 
 him blind to his rationalizing tendency, nor had he dis- 
 covered behind Schmidt's rough energy the preoccupations 
 of a mind determined to command. His stay at Yverdun had 
 been too short to allow him to discover the weak spots in 
 the men and their work, and the strongly favourable impres- 
 sions produced upon him by the good side of all he saw 
 rendered him incapable of calm criticism. Nor was he at 
 that time, though sincerely religious, sufficiently acquainted 
 with the spirit of the Gospel to make it a test of Pestalozzi's 
 work. Perhaps it was as well for him that he did not dis- 
 cover the real secret of its weakness at first. The impulsion 
 he received was all the stronger, all the more salutary ; for 
 there can be no doubt that, independently of what he learned, 
 in other respects, it was his relations with Pestalozzi which 
 awoke in him the ideas which he was so soon afterwards to 
 apply in his geographical studies. To quote his own words 
 on this subject : 
 
 " ' 1 have seen more than the paradise of Switzerland, for 
 I have seen Pestalozzi, and recognized how great his heart 
 is, and how great his genius ; never have I been so filled 
 with a sense of the sacredness of my vocation, and the dig- 
 nity of human nature, as in the days that I spent with this 
 noble man. I cannot think without emotion of this little 
 company of brave men, struggling with the present that the 
 future may be the better, and finding alike their joy and 
 their reward in the hope they have of raising children to 
 the true dignity of humanity. I have watched the growth of 
 this precious plant, I have even drunk of the waters and 
 breathed the air that give it life. I have learned to under- 
 stand this ' method,' which, based upon the nature of the 
 child, develops so naturally and so freely. It is for me now 
 to apply it in the domain of geography, where Nature has 
 been too long neglected.' 
 
 " *. . . I left Yverdun fully determined to keep the 
 promise I made to Pestalozzi of introducing his method into 
 the study of geography,' he writes later, ' and already I 
 am reducing the chaos to order ; I hold in my hand, as it 
 
2Ô4 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 were, the clue to such a knowledge of the globe as will satisfy- 
 both the mind and heart, reveal the laws of a higher wisdom, 
 and contribute not a little to the science of physico- 
 theology.' 
 
 " He certainly kept his promise, for his great work on 
 comparative geography may be said to have founded a new 
 science. He changed geography, which till then had been 
 a mere collection of facts, into an organic science, thus 
 throwing light on the relations between the physical and 
 intellectual diversities of race. No doubt he owed much to 
 many other men, and particularly to William Humboldt whose 
 labours gave a new direction to the study of languages, 
 but it is to Pestalozzi that he traces the first impulsion 
 given to his mind, and the chief part of what was valuable 
 in his work. Forty years after his visit to Yverdun, we 
 heard him admit this himself : 
 
 " ' Pestalozzi,' he said, ' knew less geography than a child 
 in one of our primary schools ; yet it was from him that I 
 gained my chief knowledge of this science, for it was in 
 listening to him that I first conceived the idea of the 
 natural method. It was he who opened the way to me, and 
 I take pleasure in attributing whatever value my work may 
 possess entirely to him.' " 1 
 
 We have not hesitated to quote at this length, because 
 any who are anxious to thoroughly understand Pestalozzi's 
 work will be glad to have the opinions of two such men as 
 Hitter and Vulliemin. As the article from which we have 
 been quoting, however, anticipates a little, we shall have 
 to return to certain points later on. 
 
 Amongst the other notable men who visited the Yverdnn 
 institute during this first period of its existence, we must 
 mention von Raunier, who, at Pichte's suggestion, left Paris, 
 where he was studying theology, to come to Pestalozzi. He 
 stayed long enough to get a thorough .understanding of the 
 work of the establishment in all its details ; but though he 
 had a great admiration for its venerable founder, he was not 
 blind to its defects, and even proposed certain alterations, 
 which, however, were not carried out. He afterwards went 
 
 1 It was to Pestalozzi that Bitter dedicated the first volume of hia 
 Geography. 
 

 FIRST YEARS AT Y VERDUN. 265 
 
 back to Germany, his native country, and wrote a History 
 of Pedagogy ', in which the praise he bestows on the insti- 
 tute is not altogether unmixed. 
 
 Chavannes' Life of Pestalozzi (Lausanne, 1853), contains 
 the testimony of a pupil from Vevey, afterwards a minister 
 of the Gospel, as to the state of the establishment at this 
 time. We quote the following extracts : 
 
 " I entered in June, 1808, when I was about seven and 
 a half years old, but I only stayed nine months. It was the 
 most brilliant period of the institute. There were as many 
 as a hundred and thirty-seven pupils there, including not 
 only Swiss, Germans, and Frenchmen, but Italians, Spaniards, 
 Russians, and even Americans. 
 
 " In the matter of food and cleanliness we were not very 
 well looked after ; but though at first I suffered very much, 
 being so far from Vevey and my parents, I gradually became 
 accustomed to the new state of things, and grew very fond 
 of my kind masters, who not only took part in all our 
 amusements, but even, by an excess of liberty, allowed us 
 to ' thou ' them. I was especially attached to their excellent 
 chief, Pestalozzi. I seem still to see this kind old man, 
 with his knee-breeches half-buttoned, his stockings down, 
 his collar, hair and beard in disorder, and yet with such a 
 quick, tender glance in his eyes, and such a kind smile upon 
 his lips, that everybody felt attracted to him, men, women 
 and children gladly accepting his affectionate embraces. 
 
 "I should add, further, in praise of this excellent man, 
 that if he did not develop in me the fear of God or faith in 
 the Saviour, he at least taught me to do my work from a 
 sense of duty, avoiding as far as possible the dangerous 
 stimulus of praise and reward. Having been called to his 
 room one day with a young Italian who had given some 
 cause of complaint, and whom he gently reproved, I thought 
 for a moment that the same thing was going to happen to 
 me ; but the good old man, turning to me, said that my 
 masters were quite satisfied with me, and that he would 
 send word of this to my parents, who would doubtless be 
 very glad to hear it. I thus found that I had done my duty 
 without being praised before my companions, and almost 
 without knowing it. 
 
 " Upon the whole I may say that, although I was very 
 19 
 
266 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 young, and spent but a very short time with this extra- 
 ordinary man, he has left an ineffaceable impression upon 
 me, and that I look upon him as one of the benefactors of 
 my youth. 
 
 " It often happened, I remember, that one of the masters, 
 seated near the fireplace while Pestalozzi pronounced his 
 morning meditation, would eagerly write it down. One of 
 these improvised discourses, delivered by Pestalozzi on a 
 Friday morning in winter, has been preserved. As it gives 
 a fairly good idea of what Pestalozzi's Christianity was at 
 that time, I do not hesitate to give it in full : 
 
 " * No day in the week is so important as this day on 
 which Jesus Christ suffered and died. We were talking 
 yesterday of the repose of winter. I tried to make you 
 understand that no seed thrives unless the ground has been 
 well prepared ; when it has been badly prepared, neither 
 the winter nor its snows can help forward the work of the 
 sun, and in spite of the repose of winter, the seed perishes. 
 
 " ' Similarly a man cannot hope for a peaceful death and 
 a happy resurrection unless the seeds of his life are likely 
 to yield a good harvest. He cannot lie down to sleep in 
 peace unless his day's work is done. 
 
 " ' When we once realize that this is true, we see that 
 Christ's sacrifice and death were but the accomplishment 
 of His work on earth. His last words were : u It is 
 finished," and as He was satisfied that His work was well 
 finished, He died in peace. Had his work not been finished, 
 He would not have died. 
 
 " ' By living for His heavenly Father and for humanity, 
 Ho earned, as it were, His repose. 
 
 " ' Would that we might follow His example, and recognize 
 that it is the only way to eternal repose. The man who 
 does not attempt to fulfil his duties, and who consequently 
 does not tend towards perfection, will never obtain this 
 rest. 
 
 " ' How difficult it is for us teachers to strive towards 
 this end throughout our lives, nay, even for a single hour ! 
 Jesus alone could say : " All is finished " ; everything that 
 man undertakes is paltry and incomplete. . . . 
 
 " ' We must be always asking ourselves : Have I tried to 
 work at my own improvement ? Does my conduct show 
 that I have advanced somewhat in the wav of sanctification ? 
 
FIRST YEARS AT YVERDUN. 267 
 
 ; . . No man can meet death with tranquillity but he 
 who has fully accomplished his task. . . . 
 
 " ' We accomplish nothing ; on all sides we are powerless ; 
 our action is broken and fragmentary ; and yet we shall only 
 find rest in so far as we strive after perfection. 
 
 " ' Try to love God, your parents, and each other more 
 and more. 
 
 " ' He who develops and perfects his inner nature will 
 gradually find the strength and means to accomplish his 
 task with regard to outer things.' " 
 
 We may add that Pestalozzi pronounced these meditations 
 at morning and evening worship, walking up and down 
 before the assembled school in the large hall which served 
 for a chapel. The service closed with singing and prayer, 
 the prayer being sometimes silent. 
 
 Pestalozzi had founded at Yverdun, not far from the 
 Castle, a girls' school, the pupils of which received lessons 
 from some of the masters in the institute, and were always 
 present at evening worship. Pestalozzi had entrusted the 
 direction of this establishment to his daughter-in-law, who, 
 it will be remembered, had been the good angel of the 
 Burgdorf institute, and who had now married a second 
 husband, Mr. Kuster. 
 
 Mrs. Kuster's chief assistant was Miss Rosette Kasthoffer, 
 of Berne, an intelligent person, who afterwards married 
 Niederer, and became the directress of the school, which 
 finally became independent of Pestalozzi. Under Mr. and 
 Mrs. Niederer it acquired much celebrity. They carried it 
 on in Yverdun till 1838, and then in Geneva till Niederer's 
 death. 
 
 It was also Pestalozzi who attracted to Yverdun Mr. 
 Conrad Naef, of Zurich, who in 1811 founded an institute 
 for the deaf and dumb, an establishment which always 
 enjoyed a thoroughly deserved reputation, first under the 
 management of the founder, and, after his death, under that 
 of his son. 
 
 The various testimony quoted above has already given 
 our readers some idea of what the institute of Yverdun 
 was like during the years of its prosperity ; we must now 
 add a few touches to complete the picture. 
 
 The pupils enjoyed a great deal of liberty. As the two 
 
268 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 doors of the Castle were open all day, and there was no 
 porter, they could go in and out at all hours as if they were 
 at home, and they never abused this freedom. Their lessons 
 lasted generally ten hours a day — the first beginning at six, 
 the last ending at eight. But none of these lessons lasted 
 more than an hour, and they were all followed by a short 
 interval, during which the children generally changed rooms. 
 Besides, some of these lessons consisted of gymnastics, or 
 some sort of manual labour, such as working in cardboard 
 or gardening. The last hour of the day was a free hour, 
 devoted to what the children called their own work. They 
 could do anything they liked — draw, or read geography, or 
 write home, or put their note books in order. 
 
 The youngest masters, who were generally Burgdorf 
 pupils, were in charge out of school. They slept in the 
 dormitories, and, in recreation time, played with the pupils 
 with as much enjoyment as the children themselves. They 
 worked in the garden with them, bathed with them, walked 
 with them, and were in every respect on the friendliest 
 terms with them. They were divided into sets, each set 
 taking its turn every third day, for this superintendence 
 kept them busy from morning till night. 
 
 Three times a week the masters rendered an account to 
 Pestai ozzi of the pupils' work and behaviour. The latter 
 were summoned by the old man, five or six at a time, to 
 receive his exhortations or remonstrances. He would take 
 them one by one into a corner of his room, and ask them in 
 a low voice if they had not something to tell him, to ask 
 him. He tried in this way to gain their confidence, to find 
 out if they were happy, what pleased them, or what troubled 
 them. The work of the week was reviewed at a general 
 meeting every Saturday. 
 
 The faithful Lisbeth, the brave woman who had brought 
 Pestalozzi such timely succour in his distress at Neuhof, 
 bad followed her master to Yverdun as housekeeper. She 
 had married Krusi's brother, who filled the post of con- 
 fidential servant at the institute. 
 
 She had brought with her to Yverdun the economical and 
 culinary habits of German-Switzerland, which were some- 
 what too simple and primitive to suit the tastes of the 
 people she had come amongst. The food, however, though 
 not very delicately prepared, was plain, wholesome, and 
 
FIRST YEARS AT Y VERDUN. 269 
 
 abundant, and the meals, as is customary in Germany, 
 numerous. 
 
 At seven o'clock, after the first lesson, the pupils washed 
 in the courtyard. The water, pumped from the well, ran 
 through a long pipe with holes on both sides, from which 
 each child received a pure, fresh stream, jugs and basins 
 being unknown. After this came breakfast, consisting of 
 soup. Lessons began again at eight. At ten came an 
 interval, when any one who was hungry could get dried 
 fruit and bread from the housekeeper. At mid-day there 
 was an hour's recreation for bathing or prisoner's-base on 
 the grass behind the lake. At one o'clock dinner of soup, 
 meat, and vegetables. Lessons again from half-past one till 
 half-past four. Then the afternoon meal, either of cheese, 
 fruit, or bread and butter. Each could take his share away 
 with him, and eat it where he liked during the play-hour, 
 which lasted till six o'clock, and which was passed, when 
 the weather was fine, either behind the lake or in the large 
 garden adjoining the Castle, where every child had his own 
 little plot. From six to eight more lessons, and then supper, 
 which was much the same as dinner. 
 
 When we consider the material conditions of the life of 
 the masters in the Yverdun institute, we can have no doubt 
 either of their devotion to Pestalozzi and his work or of the 
 lofty and disinterested motives which first attracted them 
 to him, and then kept them with him. Their lodging was 
 even more primitive than their living. Some of the oldest 
 of them lived outside the Castle, but the rest had not even 
 a private room, and when they wanted to work alone, were 
 obliged to construct little wooden cabins in the upper, unin- 
 habited storeys of the round towers that crowned the four 
 corners of the old building. 
 
 Pestalozzi' s rooms were on the second floor of the north 
 front. He often invited the masters there to take coffee with 
 him, and not infrequently held receptions in the evening, to 
 which some of the pupils were asked, and where occasionally 
 townspeople or visitors might be seen. His wife did the 
 honours with a pleasing and touching grace. Although still 
 delicate from the hardships she had suffered at Neuhof, she 
 had preserved all her freshness of imagination, as well as 
 a certain poetical feeling, and this made her a most pleasant 
 centre of conversation. 
 
270 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 As for Pestalozzi himself, lie accosted everybody with 
 gentle kindliness. His conversation was animated and 
 clever, full of imagination and originality, but difficult to 
 follow, on account of his pronunciation. But he was never 
 long the same, passing in a moment from frank, open- 
 hearted gaiety to profound and even melancholy meditation. 
 Always absent-minded and preoccupied, he was a prey to 
 a feverish restlessness, and could never sit down for long 
 together ; he used to walk up and down the corridors of the 
 Castle, one hand behind his back, or in the breast of his 
 coat, the other holding the end of his necktie between his 
 teeth. He used to appear every day like this in the middle 
 of the lessons. If the teaching satisfied him, his face would 
 become radiant with pleasure, he would caress the children 
 and say a few pleasant words to them ; but if, on the other 
 hand, he was not satisfied, he would angrily leave the room 
 at once, slamming the door behind him. 
 
 He continued to work with indefatigable zeal at improving 
 his " method," and making new applications of it. Every 
 morning, as early as two o'clock, he called an under-master 
 to his bedside to write from his dictation. But he was 
 rarely satisfied with his own work, and made continual 
 corrections, often starting afresh. 
 
 At this time Pestalozzi had set up a printing press in 
 the Castle, which he kept fairly busy. But the Yverdun 
 publications of 1807-1811 no longer bear in every part the 
 stamp of the simple, original, impulsive genius of the head 
 of the institute ; they were not so much his work, indeed, 
 as that of his collaborators. 
 
 First came a pamphlet, edited by Niederer, with the title : 
 On the Principles and Plan of a Journal Announced in 
 1807 ; then, A Glance at My Views and Educational Efforts, 
 in which the ideas and even the style of Pestalozzi can be 
 easily recognized ; lastly, A Report to Parents and the Public 
 on the Yverdun Institute. This last publication contains a 
 little boasting and many promises ; both in matter and 
 manner it would seem to be merely an expression of 
 Niederer's enthusiasm. 
 
 At the same time the Weekly Journal for the Education 
 of Humanity was commenced. It was published from 1807 
 to 1811, and forms four volumes. It contains articles by 
 Pestalozzi's chief helpers, and very many by Pestalozzi 
 
FIRST YEARS AT YVERDUN. 271 
 
 himself, nearly all retouched, however, by Niederer, who 
 seems to have thought it his duty to make his master's style 
 a little more philosophical. Amongst the latter is the note- 
 worthy discourse pronounced by Pestalozzi, in 1809, at a 
 gathering of the Society of the Eriends of Education, at 
 Lenzburg, but even this has received improvements and 
 considerable additions at the hand of his philosopher-in- 
 chief. 
 
 It was at this time and in the same press that the 
 Exercises on Numbers and Forms, the work of Schmidt, 
 were printed. 
 
 The works of Pestalozzi which were edited by Niederer 
 have a distinct value of their own, and are well worth con- 
 sulting. Their importance results not merely from the 
 ideas furnished by Pestalozzi, but also from those added by 
 Niederer, which are not without a certain interest, and 
 explain in part the discord which was so soon to break 
 out. 
 
 This is not the place to describe these writings and discuss 
 the share taken by each in their compilation ; it would 
 but interrupt our story without giving us any new facts 
 sufficiently well established and sufficiently important to 
 help us in our study of Pestalozzi's thought. We reserve 
 this discussion, therefore, for the appendix. 
 
 But before finishing this chapter we must speak for a 
 moment of the methods of physical training and manual 
 work employed in the institute, and of the various festivals 
 kept by the pupils. That we may not have to return to 
 this subject, we shall not hesitate to anticipate somewhat. 
 
 When the weather was favourable, some hours in the 
 afternoon were given every week to military exercises. The 
 pupils formed a little regiment of their own, to which 
 neither flag, drums, band, nor armoury were wanting ; they 
 soon learned to go through the most complicated manœuvres 
 with wonderful precision. When there was any shooting 
 to be done, the non-commissioned officers had to make the 
 cartridges under the direction of an instructing officer. 
 From time to time they had a sham-fight in some suitable 
 spot a few miles from the town. They used then to start 
 very early in the morning, with a waggon for the provisions 
 and ammunition. Many parents and sight-seers often joined 
 the party, so that it was a great day for the pupils. Some- 
 
272 PESTAL0ZZ1 : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 times there was target-shooting, the prize for which was 
 a ewe with its lamb, and the use of a small shed in the 
 garden. 
 
 Gymnastics, prisoner's-base and other games went on 
 regularly. There was skating as well in the winter ; and 
 in summer, bathing in the lake and mountain excursions. 
 The first day of spring was celebrated every year by a walk 
 on the neighbouring heights ; sometimes, however, a late 
 snow-storm would render this impossible, in which case the 
 children consoled themselves by going the first fine day. 
 
 We know that manual labour had a place in Pestalozzi's 
 scheme ; it was often tried at the institute, but never kept 
 up in a regular manner. The great number and diversity 
 both of the pupils and their occupations proved an insur- 
 mountable obstacle. Gardening met with most success. 
 Sometimes the pupils had a little patch of their own to culti- 
 vate ; sometimes they were told off in twos and threes to 
 work for a few hours, under the direction of the gardener. 
 They did fairly well at bookbinding and cardboard work ; 
 they also made solids for the study of geometry. 
 
 But it was . especially on the occasion of the festivals, of 
 which we have still to speak, that the greatest demands 
 were made on their skill and judgment. 
 
 The end of the year was devoted to making New Year 
 albums to send to the parents, containing drawings, maps, 
 mathematical problems, fragments of history, descriptions of 
 natural objects, and literary compositions. On New Year's 
 day there was a religious service, with a discourse by Pesta- 
 lozzi ; a distribution of presents from the parents ; a grand 
 dinner ; and, in the evening, a torch-light procession through 
 the town (each pupil made his own torch), followed by a ball, 
 to which the girls of the neighbouring institute were invited, 
 together with a certain number of guests from the town. For 
 the next few days very little work was done, everybody being 
 occupied in preparing for Pestalozzi's birthday, the 12th of 
 January. The pupils of each class decorated their room, 
 transforming it into a woodland scene, with cottage, chapel, 
 ruins, and sometimes a fountain, which was so arranged 
 as to play on Pestalozzi's entrance. Fir-branches, ivy, and 
 moss were fetched in large quantities from the neighbouring 
 forests, and transparencies, with emblems and inscriptions, 
 were secretly prepared ; for the decoration of each room was 
 
FIRST YEARS AT Y VERDUN. 273 
 
 to be a surprise, not only to Pestalozzi, but to all the other 
 pupils. Songs were also learnt in Pestalozzi's honour. The 
 leading idea of most of the inscriptions was : " In summer 
 you take us to see Nature ; to-day we are trying to bring 
 Nature to you." Often too, on that day, the pupils gave 
 a dramatic performance, the subject of which was generally 
 chosen from among the great episodes of Swiss history in 
 the middle ages. On these occasions the actors made their 
 own dresses and armour from cardboard and coloured paper. 
 We take the following passages from the journal kept by 
 Mérian, of Basle, who was a pupil of Pestalozzi's from 1806 
 to 1810, and who afterwards became an engineer at Neu- 
 châtel : 
 
 " 12th January, 1808. — Pestalozzi's birthday festival. 
 At the end of the day the richer children made a collection 
 amongst themselves for the poor of the town. Mrs. Pesta- 
 lozzi and Mrs. Kuster took charge of the money, which 
 amounted to about four pounds. 
 
 " 30th September, 1809. — Fortieth anniversary of i Father ' 
 Pestalozzi's marriage. Great rejoicings, discourse by 
 Niederer ; beautiful songs, room decorated with garlands. 
 Grand supper for three hundred people in five rooms. 
 Afterwards dance, opened by Mr. and Mrs. Pestalozzi alone, 
 in the old-fashioned way." l 
 
 It was the custom, on Christmas Eve, to set up a great 
 fir-tree in the room in which the services were held, lighted 
 with candles and loaded with golden nuts, apples, etc. This 
 was the traditional and popular German Christmas-tree, at 
 that time unknown in French-speaking countries, but since 
 then naturalized everywhere. There were also religious 
 discourses and prayers, interspersed with joyful songs, in 
 which the children always took an extreme pleasure. 
 
 Indeed, singing played a great part in Pestalozzi's insti- 
 tute, and was the joy of nearly everybody in the house. 
 There was singing everywhere and always. Two Swiss, 
 Pfeiffer and Nsegeli, had brought Pestalozzi valuable help 
 in this matter by publishing some admirable collections of 
 sweet, simple songs for children, in which Germany, it 
 
 1 Pestalozzi was then sixty-three years old, and his wife seventy. 
 
274 PESTAL0ZZ1: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 must be confessed, is very rick. We were also taught a 
 few French songs, but they were far from satisfying us 
 to the same extent. Thanks, however, to many praiseworthy 
 efforts, France has sensibly improved in this respect. 
 
 We have tried to show what the Yverdun institute was 
 like during the first years of its existence. At that time 
 its fame had spread far and wide, and yet, as we shall now 
 see, it already contained a defect which was destined to 
 result in its ruin. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 DECLINE OF THE INSTITUTE. 
 
 Pestalozzi the first to point it out. Its causes. Pestalozzi asks 
 the Swiss Diet to inspect his institute. Father GiraroVs 
 report. Niederer's controversy with the newspapers that 
 disparage the wor~k. He quarrels with Schmidt. The latter 
 leaves the institute. Pestalozzi 1 s yearly discourses. New 
 helpers. French pupils and masters at Yverdun. Alexander 
 Boniface. Illness of Pestalozzi. The Allies in Sivitzerland. 
 Pestalozzi and the Czar at Basle. The Peace appears to 
 bring new prosperity to the institute. Numerous pupils 
 and visitors. Doctor Bell at Yverdun. Internal troubles 
 at the institute. Schmidt recalled. Death of Mrs. Pestalozzi.^ 
 TJie other masters impatient with Schmidt's spirit of 
 domination. They leave the institute. 
 
 At the end of 1807, when the establishment at Yverdun was 
 at the zenith of its fame and exciting the admiration of 
 scholars and sovereigns ; when it was attracting crowds of 
 pupils, disciples and visitors from every country, and filling 
 everybody connected with it with joy and hope, one man 
 alone was dissatisfied, one man alone saw that it could not 
 endure, that it was doomed, like a plant at whose root there 
 gnaws an undying worm. This man was Pestalozzi himself. 
 
 It was his habit on New Year's day to assemble the 
 whole of his establishment, and, after passing in review the 
 events of the past year, to give expression to his hopes and 
 fears for the future, speaking quite freely all that was in 
 his heart. 
 
 His discourse of the 1st of January, 1808, is full of 
 sadness and discouragement ; he pronounced it by the side 
 of his open coffin, which he had ordered to be brought into 
 the room. It runs as follows : 
 
 " The old year is gone ; the new one is here. I am still 
 in your midst, but feel none of the joy you would expect me 
 
2;6 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 to feel. I seem to see ray hour approaching ; I seem to hear 
 a voice crying above my head : ' Give an account of thy 
 stewardship, for thou must die.' 
 
 " Can I give a satisfactory account ? Have I been a faith- 
 ful steward towards God, towards men, towards myself? 
 
 " I am happy, and the sound of my happiness is in my 
 ears like the noise of bees seeking a home. But I must die, 
 and what does this noise tell me ? That I do not deserve 
 happiness, that I am not happy. The past year has not been 
 a happy one. The ice has broken under me just where I 
 wanted to walk most surely; my life-work has betrayed 
 defects which I had never suspected ; the very bond which 
 unites us has shown itself weak where I thought it strongest. 
 I have seen perdition where I looked for salvation, anger 
 where I looked for peace, coldness where I looked for love. 
 I have seen trust withdrawn at a time when I seemed 
 unable to breathe, to live, without it. . . . There is my 
 coffin. What else is left to me but the hope of the tomb ? 
 My heart is lacerated; I am no longer what I was yesterday; 
 love, trust and hope have forsaken me. Why should I still 
 live ? Why did God preserve me so miraculously from the 
 feet of the horses ? 1 The bandage which blinded me to 
 the truth about my life is torn awa} r . The dream which 
 deceived me as to my value and happiness is gone. What 
 is there left for me to do in a world where I have made 
 nothing but mistakes, where I have ever deceived myself, 
 and where, in an hour, I shall do so again? Yet this present 
 moment, this first hour of the year, should at least put the 
 whole truth clearly and plainly before our eyes. I have 
 made far too much of a happiness I did not deserve. . . . 
 
 "Poor, weak, humble, unworthy, incapable and ignorant, 
 I yet set myself to my work. The world accounted it 
 madness, but God's hand was with me. My work prospered. 
 I found friends who loved both it and me. I knew not what 
 I did, I hardly knew what I wanted. And yet my work 
 prospered. It came from nothing, as the world at its 
 
 1 In December, 1807, as Pestalozzi was walking with Krusi on a very 
 dark night, he was knocked down by some borses, trampled upon, and 
 t brown into a ditch, from which Krnsi drew him out with bis clotbes 
 torn, but without a scratch. Pestalozzi at once returned thanks to God 
 for this rairaoulous escape. 
 
DECLINE OF THE INSTITUTE. 277 
 
 creation. It is God's work. . . . Realize, my friends, 
 that it is God's work. And may God's work nnite ns anew, 
 not as the wicked are united, but as angels with angels. 
 Yon were astonished that I was saved from the horses' feet, 
 but my work has been preserved more marvellously even 
 than my poor body. It is a miracle that I am still alive, 
 but it is a still greater miracle that my work should have 
 escaped the dangers of Burgdorf, Munchenbuchsee, and 
 Yverdun ! 
 
 " New dangers threaten it, which, with God's help, it will 
 surmount. But shall I surmount them? My heart is full 
 of doubt and fear ; I feel that I do not deserve my happi- 
 ness, that it is about to finish. But my work will subsist, 
 for gold is not consumed, but purified, in the fire. . . . 
 
 " But it will not subsist through me. It cannot ; I am 
 not worthy that it should ; for I have been weak in truth 
 and love. . . . Happiness I have had, though never for 
 long. Often have I allowed it to escape, where a child might 
 have held it. . . . What God was doing for me I looked 
 upon as my own work. In my madness I thought that it 
 was I who worked the miracles with which He surrounded 
 me. I accepted praise for what I had not done, and thought 
 myself the author of a work which was not mine. . . . 
 
 "This work was founded by love, but love has disappeared 
 from our midst. It could not indeed stay, for we had not 
 foreseen the demands it would make upon us. The work, 
 too, required patience, and I had none. I was even impatient 
 when I should have been grateful. God, how did I 
 come to this, how did I fall so low ? Let me confess my 
 fault before Thee and these my friends. My blindness has 
 exceeded belief. With miracles Thou didst build up my 
 work, with miracles support it, and yet I fancied that it 
 needed little support. Afterwards, when I came to see how 
 much strength it required, I tried to make others do what I 
 nryself neglected. I inconsiderately insisted upon what 
 I should have humbly prayed for, and tried to maintain the 
 life of my establishment by forces that my faults and weak- 
 nesses had banished from our midst. And so there have 
 been misunderstandings amongst us, and bonds are broken 
 that I thought fast tied for ever, and hearts estranged that 
 I thought indissolubly united. 
 
 " Such is my position. The coffin you see there is my 
 
278 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 only consolation. I can no longer do anything to help. The 
 poison at the heart of our work is spreading, and the praise 
 of the world, which is ours to-day, will but encourage it. 
 
 11 God, grant that our blindness may pass away ! The 
 laurels heaped upon us do but cover a skeleton, for it is 
 only the skeleton of my work which is before us, before my 
 eyes and yours. And I see that the laurels which cover it 
 will be consumed by fire, the irresistible fire of affliction 
 which is coming upon my house. My work will, indeed, 
 subsist, but the consequences of my mistakes will remain. 
 They will crush me ; the tomb is my only refuge. 
 
 "But though I go, you will remain. Would that my 
 words might be burnt into your hearts ! 
 
 "Friends, be better than I was, that God may achieve, 
 through you, the work I have failed to achieve. Do not, by 
 your faults, heap obstacles in your path, as I have done. 
 Be not deceived, as I have been, by the appearance of 
 success. 
 
 "You are called to a great, an utter sacrifice; without it 
 you will not complete my work. 
 
 "Enjoy the present, enjoy the honour which men are 
 heaping upon us, but remember that it will pass like the 
 flower of the fields, which blooms for a moment and is 
 gone. 
 
 " Once more, look at my coffin. Perhaps this very year 
 it will receive my bones or those of a woman who, for my 
 sake, has sacrificed all the happiness of her life. ... I 
 already seem to see these walls hung with black, because 
 this coffin is beneath the ground, because I or my wife, or 
 perhaps both of us, have gone down to the grave. May we 
 rest in peace ! May you shed tears of love and pardon over 
 us, and may God's blessing remain with you. I await my 
 end calmly and hopefully. And yet there is another possi- 
 bility, the mere thought of which fills me with dread : I 
 might live to see my work ruined by my mistakes. This 
 would be a calamity that I should not have strength to 
 endure. I should hang my room with black, and hide myself 
 for ever from the eyes of men, for whose society I should no 
 longer deem myself worthy." 
 
 This discourse is too characteristic for us to be satisfied, 
 like other biographers, with quoting a few isolated pas- 
 
DECLINE OF THE INSTITUTE. 279 
 
 sages. "We have, however, abridged it as far as possible, 
 cutting out everything that was only the repetition or 
 development of ideas already expressed. 
 
 Can this indeed be the head of a great institution speaking 
 to his assistants ? Is it conceivable that now, at the moment 
 of its greatest prosperity, he should feel obliged to speak 
 thus? There is nothing in this extreme openness and 
 humility on Pestalozzi's part to surprise us ; but even allow- 
 ing for this, what reasons could he have had for taking this 
 view of the position of his institute and of its future ? "We 
 must endeavour to make his reasons clear. 
 
 In the first place, Pestalozzi at that time felt instinctively, 
 though perhaps vaguely, that his work, so far as its realiza- 
 tion in an educational institution was concerned, was an 
 impossibility. He explains this at the end of his life in the 
 book entitled, My Experiences, where he says : " I was 
 already lost at Burgdorf by my attempt to do what was 
 utterly foolish and absurd." Indeed, when we remember 
 that his plan in teaching was to follow from the earliest 
 childhood an order entirely different from that followed 
 elsewhere, an order, that is, which should be natural and 
 unbroken ; and when we remember, further, that he intended 
 that the power acquired by the child in its first exercises 
 should enable it to surmount subsequent difficulties by its 
 own efforts, we can hardly understand that he should have 
 thought it possible to pursue such a course in an establish- 
 ment which received children from every country and of 
 every age. It often happened, for instance, that big boys 
 arrived at the institute who could not be placed in the 
 elementary classes with the little children, and who yet were 
 not sufficiently prepared for the higher classes. Some com- 
 promise therefore was necessary, the result of which was 
 generally disastrous, not only to the method, but also to the 
 instruction of the pupils. 
 
 In the next place, Pestalozzi based morality and discipline 
 on the relations of the family life ; he wanted to be a father 
 to his children. This beautiful and touching fiction of 
 paternity, which had been a living and healthful reality in his 
 first experiments, could no longer be maintained in an institu- 
 tion which, from the number of its pap ils and their many 
 differences of language, culture, habits, and antecedents, was 
 almost a world. It failed at Yverdun, in spite of heroic 
 
2So PESTALOZZI; HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 efforts. In vain did he divide the pupils amongst his assist- 
 ants, and ask them, as far as possible, to take his place, and 
 keep him informed of their needs and progress ; in vain did 
 he send for them in turn to his study for friendly talks, and 
 employ caresses and exhortations when he met them. They 
 still called him " Father Pestalozzi," it is true, but he no 
 longer knew them as a father should know his children. And 
 thus the discipline of affection slowly disappeared, without 
 being replaced by the more or less military discipline of the 
 school, and the home-life at Yverdun soon developed into a 
 sort of ill-regulated public life. 
 
 We have seen that Pestalozzi especially complains that 
 love and concord no longer exist in the institute ; that was, 
 indeed, the chief evil and the real cause of its ruin. But he 
 blames himself for it, attributing it to his impatience and 
 exacting demands. In this, however, he is doing himself a 
 flagrant injustice and with a magnanimit}'- which should 
 have touched those who were really in fault. Niederer and 
 Schmidt were two powerful aids, both very valuable to him, 
 and in a measure necessary for the execution of his projects. 
 But neither of these two men could identify himself with 
 him as his earlier helpers had done, with perfect simplicity 
 and self -for get fulness. 
 
 Niederer had grasped the master's thought by its philo- 
 sophical and speculative side, and had formulated it in a way 
 which, without entirely satisfying Pestalozzi, yet seemed 
 useful for spreading it abroad, and making it attractive to 
 scholars. It was in the direction of this philosophical idea, 
 as he himself had conceived it, that Niederer was always 
 encouraging Pestalozzi, opposing everything that «seemed to 
 him a deviation from the principle. But Niederer had no 
 talent for practical questions of administration and discipline, 
 and in this respect was of little help to Pestalozzi. 
 
 Schmidt, on the contrary, saw nothing more in the master's 
 system than an excellent method for teaching mathematics, 
 to which he had applied it with a success which aroused 
 the admiration of the visitors, and contributed more than 
 anything else to the reputation of the institute. In addi- 
 tion to this, in matters of discipline and administration, his 
 strong common-sense and iron will made up for what Pesta- 
 lozzi lacked. He was pre-eminently practical, and this was 
 what attracted Pestalozzi to him. He cared little for prin- 
 
DECLINE OF THE INSTITUTE. 281 
 
 ciples when it was a question of maintaining or extending 
 the reputation and material prosperity of the institute. 
 
 It is clear that these two men exercised a contradictory 
 influence on Pestalozzi; each wished to lead him his own 
 way. They could neither understand nor respect each other. 
 Their antagonism had broken up the harmony of this great 
 family, and hence Pestalozzi had been able to exclaim so 
 sorrowfully, " Love has disappeared from our midst." 
 
 Such were the defects that Pestalozzi had discovered in his 
 institute at the beginning of 1808. For more than fifteen 
 years he struggled to remedy them, and not indeed without 
 occasional and momentary successes ; but at last, after many 
 changes of fortune, he was obliged to succumb, and thus 
 suffered the very misfortune he had so much dreaded, the 
 misfortune of outliving all his enterprises. 
 
 We have still to relate the different phases of this sad 
 period of decadence. In view of the inevitable end, the 
 story would have but little interest if we had not always 
 with us Pestalozzi's unfailing courage and genius ; for, 
 although the old man became more and more incapable in the 
 ordinary matters of life, although he ended by submitting 
 blindly to the will of others and making mistake after 
 mistake, he yet preserved to the very last both his ardent 
 love for the poor and weak ones of this world, and the 
 powerful originality of a mind always occupied with the 
 educational reform which had been the one aim of his life. 
 In following Pestalozzi's thought from this point, we shall 
 find valuable help in the discourses he was in the habit of 
 pronouncing before the whole school at such times as Christ- 
 mas and the New Year, or on his birthday. These discourses 
 were the outpourings of his heart, in which all his fears and 
 hopes, sorrows and joys, thoughts and feelings, were laid 
 absolutely bare. They are full, too, of his religious faith, 
 his love for men, his ardent desire to raise the people, and 
 the educational views by which he sought to reach his end. 
 Most of the discourses have been published at different 
 times. They are all to be found in Seyffarth, volume xiii. 
 
 Pestalozzi's discourse of the 1st of January, 1808, had 
 painfully surprised all the masters, but they were not at all 
 convinced that the evil which he so bemoaned really existed. 
 They all endeavoured to reassure the old man by pointing to 
 the prosperity and increasing renown of the institute ; and, 
 20 
 
282 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 this year particularly, the admiration of visitors and the 
 number of enthusiastic reports that were published on all 
 sides, seemed to lend colour to their arguments. And so 
 Pestalozzi took heart again, and, for a moment, his old 
 illusions revived. But his confidence was of short duration, 
 and in spite of all his assistants could urge to the contrary, 
 the feeling that the institute was in danger was soon stronger 
 in him than ever. At last, to finally dispel his fears, the 
 masters proposed that he should ask the Helvetian Diet to 
 make an official inspection of the institute, and to this the 
 old man consented. 1 
 
 Pestalozzi's request reached the Diet at Freiburg, in June, 
 1809, and shortly afterwards a Commission was duly ap- 
 pointed to inspect the institute, composed of Abel Mérian, 
 member of the Petty Council at Basle ; Trechsel, professor 
 of mathematics at Berne ; and Father Girard, of Freiburg. 
 
 The commissioners arrived at the Castle in November, 
 1809, and spent five days there, interrogating masters and 
 pupils, and examining everything with the greatest care. 
 
 It is curious to see how Father Girard speaks of this 
 inspection in the book he published thirty-seven years after- 
 wards, entitled : On the Systematic Teaching of the Mother- 
 tongue. 2 
 
 11 To cultivate the minds of the young was my intention as 
 it was my duty, but I did not, as yet, understand how useful 
 the mother-tongue might be made in this respect. It was 
 only on the occasion of an official visit paid to Pestalozzi's 
 institute at Yverdun that, by talking with my two worthy 
 colleagues, and by very carefully considering the officiai 
 report which I had been charged to draw up, the darkness 
 in which I had been groping was suddenly dispelled. On a 
 previous visit, I had remarked to my old friend Pestalozzi 
 that mathematics seemed to me to play far too important a 
 part in his school, and that I was afraid the general educa- 
 tion of his children would suffer from it. Whereupon he 
 answered with characteristic heat: 'The fact is, I do not 
 
 1 Schmidt alone was opposed to this inspection, feeling that the system 
 of studies in the institute was not yet, as a whole, in a satisfactory con- 
 dition. 
 
 ' Published at Paris in 18i6, and crowned by the French Academy. 
 
DECLINE OF THE INSTITUTE. 283 
 
 wish my children to know anything which cannot be proved 
 to them as clearly as that two and two make four.' ' In that 
 case,' I said, ' if I had thirty sons, I would not entrust you 
 with one of them ; for it would be impossible for you to 
 show him as clearly as that two and two are four that I am 
 his father, and that it is his duty to obey me.' This brought 
 about a retraction of the exaggeration into which he had 
 been betrayed, — not an unusual thing with this impulsive 
 genius, — and we soon arrived at an understanding. 
 
 "However, so great was the attention given to mathe- 
 matics in his institute, that the mother-tongue was com- 
 paratively neglected, and suffered considerably in consequence. 
 My colleagues and myself were also struck by another 
 anomaly. We found that the children had indeed reached 
 a high pitch of excellence in abstract mathematics, but that 
 in all ordinary practical calculations they were inconceivably 
 feeble." 
 
 This last criticism contains a manifest error on Father 
 Grirard's part, which, considering his high position, would 
 certainly be most astonishing, if we did not know how hard 
 it is to place ourselves suddenly at a point of view totally 
 different from that to which we have been long accustomed. 
 Abstract calculations were precisely what Pestalozzi would 
 have nothing to do with ; he accustomed his children to 
 concrete numbers from the very first, and all the ordinary 
 problems of practical life they solved with ease. They 
 worked them, however, in their heads, and did not learn till 
 later the use of written figures, in which they therefore 
 remained weak and unpractised for a long time. But it is 
 just the conventional methods necessitated by our arbitrary 
 written system that constitute an abstract calculation, and 
 yet it is these very methods that Father Girard calls the 
 " ordinary practical calculations " in which he found the chil- 
 dren so " inconceivably feeble." 
 
 The examination being over, the masters of the institute 
 and the commissioners separated, not very satined with each 
 other. At Yverdun it was felt that the report would be 
 unfavourable. Pestalozzi had expected it, but Niederer and 
 those who shared his illusion were surprised and irritated 
 by it; they thought themselves misjudged. It had been 
 settled that written documents should be sent to the com- 
 
284 PESTAL0ZZ1 : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 missioners for the purpose of making their information still 
 more complete, and a very lengthy correspondence now 
 ensued between Niederer and Abel Mérian, the president of 
 the Commission, and Father Girard, who was to draw up 
 the report. Niederer said that the commissioners had not 
 grasped the spirit of the institution ; that they had only seen 
 the changing outward form, and not the unchanging essence ; 
 to which the commissioners made answer that their instruc- 
 tions had charged them to examine facts and not ideas. 
 
 In a letter of the 31st of January, 1810, Father Girard 
 writes to Abel Mérian that he is surprised at not having yet 
 received the documents which were to have been sent from 
 Yverdun, and adds : 
 
 " My opinion is that the institute was not worth all the 
 attention that has been bestowed upon it. Now that I have 
 considered it from every point of view, I am inclined to 
 think it far inferior to the cantonal school of Aarau, and the 
 Institute of St. Gallen, to say nothing of older institutions. It 
 is inconceivable that it should have obtained such celebrity 
 and favour." 
 
 Some time afterwards Pestalozzi himself expressed his 
 opinion of the work of the Commission as follows : 
 
 "The commissioners were alarmed at the very outset by 
 seeing how entirely we neglected the teaching of certain 
 common subjects which are treated with the utmost care in 
 the smallest schools, and that being so, they had neither 
 faith nor courage to go deeper into the matter, and much of 
 the good escaped them altogether. 
 
 " Their report did our work much harm, and placed it 
 much lower than it deserved." 
 
 But if Pestalozzi thought the commission had not seen all 
 the good, Father Girard thought it had not seen all the 
 bad ; for even as early as the 9th of December, 1809, he 
 had written : " Besides, many things were concealed from 
 us." 
 
 The report of Father Girard appeared in French in Sep- 
 tember, 1810, and the German translation by Bernard Hiiber 
 in October. It was drawn up with great moderation and 
 with great consideration for Pestalozzi, who could certainly 
 
DECLINE OF THE INSTITUTE. 285 
 
 not have wished for a more worthy judge. Girard, how- 
 ever, pointed out serions gaps in the instruction given at the 
 institute. He praised the discipline, but declared that the 
 religious teaching was insufficient, and blamed Niederer, in 
 whose hands it had been left, for the methods he had 
 adopted. He found fault with him, for instance, for begin- 
 ning his lessons with a sort of natural religion, for then 
 passing on to the Old Testament, and for only touching 
 upon the New in his preparation of pupils for the Holy 
 Communion, at the special request of parents. 
 
 We are, however, in a position to affirm from our own 
 experience that such was not Niederer's habitual plan. In- 
 deed, at the very time of the inspection, we were following 
 his lessons on religion in a class of children of from eight to 
 nine years of age, where we began by reading the Gospel 
 according to St. Matthew, learning by heart a portion of the 
 Sermon on the Mount. But, as we have already said, none 
 of the teaching at the institute of Yverdun was very regular 
 or connected, except perhaps in mathematics, in which there 
 was not much alteration. 
 
 The report of Father Girard terminated thus : 
 
 " The teaching given at Pestalozzi's institute is not in 
 harmony with that of the various establishments of public 
 instruction, nor has the institute sought to establish that 
 harmony. Resolved, at any price, to seek the development of 
 the faculties of the child according to the principles of Pes- 
 talozzi, it has thought only of its own views, and betrays a 
 burning zeal to open up new paths, even should they be in 
 opposition to those established by usage. Perhaps it was the 
 only way of arriving at useful discoveries, but it has made 
 all harmony with public establishments impossible. The 
 institute goes its own way, and public establishments go 
 theirs, and. it is not probable that their views will soon coin- 
 cide. It is a sad pity that the force of events should always 
 drive Pestalozzi from the path laid down for him by his 
 zeal and goodness. But justice will always be done to his 
 good intentions, his noble efforts, and his unconquerable 
 perseverance. Let us take advantage of the excellent ideas 
 which form the basis of his work, and follow the instructive 
 examples it offers us, but let us, at the same time, pity the 
 lot of a man whom the force of circumstances has always 
 
286 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 prevented from carrying out what it was his purpose to 
 do." 
 
 This report was presented to the Diet, which, on assem- 
 bling at Soleure in 1811, merely voted thanks to Pestalozzi, 
 and then let the matter drop. 
 
 For some years previously, however, the work of Pestalozzi 
 had been exposed to rather severe attacks in several publica- 
 tions in Switzerland and Germany. Every reform which calls 
 for strenuous efforts and, as it were, mental renovation, always 
 finds adversaries amongst men whose reputation is already 
 made, and who believe that there is nothing to change in 
 their theories or their practice. This is especially the case 
 in matters of education. It was alleged against Pestalozzi, 
 sometimes that his ideas were not new, sometimes that they 
 were inapplicable ; even the real defects of his institute were 
 not pointed out without a certain amount of spiteful exag- 
 geration. 
 
 The report of Father Girard spread joy in the camp of the 
 adversaries by supplying them with new arms ; their attacks 
 became sharper, more animated, more unjust than ever, 
 especially in a Gottingen paper, in which Professor Heller 
 described the institute of Yverdun as a nest of revolution- 
 aries, and in the Zurich Popular Gazette, in which an eccle- 
 siastic, named Brémi, attacked Pestalozzi's work in an article 
 entitled : Three Dozen Questions. 
 
 The old man, deeply hurt by this last blow, said in an 
 answer to Brémi : 
 
 " It distresses me, I confess, to see my establishment and 
 my friends calumniated in my native town more than in any 
 other place. I am pained that it should be within its walls 
 that the very things that are most captious and most danger- 
 ous to me and my work should be written, and that people 
 should print the most bitter attack of all, and the one 
 most calculated to ruin my establishment and my under- 
 taking." 
 
 From this time an angry, bitter, and interminable polemic 
 was carried on between the institute and its traducers. It 
 was generally Niederer who answered the attacks, though 
 often in Pestalozzi's name. This paper war was thence- 
 forth the great preoccupation of the inhabitants of the Castle, 
 
DECLINE OF THE INSTITUTE. 287 
 
 who worked harder to restore the reputation of the insti- 
 tute without than to deserve it within. 
 
 There was certainly room for many improvements, but none 
 were attempted. However, as we have seen, the first cause 
 of the evil was in the very nature of things. Pestalozzi's 
 method had nothing whatever in common with the teaching 
 of the ordinary public establishments. This absence of any 
 harmony between the instruction given at the institute and 
 that of the public schools had already struck the examiners ; 
 such harmony could only have been restored by modifying 
 the method itself, but this neither Pestalozzi nor his fellow- 
 workers were at all inclined to do. 
 
 Schmidt alone would have been disposed to do so, because 
 he set more price on the success of the institute than on 
 maintaining the spirit in which it had been founded. This 
 divergence of views added intestine war to that which the 
 institute was carrying on against its outside foes, and the old 
 antagonism between Niederer and Schmidt broke out again 
 more violently than ever. 
 
 Before the publication of Father Girard's report, and in 
 anticipation of what it would be, Schmidt, at a general meet- 
 ing of the masters, had already asked for certain reforms, 
 which, however, had been refused. Now, as it seemed im- 
 possible to come to an understanding, and as Niederer's 
 opinion again prevailed, Schmidt was obliged to leave the 
 institute. He did so in July, 1810, with some of his adherents. 
 It was on this occasion that Pestalozzi exclaimed : 
 
 " If I were but twenty years younger, I would leave too, 
 and go and find something that I could do, and set to work 
 to do it ; but I have made too many fresh beginnings already 
 to have any strength left for more ! " 
 
 The Chancellor von Beyme, who about this time was sent 
 to visit the establishment at Yverdun by the King of Prussia, 
 said on taking his leave : 
 
 "If I were to hear to-morrow that the institute was 
 closed, I should really be less astonished than if it were to 
 last another year." 
 
 Such was the state of Pestalozzi's establishment in 1810, 
 and yet pupils and visitors continued to arrive, and new 
 
288 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 masters, amongst whom were a few remarkably able men, 
 came and gave lessons. At the same time the teaching was 
 extended to several subjects which were either quite new or 
 had been comparatively neglected, such as chemistry, Latin, 
 and Greek. 
 
 We must now return to Pestalozzi's discourses, which tell 
 us from year to year of the state of his feelings and the 
 progress of his thought. On the 1st of January, 1809, his 
 mind is at peace again. He thanks God who has come to 
 his rescue and saved his work from the dangers which had 
 beset it, and humbly acknowledges that the favour was more 
 than he deserved. Then, after thanking God, he thanks his 
 fellow-workers for their share in this good result, and con- 
 tinues thus : 
 
 " Almighty Father, who leadest us, complete the miracles 
 of Thy grace towards me ! Keep my friends true to me till 
 my dying day. Preserve the bond which joins us until the 
 work with which Thou hast filled my heart, and which, till 
 now, Thy grace has preserved, be accomplished. God, my 
 Creator, let me preserve the only strength Thou hast given 
 me — the power of love ! Let me not forget for a single mo- 
 ment all that I owe Thee, and all that I owe to the friends 
 around me. Renew my love for Thee. Renew my love for 
 these children in whom I place my hopes, and in whom I 
 shall find the consolation of my life, which can have no other 
 value than that which is given by them. 
 
 " I now turn to you, boys and girls, my own dear children. 
 What shall I say to you out of the fulness of my heart 
 at this solemn hour, this beginning of a new }^ear ? I would 
 fain press you all to my heart with tears of joy, whilst 
 giving praises to our Father in heaven for permitting me to 
 be a father to you. I would fain fall upon my knees and say 
 to my Father in heaven : Lord, behold me, with the children 
 Thou hast given me. Forgive me, for I am far from being 
 what I ought to have been for these dear chilren ; forgive 
 me, for I have not been their father as I ought to have been. 
 I would fain fall upon my knees and say to Him : Lord, the 
 burden Thou hast cast upon my shoulders is too heavy for 
 me ; Thou who hast given it to me, help me to bear it, and 
 give us, whom Thou hast called to watch over these children, 
 Thy Holy Spirit, Thy Spirit of love and wisdom, the Spirit 
 
DECLINE OF THE INSTITUTE. 289 
 
 of Jesus Christ, so that, fortified by Thy strength, we may 
 holily complete the work which Thou hast given us to per- 
 form, and by our love, and faith in Thy love, lead our chil- 
 dren to be indeed Thine own. . . . 
 
 "We simplify the means of the development of the facul- 
 ties, and we stimulate this development with nothing but 
 the holy force of love. My children, let this love increase 
 and take root in you ; that is all we ask. 
 
 " Teaching in itself does not produce love any more than 
 it produces hatred. And thus the centre and essential 
 principle of education is not teaching but love, which alone 
 is an eternal emanation of the divinity within us." 
 
 The discourse of the 1st of January, 1810, is an urgent 
 appeal for the revival of a life of faith, love, concord, self- 
 sacrifice, and effort. 
 
 The examination of the Federal Commission had just taken 
 place, and Pestalozzi, although believing his institute 
 wrongly judged, appears to feel that it is susceptible of 
 improvement. He is anxious that this improvement shall 
 begin with the new year, and last throughout its whole 
 course. He begs that there may be an end to illusions, 
 vanity, weakness, and negligence. He first addresses his 
 pupils according to their ages, then the young men who 
 are studying his method for the purpose of introducing it 
 into their own country, and then his old collaborators and 
 friends ; finally he examines himself, and reviews his past 
 life, thanking God for all he has received from Him in spite 
 of his unworthiness, and asking for help to become better 
 than he has hitherto been. 
 
 We are sorry that this discourse is too long to be given 
 in full. A few quotations, however, will serve to show the 
 spirit which animated Pestalozzi at this time, though our 
 translation may rob his words of much of their force and 
 touching originality: 
 
 " Little children, whom we love as Jacob loved Joseph 
 and Benjamin, what are we to wish you for this new year? 
 A life of innocence and love. Be then always joyful ! En- 
 joy the beauties of Nature ! When the beautiful butterfly 
 flutters over your heads, when the caterpillar crawls at your 
 feet, when the stone glitters before your eyes, when the 
 
2ço PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 flower expands in your sight, make them your own, and 
 treasure them, and be happy that God has made Nature 
 so lovely, and that you are capable of understanding and 
 enjoying it. But then think of your fathers and mothers, 
 who, in their love for you, have given you liberty, the better 
 to secure your happiness. Think of }'our fathers and 
 mothers, who often perhaps shed a silent tear because you 
 are no longer near them, because they can no longer em- 
 brace you every day. I would that tears should sometimes 
 fill your own eyes because you are no longer able to see 
 them at all times. To-day, with tears in your eyes and 
 with hearts full of love and gratitude, wish them a happy 
 year, and pray to your Father in heaven, who is also their 
 Father, that He will bless them, and by making you pious 
 and good, bring them consolation and happiness. . . . 
 
 " I now address you, young men, who are already masters 
 and fellow-workers with us. What should this new year 
 bring you ? Be as simple as little children, and walk ever 
 in the way of love and truth. May you increase in strength, 
 virtue, and dignity ; may you be united to help on the work 
 which has formed you ! Turn your eyes with faith to Him 
 who begins and ends all that is good on earth. May you 
 recognize the magnitude of the work with awe, and may your 
 hearts be far from pride, foolish presumption, or the puerile 
 thought that 3-ou have already climbed mountains ! Oh, 
 no, no ! we are all still at the foot of the mountain ; we are 
 far, very far, from the summit we are anxious to reach. I 
 shall not see it : the cold tomb will have covered me long 
 before we are near. When I close my eyes, my last word 
 to you will be : Do not deceive yourselves as to the height 
 of the mountains you have to climb. They are higher, much 
 higher, than they appear. When you have climbed one, j t ou 
 will bat find yourselves at the foot of the next, and should 
 you have mistaken the way and wish to stop and rest your- 
 selves on the first height, your feet will become weak, and 
 you will never see, any more than I have done, the true 
 summit of the mountain. . . . 
 
 " And you, my friends, who helped me to lay the first 
 foundations of this institute, and have supported with 
 patience and love these troubled times — friends without 
 whom my work would never have existed — what shall I say 
 to you ? What is this work ? Is it really our work? No, 
 
DECLINE OF THE INSTITUTE. 291 
 
 no ! Often, indeed, our fears vanished, though we saw a 
 sword hanging over our heads. But often, too, our expecta- 
 tions have been deceived, and our hopes destroyed. As- a 
 rivulet which rushes from the mountain, our work owes its 
 direction to its own weight ; nor could we, who were stationed 
 at its source, foresee whither it would flow. As the rivulet 
 increased, it received tributaries of which we knew nothing, 
 and which, by their united force, carried away the waters 
 of our rivulet with their own. And so our work is controlled 
 by a higher power, a power which is of God, and which has 
 helped us far beyond our expectations, and far beyond our 
 deserts. . . . Every one calls it our work, but it is the 
 work of God. Even this year again it requires, as it were, 
 a new creation. . . . We are in danger, we are in great 
 danger ; but we believe in Him who has so often rescued 
 the work that was in danger in our hands, we believe in 
 Him who has so often led His river through rocks which 
 were impeding its progress. This year again He will cause 
 it to flow on towards its destination. . . . 
 
 " Friends, brothers, children ! my soul overflows with 
 joy. The Lord has worked great things in me. May I be 
 more worthy of His goodness ! May I, in spite of my weak- 
 ness, be a father to you ! I both can and will, so far, that is, 
 as a man can be the father of his fellow-creatures. But 
 God is the Father of us all. May He keep us all in His 
 truth and His love, and pour out upon us during this year 
 His most precious blessings ! Amen ! " 
 
 The Christmas discourse of 1810 speaks first of the great 
 joy that all men should feel in thinking of Jesus Christ, 
 made man for our redemption, and of ourselves, pardoned, 
 sanctified, united through love, in communion with God 
 and the Saviour for eternity. It is a joy which is celestial 
 and Divine, which surpasses all other joys on earth, and 
 which is for all men and for all times. But to partake of 
 this joy our hearts must be full of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, 
 and our hands full of good gifts for men. After having 
 developed these ideas, he applies them to the work of his 
 institution as follows : 
 
 " If we wish this Christmas-day to be a festival for our 
 hearts, let us make sure that love is in our midst! But 
 
292 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 love cannot exist apart from the strength and Holy Spirit 
 of Jesus Christ. Brothers and friends ! if we are without 
 that strength and that Spirit, our house is built upon the 
 sand. . . . Association between men does but corrupt 
 instead of exalting them, if they are not made one by the 
 strength and Spirit of Jesus Christ. . . . 
 
 " To-day we can no longer expect any happiness save that 
 which results from our own virtue ; our virtue alone can 
 maintain our association and lead it on in the right direc- 
 tion. Friends, you are almost without a leader. My strength 
 is spent ; I can no longer set the example of what each and 
 all of us must do daily, and your task is heavy. . . . May 
 this holy day bring us a renewal of strength in the service 
 of our work. Brothers and friends, let us rejoice at the 
 coming of Jesus Christ, and let us rejoice also at our holy 
 association in a common work. May our joy be the pure 
 effect of our faith in Jesus Christ and our love for Him. . . . 
 
 " Brothers and friends ! I am the weakest among you ; 
 but I am prepared for every sacrifice to save the holy cause 
 which is our common aim. Be ye so likewise. It is not a 
 small matter to put your hand to the education of men, and 
 to say to the world : ' Here we are, anxious and able to 
 improve the education of mankind. . . .' The world has 
 given us its confidence ; it covered us with laurels when 
 we had barely begun to look for the means of changing our 
 great dream into a reality. I was deceived myself ; I 
 thought that the road leading to my end was much shorter 
 than it really is. The praise we received, the success of some 
 few isolated experiments, strengthened our error, and had 
 a bad influence on our association and our work. The light 
 and superficial spirit of the day lauded us too much, and 
 made praise of us too much a matter of fashion. But now 
 the disease which has betrayed itself in our work has changed 
 the nature of men's judgments ; blame has commenced, and 
 I foresee that the same light and superficial spirit will also 
 make fault-finding a matter of fashion. However, it is well 
 for us that this hour is come ; it is better for us than the 
 hour of vain glory." 
 
 The discourse of the 1st of January, 1811, is remarkable 
 from the fact that Pestai ozzi addresses himself personally 
 to Niederer and Krusi, and even to Schmidt, who is no 
 
DECLINE OF THE INSTITUTE. 293 
 
 longer there. He begins by a religious statement, of which 
 the substance is : Life passes like years, years like the hours 
 of the day : everything changes, everything is destroyed. 
 God, and man created in His image, alone remain eternal. 
 
 Man is only man, however, and only immortal by virtue 
 of the Divine which is in him : the love of God and of his 
 fellow-men. When man lives for this Divine inward essence, 
 when all his faculties and sentiments are quickened by the 
 love of God, then he sees time and years pass by as a part 
 of eternity, for he is already in possession of life eternal. 
 After having developed these ideas, Pestalozzi first applies 
 them to his institute, and then to the work which is being 
 accomplished there, and to all the persons who are taking 
 part in it. He exhorts every one to work in the love of God 
 and of men, not for what passes with the world, but for the 
 Divine and unchangeable part of us which remains eternally. 
 
 The following passages from his speech will show the 
 relations which then existed between him and his fellow- 
 labourers : 
 
 " You, Niederer, the first of my sons, what shall I say 
 to you ? What shall I wish for you ? How shall I thank 
 you*? You fathom the lowest depths of truth ; you walk 
 in its labyrinths as in beaten tracks. Love guides your 
 steps, and, full of courage, you throw down the glove to 
 those who abandon the path of truth, who seek only appear- 
 ances, and make imposture their god. Friend, you are my 
 support ; my work rests upon your heart ; the light of your 
 eyes is my salvation, although at times my weakness shrinks 
 from it. Be, Niederer, the guiding star of my house ! May 
 peace dwell in your soul and contentment in your mind ! 
 And so the fulness of your mind and heart will exercise a 
 powerful and blessed influence on the work of my weakness. 
 
 " Krusi ! May your goodness spread continually ! It was 
 you who founded the spirit of the establishment at the holy 
 hour of its first beginnings, and you founded it on holiness 
 and love. In the midst of children you have always your- 
 self been as a child. By your side, under the influence of 
 your power and love, the children of our institute, even in 
 the first days of their arrival, miss neither father nor mother. 
 You have satisfactorily answered the question : Can the 
 teacher supply the place of father and mother ? . . . 
 
294 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 11 You have laboured with Niederer as with a brother ; 
 you have had but one heart; each day strengthened the 
 union between yon. Promise me, with hand in hand, to 
 remain united ! You are the first and oldest of my helpers, 
 the only ones that have remained faithful. I do not always 
 agree with you in everything, but my soul is attached to 
 you ; without your united strength to support it, my estab- 
 lishment would no longer be the same, and its ruin would 
 be speedy. . . . 
 
 " Dear friends ! you have all been my consolation in my 
 days of sadness. When I lost the heart of the man whom 
 my soul loved as a father loves the soul of his child, when 
 I was afflicted as with the loss of my right hand, when I 
 thought I had no more strength for the work of my life, then 
 you showed me that you believed in me, and you strengthened 
 my belief in myself. I now thank you, for it is owing to 
 many of you that I was enabled to surmount that hour of 
 weakness. . . . 
 
 " And I owe you gratitude, too, Schmidt, as does also my 
 work. Fellow-workers, a large part of his marvellous power 
 has passed into your hands, and it is you who continue to 
 support the institute. Schmidt ! my gratitude and love 
 must never lessen. You have done me much good. My 
 trust in your strength made me well-nigh forget the estab- 
 lishment, myself, and my one sacred aim. Now I shall no 
 longer forget either house, self, or aim ; but neither shall I 
 forget you. You have done me good by your love, which 
 made me happy, and by your departure, which made me sad. 
 Schmidt, the least that I owe you is to respect your views, 
 and gratefully endeavour to carry them out. They are in 
 so many points similar to mine ! How can I help respecting 
 them ? How can I turn aside from them ? No, I will be 
 true toy ou as to myself. No one understands you better 
 than I, no one will do you more justice. May God grant 
 you days of peaceful maturity, love and consideration for 
 the lowly, and faith in God, whose strength is made mani- 
 fest in the weak. It seems as though I must go in search 
 of you, crying aloud to you to say where you are, so great 
 is my longing to-day to see you as one of my own. 
 
 " Blessed hour ! raise us above all that is terrestrial, all 
 that is transitory! Father in heaven! lift us in every 
 circumstance of our lives to that which is eternal and 
 
DECLINE OF THE INSTITUTE. 295 
 
 unchangeable, which we find but in Thee alone, and which 
 we cannot reach save by living in Thee." 
 
 Thus Pestalozzi began the year 1811, which was still 
 further to increase the apparent external prosperity of the 
 institute, but without retarding the progress of its internal 
 decay. 
 
 Polemics occupied most of the time and strength of 
 Niederer ; in answer to certain violent attacks, he had just 
 published a pamphlet, entitled, PestalozzVs Educational 
 Establishment Considered in its Relations to the Needs of 
 our Time. Pestalozzi refers to this pamphlet in a letter to 
 Knusert, of the canton of Appenzell, who had been one of his 
 pupils in 1801, one of his assistant masters in 1805, and who 
 in 1807 had entered the French army as lieutenant, and was 
 now, after serving in the Spanish war, at Barcelona. The 
 letter is as follows : 
 
 " Yverdun, April, 1811. 
 " My dear Switzer ! 
 
 " When you return, you will find many changes. The 
 principal work continues to progress in a most satisfactory 
 manner, but, like you in Spain, we have guerillas about us 
 who are ever on the look out to strike us on our weak side. 
 Some even slip in under our roof, and will eat and drink 
 with us so long as we ask them to stay. There are also 
 mighty lords of the Junta, who have not been satisfied merely 
 to spy out our weaknesses, but who have taken their part 
 in the firing at us. Fortunately, many of our enemies are 
 bad marksmen ; but their shooting, though wide of the mark, 
 makes a great noise. Most of these shots are directed 
 against the general of our engineers, your countryman ; not 
 he of Gais, but he of Wollhalden. 1 But the general is a 
 deuce of a fellow, who, whilst the enemy are firing at him 
 from all sides, continues to cast cannon of the heaviest 
 calibre, with gun-carriages that, like the tower of Babel, 
 reach nearly to the skies. You will think I am speaking a 
 strange language ; but our circumstances are so peculiar that, 
 as schoolmasters, we cannot express all we feel any more 
 than you, in your position, can always say what you would. 
 
 1 i.e., not Krusi, but Niederer. 
 
296 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 " I am very well in health, thank God ; and yet my strength 
 is failing me. The good old times are gone by. I have an 
 inexpressible longing for rest, even though it should be in 
 the grave. 
 
 " Take care of yourself, my dear Knusert, and let us hear 
 from you soon. 
 
 " Your friend, Pestalozzi." 
 
 Since the installation of the institute at Yverdun there 
 had been numerous and important changes in the teaching 
 body. 
 
 Pestalozzi had lost many of the best of his former helpers : 
 Tobler, Buss, Knusert, then Steiner, Murait, Mieg, and Hoff- 
 mann. Most of these left him to make the principles of his 
 method more widely known. Later on Schmidt had left, 
 harbouring a bitter feeling of resentment against his 
 colleagues, who would neither adopt his ideas, nor submit 
 to his overbearing manner; on leaving, he had gone to 
 Vienna, where he published a pamphlet against the institute, 
 calling it " a disgrace to humanity." The establishment 
 had also lost several other masters of less note. 
 
 Those who had left had been gradually replaced by a 
 much larger number of teachers, many of whom were men 
 of far higher attainments than their predecessors. Amongst 
 the most distinguished were : 
 
 Ramsauer, whom we know already, and who had become 
 an excellent master in arithmetic, elementary geometry, and 
 especially drawing. 
 
 Gôldi, from canton Saint Gallen, who, first a pupil of Pesta- 
 lozzi, then an assistant-master, was zealous and earnest in 
 his work, and taught mathematics with clearness and 
 success ; he had quite mastered the spirit of the method, 
 and never gave it up. Later on, he became professor of 
 mathematics and physics at the College of Saint Gallen ; he 
 also published a treatise on geometry. 
 
 Weilenmann, of Eglisau, canton Zurich, was a tall, strong 
 man, but had lost one arm. He took charge of the ele- 
 mentary class, which was very numerous ; and with his one 
 hand, which often shook with fatigue, he set copies, ruled 
 copy-books, and made and mended pens for all the children. 
 He was everywhere and always with his pupils, not only in 
 their games and walks, but in the dormitories, where he 
 
DECLINE OF THE INSTITUTE. 297 
 
 often sat up part of the night, and was always the first 
 to rise. Eveiwbody loved him. He attended to the little 
 ones and to those who were ailing like a mother ; in this 
 respect, indeed, he was like Krusi. Those of his old pupils 
 living to-day are still grateful for all the trouble this excellent 
 man took for them. 
 
 Baumgartner was a handsome young man from canton 
 Glarus, quick and intelligent, but gentle and modest ; he had 
 a decided talent for teaching beginners mathematics, know- 
 ing how to put things clearly and inspire a taste for the 
 subject. He left Yverdun to join the institute founded by 
 Hoffmann at Naples, where he died of fever very shortly 
 after. 
 
 Leuenzinger, of Glarus, was a short, thick-set man, with 
 a dark complexion and large head. His heavy body pre- 
 vented him from joining in the games of the pupils. He had 
 a remarkable taste for mathematics. His great happiness 
 was to attack complicated problems, after solving which he 
 would walk about the room rubbing his hands and talking 
 to himself. He was full of rustic simplicity. 
 
 Amongst the masters who arrived after the departure of 
 Schmidt, we must mention : 
 
 Schacht, of Brunswick, of gentlemanly bearing, and with a 
 good influence on the character and conduct of the scholars. 
 He had a fine face, sharp and full of animation, and talked 
 well. He taught history, and captivated his hearers by his 
 dramatic manner ; he also lectured on chemistry. He after- 
 wards returned to Brunswick, where he became a member 
 of the Council of State and of the superior Council of Educa- 
 tion. He also published a treatise on geography, according 
 to the principles of Pestalozzi. 
 
 Blochmann, of Dresden, no less distinguished by his nobility 
 of character than by his knowledge and talent for teaching. 
 He came to Yverdun to know more of Pestalozzi. He only 
 taught geography in the institute, but his influence was valu- 
 able in many ways, and he was liked by everybody. After 
 leaving Yverdun he established an educational institute in 
 Dresden, and became the king's trusted adviser in all educa- 
 tional matters. 
 
 Ackermann, a young Saxon, full of vivacity and zeal, and 
 as eager to learn as to teach. He taught gymnastics, and 
 was the constant companion of the children. He afterwards 
 21 
 
298 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 became headmaster of the model school at Frankfort-on- 
 Main. 
 
 Lehmann had a scholarly knowledge of French and 
 German ; he taught the two languages. His heart was 
 thoroughly in his work, but he was a little wanting, perhaps, 
 in the firmness and practical skill that help to make a good 
 master. Later on, he was employed in the public educa- 
 tional establishments at Berne; afterwards he and his wife, 
 who was a talented woman, established at Basle a school for 
 girls. 
 
 In the summer of 1811, a man came to Yverdun who was 
 destined to exercise a large influence on the state of the 
 institute for some time. This was Jullien, of Paris, a Knight 
 of the Legion of Honour, a school-inspector, a member of 
 several learned societies, and the author of J. General Essay 
 on Physical, Moral, and Intellectual Education, and An 
 Essay on the Employment of Time, etc. 
 
 Jullien soon recognized the merit and importance of the 
 practical educational reform that was taking place before 
 his eyes, and he determined to make a thorough study of 
 the doctrine of Pestalozzi and its various applications. 
 Protracting his stay therefore at Yverdun, he held continual 
 discussions with Pestalozzi and his coadjutors, and though 
 much hampered by his own ignorance of German and the 
 bad French of his interlocutors, persevered with admirable 
 patience until he thought himself in possession of the 
 requisite knowledge. The year after, he published, in the 
 royal press at Milan, a pamphlet of some hundred pages, 
 entitled, A Sketch of the Educational Institute of Yverdun, 
 and two large octavo volumes on The Spirit of Pestalozzi' 8 
 Educational Method. 
 
 By placing his sons with Pestalozzi, and by his own per- 
 sonal influence and that of his writings, Jullien was the 
 cause of a large number of French pupils and some few 
 French masters going to Yverdun, so that the institute was 
 no longer so entirely German. We shall show, later on, 
 how this affected the establishment. 
 
 The year 1811 seemed to Pestalozzi to have been a happier 
 one; his discourse of January 1st, 1812, therefore, is full of 
 joy and gratitude. We give the most characteristic portions : 
 
 " The year just ended has been a blessed one for us ; it 
 
DECLINE OF THE INSTITUTE. 299 
 
 has brought me nearer the aim of my life. What matters, 
 now, that it has been a hard one ? The hours of trouble 
 have passed, and there remains nothing but the strength 
 they have developed in us. Dangers have disappeared as 
 completely as if they had never existed ; but the courage 
 they have aroused remain, and its foundations are now more 
 solid than ever. 
 
 " What we want to do, what we have to do, we can now 
 do better than ever. The road we have been looking for 
 lies open before us. Peace reigns in our paths ; great 
 obstacles have vanished, and we feel that the strength and 
 means necessary for reaching our goal are slowly ripen- 
 ing. ... 
 
 " Friends and brothers ! Whilst I rejoice at the good 
 fortune with which we have surmounted all dangers, I also 
 look into the past, and think of all we might have done to 
 make ourselves more worthy of this blessing, and to enjoy 
 it with a purer and nobler satisfaction. . . . 
 
 " Grod has allowed our work to remain in our hands. He 
 has blessed it and strengthened it ; but the joy which we 
 feel cannot be pure and complete unless we are conscious 
 of having worked with fidelity, zeal, and a pure heart. . . . 
 
 " With what joy I thank God for having kept us faithful 
 to the precious mission which unites us, for having increased 
 your strength and zeal in the pursuit of our aim ! " 
 
 Pestalozzi next addresses himself personally to his two 
 oldest collaborators, Niederer and Krusi ; to Weilenmann, 
 Heussy, Baumgartner, Schneider and Leuenberger, who have 
 already been with him for some years ; to Schacht, Bloch- 
 mann, Ackermann and Lehmann, who have joined him more 
 recently; to the Prussian student-teachers, Kaverau, Hen- 
 ning, Dreist, Patzig, Kràtz and Benschmidt ; and lastly, to 
 his daughter-in-law's second husband, Mr. Kuster, the steward 
 and bursar of the institute. He then continues : 
 
 " Friends and brothers, do not forget that I am leaving 
 you, and that you are to remain behind ! What a great 
 thing completion is ! How glorious to approach the mark 
 where the victor is crowned. I have not reached the mark, 
 and my course is run. I can no longer strive towards it ; 
 all I could do I have done. I see that for me action is at 
 
3oo PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 an end, though the work in hand is not completed. Man- 
 kind, that I have loved so well, will, with grateful acknow- 
 ledgment of my efforts, complete my task. But it will also 
 see in you, friends and brothers, the first and worthiest 
 labourers in this reform. You will therefore remain my 
 sons, and not fail that posterity for which I have lived. It 
 is this hope that consoles me, when I see that the work I 
 have neither time nor strength to finish, rudely torn from 
 my hands by the natural course of events, is really mine no 
 longer. But it is still in God's hands. friends, be true, 
 and fail not ! " 
 
 In the words which Pestalozzi now addresses to his wife, 
 we find the confirmation of a fact hitherto unverified, 
 namely, that the old man, after neglecting money matters 
 all his life, nevertheless took certain necessary precautions 
 to secure for his wife, and after her for his grandchild 
 Gottlieb, a sum of money representing the increased value 
 of the Neuhof estate, which was all that remained of the 
 fortune she had brought him. 
 
 His words were as follows : 
 
 " I now address myself to you, faithful companion of my 
 life ! Do not take as indifference the calmness with which 
 I regard my fate ; it is God who gives it me. . . . The 
 year just gone first brought me this peace, the present year 
 will complete it. The past year has also been blessed for 
 you, my dear and noble wife, for your health has been 
 restored. God permits you, then, to see the end I have so 
 nearly reached ; joy shall still be yours, for you have 
 deserved it ! You have indeed suffered much for my sake 
 in the times of struggle and preparation which have been 
 so unduly prolonged in my life ; you have greatly feared for 
 the future of our grandson, compromised by my fault. But 
 God, who fashions our lives, has witnessed your agony ; His 
 Fatherly hand has sent you an unexpected succour ; our dear 
 child is saved, so that, in this respect too, we may go down 
 to the grave in peace. Our child will be your heir. As for 
 me, I shall die poor, as I have always intended. To devote 
 nryself and my all to my work has been, as you know, my 
 only desire. But God is good, dearest ! May oui* faith in 
 Him remain unshaken ! " 
 
DECLINE OF THE INSTITUTE. 301 
 
 After this, Pestalozzi addresses himself first to his own 
 children, then to the young girls of the neighbouring insti- 
 tute, then to the directress, Mrs. Krister, and her chief 
 assistant, Miss Rosette KasthofFer. He speaks to them 
 all of his gratitude and trust, and to all utters words of 
 encouragement. He finally concludes by invoking God's 
 blessing upon everybody, including his absent friends, for 
 the year which has just begun. 
 
 This year, 1812, begun under such happy auspices, was 
 soon to bring Pestalozzi a fresh trial — a painful, serious and 
 long illness. 
 
 One day, as he was walking up and down Mrs. Krusi's 
 room, preoccupied and restless, as was his wont, having 
 taken up a knitting-needle to scratch his ear, he suddenly 
 knocked against the high earthenware stove with such force 
 that the needle was driven into his head. According to 
 the doctor who attended him, and who was amazed beyond 
 measure that such an old man should recover from so severe 
 an accident, the needle must have penetrated, not the tym- 
 panum, but the bony part of the ear. 
 
 His recovery, however, was very slow. For a long time 
 he was confined to his bed, and suffered much pain. He 
 could not bear the slightest noise, and for four months his 
 life was despaired of. At times he thought he was dying, 
 and seemed glad ; at other times he would say, " I should 
 like to live a little longer, for I have still much to do." His 
 convalescence was long and painful. But the old man could 
 not give up work, and even in the midst of his sufferings, 
 and when parched by fever, he continued to dictate to one 
 of his assistants, for he never ceased to occupy himself with 
 the elaboration of his " method." When he was well enough 
 to be placed on a sofa, he began to write a little himself ; 
 he also put into execution a project which had occupied his 
 mind for some time past. 
 
 ' He considered the best means of teaching a foreign lan- 
 guage to be that which Nature employs in teaching a child 
 to speak its mother-tongue, that is to say, constant prac- 
 tice in the spoken language. It was thus that, with the 
 addition of a little grammar, the Germans at Yverdun 
 learned Trench, and the French German, with complete 
 success. Pestalozzi thereupon asked himself if it would 
 not be possible to employ similar means to teach a dead 
 
302 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 language, and he resolved to try the experiment. Every day 
 some six or seven children who had not yet begun Latin, 
 amongst them the writer of these lines, were brought to his 
 couch. 
 
 Pestalozzi had with much care selected from Cœsar^s 
 Commentaries a number of short passages and isolated 
 phrases, all bearing on the same subject, and nearly all 
 containing the same words; with these selections he had, 
 in his illegible hand, filled several sheets. As we stood by 
 the couch, where he lay weak and suffering, he would give 
 us a phrase, which we all had to repeat until we knew it by 
 heart ; he would then explain the different words, and point 
 out some of the changes they undergo when it is required 
 to modify the sense of the sentence. In this way the study 
 of syntax and accidence went hand in hand. We were 
 soon able to make certain changes for ourselves, and con- 
 struct sentences of such elements as were known to us ; 
 that is to say, with a very limited vocabulary, and a very 
 narrow range of subjects, we spoke Latin like Csesar ! 
 
 These lessons were continued during the whole period of 
 the old man's convalescence, but after that they were dropped. 
 We have never been able to ascertain whether Pestalozzi 
 gave them up because he was not satisfied with the success 
 of the experiment, or merely because he was carried away 
 by new ideas. 
 
 At the beginning of 1813, Niederer married Miss Kast- 
 hoffer, and Pestalozzi made over to them the girls' school, 
 which had been originally established in a large house near 
 the Castle, where it remained for the next twenty-five years. 
 Mrs. Kuster thus saw herself supplanted by her head- 
 assistant, to whom she resigned her position without the 
 least complaint. The establishment certainly profited by 
 the change, and, owing to the unusual capacity of Mrs. 
 Niederer, enjoyed a very long period of prosperity. 
 
 The finances of the institute were at this time in a very 
 unsatisfactory condition. Since 1810 the number of the 
 pupils had been falling off, but that of the masters steadily 
 increasing. Young men came from far and near to learn 
 the method, and on the understanding that they would 
 afterwards do their best to spread it, were admitted by 
 Pestalozzi for nothing. The old man's credulity in this 
 respect was unbounded. He refused nobody, and received 
 
DECLINE OF THE INSTITUTE. 303 
 
 all sorts of unfit persons into the institute, sometimes even 
 deliberately dishonest people, who, after staying a few 
 months, made off, leaving debts behind them which Pesta- 
 lozzi felt it his duty to pay. The mode of life was simple, 
 it is true, and the faithful Lisbeth Krusi did her best as 
 housekeeper; but in her desire that there should be no 
 stint, she fell into the opposite extreme, with the result 
 that there was much waste. The printing press, too, cost 
 a great deal of money, especially now that the polemical 
 publications were so frequent. The effect of all this was 
 already making itself felt, as we have said, though the final 
 financial disaster did not come till afterwards. 
 
 After the departure of Schmidt, Bamsauer became Pesta- 
 lozzi's favourite, and did for the practical application of the 
 " method " very much what Niederer did for the theory. It 
 is to be regretted that at this time Bamsauer could not, or 
 would not, take in hand the administration of the finances 
 of the establishment ; had he done so, he might perhaps 
 have saved the institute. But he confined his activity to 
 his relations with the pupils, and to the improvement of the 
 system of instruction in the elementary branches. 
 
 Mechanical and perspective drawing, in which he excelled, 
 were his favourite subjects ; it is to him that we owe the 
 rational and graduated course which made it possible to 
 introduce that particular branch of teaching into the primary 
 schools. Very often foreigners, who were passing through 
 the country, would beg for a collection of his models to take 
 home to their respective countries, and thus his practical 
 method spread in all directions. It was almost the same 
 collection as that afterwards published in Paris by Boniface 
 and Bivail. 
 
 Bamsauer's own account of his relations with Pestalozzi 
 is as follows : 
 
 " It was not at all rare in summer to see foreigners at the 
 Castle four or five times a day, who interrupted our lessons, 
 and expected us to explain our method. During the years 
 1812, 1813, and 1814, in addition to my ordinary occupa- 
 tions, I so often had to give the necessary explanations in 
 a very loud voice, that my chest suffered. When, at last, 
 I was quite ill, Pestalozzi reproached himself with being the 
 cause ; he knew he had worked me too much, and was 
 
3o4 PESTAL0ZZ1: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 anxious to nurse me himself, as a father would nurse his 
 child. But he was more incapable and awkward than I 
 could have believed possible if I had not seen him. 
 
 " The hardest time I spent with Pestalozzi was from 1812 
 to 1815, when I so often had to write in his room from two 
 to six in the morning. Even when I retired to bed as late 
 as eleven or twelve, I was expected to be at his bedside by 
 two. If I was a few minutes late, he would impatiently 
 jump out of bed, both winter and summer, and with very 
 little clothing on, cross the courtyard, and, going through 
 the boys' dormitories, call me in a way that was not always 
 polite. But when I was punctual, or even when I made my 
 appearance after being called, he would express his approval 
 by embracing me, and then get back into bed and begin his 
 dictation. But it was very difficult to write down what he 
 said, for he not only spoke very indistinctly (he always had 
 the end of the sheet in his mouth), but generally changed 
 the form of his sentences two or three times. . . . When 
 Pestalozzi was talking, people were often obliged to guess 
 at what he meant from the expression of his face, his speech 
 being so much slower than his thought. In the same way 
 his secretary often had to guess at his words from the tone 
 of his voice. My task then, if interesting, was difficult, 
 and I sometimes felt a certain pity for the old man, though 
 without losing any of my love and respect. . . . 
 
 " During the years 1812, 1813, and 1814, the period when 
 Pestalozzi's friendliness and confidence in me were most 
 marked, he used to send for me every day after dinner to take 
 coffee or liqueur in Mrs. Pestalozzi's room, or in that of his 
 faithful housekeeper, Mrs. Krusi. On those occasions he 
 was generally very gay and full of wit ; and his wit was 
 often brilliant, for whatever he did, he did thoroughly, 
 giving himself up entirely to the feelings of the moment. 
 In the same half-hour he would be extremely happy and 
 extremely miserable, gentle and caressing or serious and 
 severe ; he did nothing without enthusiasm. . . . 
 
 " But, happily or unhappily, he soon forgot ; and so there 
 is little sequence in the history of his life. Nor did he 
 profit much by his experiences. Even in our study of peda- 
 gogics, he would not allow us to make use of the experience 
 of other times or other countries ; we were to read nothing, 
 but discover everything for ourselves. Hence the whole 
 
DECLINE OF THE INSTITUTE. 305 
 
 strength of the institute was always devoted to experiment. 
 The fact remains, however, that whatever we learned in that 
 way, with so much trouble and toil, we learned well, and 
 the trouble was soon forgotten in the pleasure and confidence 
 that resulted from such well-grounded knowledge. 
 
 " Often when the masters had done something to displease 
 him, Pestalozzi would fly into a passion, and angrily leave 
 the room, slamming the door as if he would break it. But 
 if at that moment he happened to meet a young pupil, he 
 Would instantly grow calm, and, after kissing the boy, return 
 to the room, exclaiming, ' I beg your pardon ! Forgive my 
 violence ! I was mad.' " l 
 
 We must here say a word about the letter to Mr. Delbruck, 
 which Pestalozzi published towards the end of April, 1813. 
 Mr. Delbruck, who was tutor to the Prince Royal of Prussia, 
 had been sent by the king to Yverdun, and had spent some 
 considerable time in the institute, studying the work and 
 doctrine of the master, whom he soon learned to love and 
 admire. After his return to Berlin, he had written to Pesta- 
 lozzi advising him to abandon polemics, and leave all the 
 attacks on the institute unanswered.- 
 
 Pestalozzi, in a long letter, endeavours to show that an 
 educational institute cannot be silent when it is accused of 
 corrupting youth both in religion and politics ; he also tries 
 to excuse Niederer, who had been blamed for the violence 
 of his language. He then continues, with characteristic out- 
 spokenness : 
 
 " The remembrance of the past weighs heavy on my heart ; 
 my explanations do not satisfy me. I almost hate my own 
 words as I write them. When a man is struggling with 
 people with no nobleness of heart, he is almost sure to lose 
 some of the nobleness of his own heart. This is a very sad 
 thought to me. I would give up some of the days I have 
 still to live to blot out this portion of my life." 
 
 The end of this letter shows that the old man has again 
 relapsed into the illusions which he himself had once recog- 
 nized as such. He thinks that by the unceasing labour of 
 himself and his coadjutors, the institute will soon be in such 
 
 1 A Short Sketch of my Pedagogical Life, by J. Ramsauer. Olden- 
 burg, 1838. 
 
3o6 PESTAL0ZZ1: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 a state that the application of his method to all branches of 
 instruction will at last be possible. 
 
 It was this same year, 1813, that witnessed all the 
 consequences of Napoleon the First's disastrous Russian 
 campaign. 
 
 The (jermans, seeing a favourable opportunity for deliver- 
 ing their country from the foreign power that had heaped 
 so many misfortunes and humiliations upon them, eagerly 
 prepared to fight. It was impossible that the young men 
 of Grerman origin who were with Pestai ozzi at this time 
 should remain untouched by this enthusiasm, and numbers 
 of them went and took up arms " for the deliverance of 
 Germany." The Prussian pupils, who had indeed just com- 
 pleted their studies, all went away too, some of the masters, 
 amongst whom were Schacht and Ackermann, following their 
 example. 
 
 Pestalozzi entirely commended them, and made no effort 
 to restrain them ; they had indeed his best wishes for the 
 success of their patriotic enterprise. He considered that 
 the enormous power Napoleon exercised in Europe was an 
 obstacle to that part of his work which consisted in raising 
 the people b}^ education. We have seen that in 1803 Bona- 
 parte had refused to listen to Pestalozzi, and rejected his 
 proposals, saying that he could not mix himself up with 
 questions of A B C ; afterwards, however, he saw that the 
 work of the Swiss philanthropist went far beyond the A B 
 C, and that its aim was to put the freedom and development 
 of the individual in the place of the mechanical routine of 
 the old schools, which did little more than produce a mass 
 of dull uniformity. With this aim Napoleon was entirely 
 out of sympathy, and whenever the subject was mentioned, 
 would say, " The Pestalozzians are Jesuits." 
 
 For this reason, if for no other, Pestalozzi rejoiced at the 
 success of the allied sovereigns, whose coalition was to 
 liberate Europe. 
 
 Opinions were divided, however, in Switzerland on this 
 point ; but as the Swiss were not in a position to maintain 
 their neutrality, the Austrian troops passed through the 
 country to enter France by the frontier of the Jura. 
 
 On Christmas day, 1813, a regiment of Esterhazy's Hun- 
 garian hussars arrived at Yverdun, and were soon followed 
 by a large number of Croatian infantry. 
 
DECLINE OF THE INSTITUTE. 307 
 
 On the 9tli of January, 1814, th.3 municipality received 
 orders from the Austrian Commissary at Pontarlier, to pre- 
 pare a military hospital at Yverdun, and, a few days after, 
 two delegates arrived to choose the locality, and make, at 
 the town's expense, all the necessary preparations. They 
 appropriated four "blocks of buildings : the castle of Yver- 
 dun with two hundred and seventy beds, the old barn oppo- 
 site (now a casino) with two hundred beds, the bath-house 
 of Yverdun with ninety-four beds, and the castle of Grandson 
 with one hundred and sixteen beds. The municipality 
 immediately informed the cantonal Government, and urged 
 it to help them deliver the commune from the danger which 
 threatened it. The Petty Council only returned answer that 
 they should consider all expenses necessitated by a military 
 hospital as a cantonal charge, and that they would enforce 
 the payment by the State. Nevertheless the population of 
 Yverdun were much frightened, for the Austrian troops, 
 encumbered with sick and wounded, were seriously ravaged 
 by typhus. The municipality accordingly appointed two 
 delegates to go to the head-quarters of the allied armies 
 and ask for a revocation of these orders. Pestalozzi, the 
 very existence of whose establishment was seriously threat- 
 ened, accompanied the municipal delegates, and it was this 
 which saved the town. 
 
 It is quite certain that the representatives of the town of 
 Yverdun had but little idea of Pestalozzi's real merit. They 
 must have felt very little honoured by this fellow-traveller, 
 who in the eyes of the vulgar was but an eccentric old man, 
 shabbily dressed, and careless of his person. But their sur- 
 prise was great when, on arriving at Basle, they witnessed 
 his reception by the allied sovereigns. On the 21st of 
 January they returned to Yverdun, and the day after, an- 
 nounced to the municipality that " their mission had had 
 perfect success, that no military hospital would be estab- 
 lished at Yverdun, and that Mr. Pestalozzi had been received 
 with most extraordinary favour." 
 
 And yet the old man had not been less eccentric at the 
 head-quarters at Basle than anywhere else. He no sooner 
 found himself in the presence of the Emperor of Russia and 
 his officers, than, thinking it a good opportunity to preach 
 educational reform and the liberation of the serfs, he be- 
 came so enthusiastic and so ardent that he completely for- 
 
3o8 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 got his position, and approached so near the emperor, that 
 the latter was obliged to retreat. It was not till he had 
 forced him nearly to the wall, and was in the act of taking 
 him by the button of his coat, that Pestalozzi suddenly 
 became aware of his indiscretion. Muttering an apology, he 
 then sought to kiss the Czar's hand, but Alexander cordially 
 embraced him. 
 
 Notwithstanding his eccentricity, Pestalozzi's words pro- 
 duced a great effect, and those about the emperor thought 
 at one time that he contemplated putting the Swiss philan- 
 thropist's views into execution. 
 
 But, alas ! the Muscovite serfs had to wait another fifty 
 years for their emancipation, and the Russian people, though 
 proud of their civilization, are still waiting for good schools. 
 But in this respect they do not stand alone. 
 
 The Czar decorated Pestalozzi with the cross of Saint 
 Vladimir of the third class, and sent him a collection of 
 minerals from the Oural for his school. The Emperor of 
 Austria also sent him a case of Tokay wine. 
 
 Thus this poor old man, the weakest and awkwardest of 
 mankind, and the most unattractive in appearance, was able 
 to excite the attention and sympathy of princes at a moment 
 even when they were intoxicated with success and glory. 
 For the honour of humanity, this triumph was won by his 
 moral beauty, — a consoling thought, which enables us to for- 
 get many a wrong. 
 
 Of the four blocks of buildings chosen for military hospi- 
 tals, the castle of Grandson alone was used. The typhus, 
 however, broke out in the village of that name, which is not 
 far from Yverdun, and was not stamped out of the neigh- 
 bourhood for several years. Nor did the town of Yverdun 
 escape ; indeed one of Pestalozzi's own pupils took the dis- 
 ease, though not very seriously. It may not be amiss to 
 mention here that since the foundation of his establishment 
 Pestalozzi had never lost a single pupil by death. 
 
 During that same year the King of Prussia paid a visit to 
 his principality of Neuchâtel, which had just been restored 
 to him, and where he was received with almost unanimous 
 joy. While he was there, Pestalozzi, although very ill, in- 
 sisted on going to thank him for having sent him so many 
 student- teachers to train, and did not forget to remind him 
 of the importance of the work these young men were about 
 
DECLINE OF THE INSTITUTE. 309 
 
 to undertake in Prussia. Ramsauer, who accompanied him, 
 makes the following reference to the occasion : 
 
 " During the journey Pestalozzi had several fainting fits, 
 so that I was obliged to take him from the carriage and 
 carry him into a neighbouring house. I constantly urged 
 him to return home. ' Hold your tongue ! ' he said ; * I 
 must see the king, even though it should cost me my life. 
 If I can bring about a better education for a single Prussian 
 child, I shall be fully rewarded.' " 
 
 Peace brought a new period of external prosperity to the 
 establishment at Yverdun; pupils, young assistants, and 
 visitors flocked there in numbers and from all countries, 
 France and England at length following the example already 
 set by Germany. But this great concourse of people of all 
 languages was equally fatal to the internal arrangements of 
 the establishment and to its financial position. Ramsauer 
 gives the following account of one of those frequent visits 
 about which Pestalozzi became so excited, but which threw 
 the lessons into such confusion : 
 
 " In 1814, old Prince Esterhazy arrived. Pestalozzi at 
 once ran all over the Castle, crying, ' Ramsauer, Kamsauer ! 
 where are you ? Take your best pupils (for gymnastics, 
 drawing, arithmetic, and geometry) and come quickly to the 
 Red House (the hotel where the prince was staying). He 
 is a very important personage, and immensely rich : he owns 
 thousands of serfs in Hungary and Austria, and it is quite 
 certain that he will establish schools and liberate his pea- 
 santry as soon as he understands our system, etc' 
 
 " I accordingly took some fifteen of the pupils to the hotel, 
 where Pestalozzi presented me to the prince, saying : 
 
 " l This is the master of these pupils ; he came to my house 
 about fifteen years ago with other poor children from the 
 canton of Appenzell, and has been brought up without re- 
 straint, and by the free development of his own powers ; 
 now he is himself a teacher, and you will see in him a proof 
 that the poor are just as capable as the rich, if not more so, 
 provided only that their intellect be methodically developed, 
 which however is rarely the case. Hence it is of the greatest 
 importance to improve our popular schools ; but he will ex- 
 plain everything to you better than I could myself.' 
 
3io PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 u Pestalozzi then left us, and I set to work questioning, 
 explaining, and bawling, with an energy which made me 
 very hot and tired, never doubting for a moment that the 
 prince was perfectly convinced. On Pestai ozzi's return at 
 the end of an hour, the prince expressed his satisfaction, 
 and we took our leave. Going downstairs, Pestalozzi said, 
 1 He is quite convinced, thoroughly convinced ; he will 
 certainly set up some schools in Hungary.' At the bottom 
 of the stairs Pestalozzi suddenly cried out, ' Why, what is 
 the matter with my arm ? Look, how swollen it is ; and it 
 is so stiff that I cannot bend it.' And as a matter of fact 
 the large sleeve of his coat looked almost too tight. I 
 immediately noticed that the great house-key was bent in 
 the lock, and we concluded that on coming in an hour before 
 he must have knocked his elbow against the key and bent 
 it. And yet, so ardent was the flame that burned within him, 
 even at seventy years of age, when his mind was bent on 
 doing good, that during that hour the old man had felt no 
 pain. I may add that I could give many more instances of 
 the same sort of thing." 
 
 We have now arrived at a time when there were almost 
 as many French as Germans in the institute. 
 
 The consequence of this was that a master was often 
 obliged to make his observations in both languages ; very 
 often, too, a pupil could not be placed in the class Avhich 
 would have suited him best, on account of his not under- 
 standing the language in which it was conducted. 
 
 The pupils who came from French schools, having been 
 accustomed to an almost military discipline, were inclined 
 to take advantage of the liberty they enjoyed at Yverdun ; 
 accustomed, too, to look upon the masters as natural enemies, 
 with whom they must necessarily be at war, they took plea- 
 sure in playing all sorts of tricks upon them. Furthermore, 
 having been deprived suddenly of the only stimulus they 
 had hitherto known, the stimulus of self-love, they were 
 little disposed to stud}^, where there was neither reward to 
 hope for nor punishment to fear. At the same time the 
 rustic simplicity of life in the institute filled them with 
 repugnance and contempt. Much less than this would have 
 sufficed to promote indiscipline and confusion in the estab- 
 lishment, so that the result may be imagined. 
 
DECLINE OF THE INSTITUTE. 311 
 
 Jullien had undertaken to obtain some French masters for 
 the institute, but among those he sent there, only one was 
 really a capable man and fit to collaborate with Pestalozzi. 
 This was Alexander Boniface, the author of one of the best 
 French grammars. 
 
 " Amongst all the men of note," said Jullien, " I only 
 found Boniface who was willing to give up Paris for toil and 
 moil at Yverdun." 
 
 Of a cheerful and lively disposition, Boniface was a 
 true child of Paris, but he was, at the same time, kind 
 and simple of heart, and soon learned to love and admire 
 Pestalozzi. He became the centre of the French side of the 
 institute, and exercised a most salutary influence. By his 
 uniform kindness to the children he won their love, and, in 
 spite of his not very imposing presence, their entire respect. 
 He was small and exceedingly short-sighted, and generally 
 wore red or green slippers, which was thought at Yverdun 
 to be an extraordinary eccentricity. To a good knowledge 
 of classics he joined a cultivated taste, and gave excellent 
 lessons in grammar and French literature, in which the 
 scholars took great interest. On his return to Paris he 
 founded a higher school on Pestalozzi's principles. When 
 in 1829 Mr. de Vatisménil appointed a Commission to inquire 
 into the methods employed in private schools in Paris, the 
 commissioners, after a very conscientious examination, made 
 a report to the minister, in which they declared the method 
 employed by Mr. Boniface to be superior to all the others 
 they had examined. (Pompée, p. 269.) 
 
 At this time, unfortunately, the assistant masters were not 
 all like Boniface ; they were not all zealous and diligent in 
 their work, and often, in the absence of any complete con- 
 trol, did very much as they liked. The devotion of the good 
 teachers was powerless against all the elements of disorder 
 which had crept into the institute, and none of them could 
 make up for the administrative weakness of its head. Con- 
 currently with this, the financial position grew more and 
 more unsatisfactory, and the various causes of rain already 
 referred to were increased by the great extension that peace 
 had given to the establishment. 
 
 In this state of things Schmidt was thought of as the only 
 man capable of governing with a strong hand. Niederer, 
 his old antagonist, was the first to advise Pestalozzi to recall 
 
312 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 him, and even undertook to go and urge him to return 
 himself. 
 
 Schmidt was now the director of the public school of 
 Bregenz, an establishment which his talents and energy had 
 brought into a state of great prosperity. It was there that 
 Niederer sought him out, and succeeded in inducing him to 
 return to Yverdun. Niederer had never denied Schmidt's 
 great capacity, and at that time still had perfect confidence 
 in his character. We may judge of this from the following 
 passage of a letter written a few days after this interview : 
 
 "Rely entirely on Pestalozzi's love ; he has never ceased 
 to look on you as a son. Besides the strength which makes 
 you valuable, and which is the gift of Nature, you have 
 still greater gifts, for you are a true man, and your will 
 is set on good. This last is the gift of a man to himself, 
 and is what makes you worthy of our respect." 
 
 Schmidt returned to Yverdun at Easter, 1815, and Pesta- 
 lozzi, receiving him as a son who was sacrificing himself 
 for his father, made vows of eternal gratitude. 
 
 On his arrival, Schmidt at once quietly set about the 
 necessary reforms, working almost incessantly day and 
 night. He dismissed useless teachers, reduced the salary 
 of others, stopped waste, and restored order and regularity 
 in the lessons as well as discipline among the pupils. All 
 Pestalozzi's right-minded coadjutors willingly gave him 
 their aid in these much-needed reforms. 
 
 But Schmidt wanted to be master, to wield, that is, the 
 sole authority in the name of Pestalozzi. Taking advantage 
 of what had been told him of his usefulness, he went 
 straight to his end with an acuteness, ability, perseverance, 
 and calm energy that never forsook him. Under a mask 
 of respect and affection, he submitted his proposals to the 
 old man as the only conditions of safety, conditions with- 
 out which he could answer for nothing. At the same time 
 he succeeded in winning the women of the establishment 
 to his side : Mrs. Pestalozzi, because she was tired of the 
 philosophy of Niederer, and found him incapable of pro- 
 tecting her husband's financial position ; Mrs. Kuster, to 
 whom it had been pointed out, after the event, that Mrs. 
 Niederer had behaved very badly to her in taking her place 
 
DECLINE OF THE INSTITUTE. 313 
 
 as directress of the girls' school ; and, lastly, the faithful 
 housekeeper, Lisbeth Krusi herself, who looked on Schmidt 
 as the only man capable of restoring order and economy in 
 domestic matters. Schmidt, indeed, had this merit, that 
 he was satisfied with little, and was continually preaching 
 plain living. We shall soon see, however, that Mrs. Krusi 
 had cause to repent of the preference she had given him. 
 
 In this same year, 1815, Pestalozzi published at Yverdun 
 a book which he had written the previous year, entitled : 
 A Word in Season to the Innocent, Serious, and Noble- 
 Minded Ones of My Country. 
 
 If it is chiefly to Switzerland that the author addresses 
 his remarks, it is not to her alone, but also to the whole of 
 Europe, which, set free by Napoleon's fall, is about to enter 
 on a new era, an era it may be of virile and moral reno- 
 vation, ensuring peace both at home and abroad, or it may 
 be of weakness, vanity, and selfishness, such as has already 
 ended in revolution, licence, and despotism. The nations 
 of Europe are corrupted by a sensual civilization, which does 
 but stimulate their appetites and their vanity, making those 
 who suffer envious of those who enjoy, and those who 
 enjoy insensible to the troubles of those who suffer. There 
 is none of that real moral civilization which exalts a man 
 and makes him capable of love, commiseration, and abne- 
 gation. The first step to this higher civilization is the 
 reform of public education. 
 
 We have endeavoured to give in a few words some idea 
 of the subject treated by Pestalozzi ; but what we have 
 just said can convey but a faint idea of the many precious 
 truths and valuable and original ideas to be found in this 
 new work, which is as it were a continuation of that 
 which the author had written some years previously : An 
 Inquiry into the Course of Nature in the Development of 
 the Human Race. But the second work is more matured, 
 more clearly written, and more practical. It is now fifty- 
 seven years since it was first published and yet it has lost 
 none of its appropriateness. Europe would still do well to 
 think over this advice, and act on it. 
 
 About this time there arrived at Yverdun the celebrated 
 
 Doctor Bell, the founder of the system of mutual instruction 
 
 in England. His visit to the far-famed institute had a 
 
 double motive. He came partly to see Pestalozzi, this man 
 
 22 
 
3 i4 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 whose reputation as the inventor and propagator of a new 
 method of education rivalled his own, partly in the hope 
 of discovering some further improvement for his own 
 system. Bell understood neither French nor German, "but 
 he found an interpreter in the establishment whom he 
 knew already. This was Ackermann, the Saxon, a teacher 
 of some merit, who had left Pestalozzi in 1813 to fight for 
 the liberation of Germany, and who, before returning to 
 Yverdun, had spent some time in England visiting Bell's 
 schools and examining his method. 
 
 During his visit to Yverdun, Bell, after watching the 
 lessons in the different classes, gave, with the help of some 
 teachers and under-teachers, a sort of representation of his 
 own method ; there was, moreover, a conference, in which 
 Pestalozzi and the Doctor summed up, with Ackermanns 
 help, their chief objections to each other's system. But, 
 whatever the merits and defects of the rival systems may have 
 been, the Englishman certainly possessed one talent that the 
 Swiss was without; for whereas the latter by his educational 
 labours had ruined himself, the former had amassed a 
 fortune of £2.000 a year. On leaving Yverdun, Bell, in 
 company with Ackermann and Jullien, went to Freiburg, to 
 visit the schools of Father Girard, who, with true pedago- 
 gical tact and elevated moral views, had applied to his own 
 system all that was really good in the method of Bell and 
 Lancaster. On taking leave of Ackermann, Bell said : " In 
 another twelve years mutual instruction will be adopted by 
 the whole world, and Pestalozzi's method will be forgotten." 
 
 A few days afterwards, one of those inquisitive and 
 ignorant people whom fashion alone induced to visit Pesta- 
 lozzi, was presented to him, and accosted the old man 
 with : " It is you, sir, I believe, who invented mutual 
 instruction?" " God forbid," replied Pestalozzi. And yet 
 seventeen years before, at Stanz, he had already in his own 
 way made use of the sj^stem. 
 
 Early in December, 1815, Mrs. Pestalozzi fell ill ; her 
 strength was gone. Without suffering and with admirable 
 tranquillity, the good and kind old woman, now in her 
 seventy-ninth year, felt her life slowly ebbing away. She 
 died on the evening of the 12 th, as she lay upon her couch. 
 She was still lying there when Pestalozzi's particular 
 friends, anxious to share his sorrow, hastened to his side. 
 
DECLINE OF THE INSTITUTE. 315 
 
 Her obsequies took place on the 16th. The first thing in 
 the morning the coffin was placed in the chapel. The whole 
 of the household had assembled there, and were singing 
 a funeral hymn, when the unhappy old man entered. As 
 soon as the singing had ceased, he approached the coffin, 
 and, addressing himself to his faithful companion as if she 
 could still hear him, passed in review their forty-five years 
 of companionship, so full of labours, trials, and disasters, 
 dwelling particularly on the many sacrifices she had made 
 and the many sufferings she had endured for him and through 
 his fault. After speaking of the time when, " forsaken and 
 scoffed at by everybody, and weighed down by misery and 
 disease," they had eaten their " dry bread with bitter tears," 
 he added : " What, in those days of affliction, gave us the 
 strength to bear our troubles and recover hope ? " and, 
 seizing a Bible which was near him, he drew still nearer 
 the body, crying : " This is the source whence you drew, 
 whence we both drew, courage, strength, and peace ! " 
 
 The coffin was then closed, and carried, followed by 
 all the household and a large concourse of the inhabitants 
 of Yverdun, to the farthest end of the garden, where, in 
 accordance with Mrs. Pestalozzi's express desire, a grave 
 had been dug between two walnut trees. At the tomb 
 there was singing by the boys and girls, and a prayer by 
 Niederer, who also preached the sermon on their return to 
 the chapel. The ceremony ended with Klopstock's beautiful 
 hymn : The Song of Triumph of Christian Hope. 
 
 Pestalozzi's grief was profound ; for a long time he would 
 go stealthily out at night, when all were asleep, and pray and 
 weep under the walnut trees, on the marble slab engraved 
 with his wife's name, and the dates of her birth and death. 1 
 And he had reason to lament her who so long had been his 
 support, his adviser, and his good angel ; for now that she 
 was gone, he was to be buffeted by the winds of adversity, 
 like a ship without a rudder. 
 
 Pestalozzi, however, was strangely impressionable, and 
 when once possessed by his favourite idea of elevating the 
 lower classes, he forgot everything else. Some short time 
 after the death of his wife, one of his old pupils, deeply 
 moved by his loss, came to see him. After a few words 
 
 1 The remains of Mrs Pestalozzi now lie in the cemetery of Yverdun. 
 
3i6 PESTALOZZT: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 on the painful subject of the visit, the old man began to 
 speak of his new plans and new hopes for his success 
 of his method, and before long, carried away by his illu- 
 sions and enthusiasm, he cried excitedly : " I am swimming 
 in a sea of \<yy ! " 
 
 The year 1816 opened very sadly for Pestalozzi, and it 
 was destined to be a disastrous one. The old man looked 
 upon Schmidt more and more as his only means of salvation, 
 and was prepared to sacrifice everything to keep him, but 
 as he could only keep him by allowing him to have his own 
 way, he ceased any longer to have a will of his own. 
 
 From this time, Schmidt, certain of his power, cared little 
 how he acted. He suppressed the meetings of the masters, 
 and gave his own orders in Pestalozzi's name. He was a 
 tall man, rather slim, but strong and sinewy ; his dark face, 
 with its eagle eyes, had an expression of impassible severity ; 
 he was feared no less than Pestalozzi was beloved, and yet 
 he exercised considerable influence over many of the 
 scholars. He moved about the house with a high head and 
 a proud gait, as if to impress upon everybody that he was 
 the master. 
 
 To show the progress he had made since his arrival at 
 Yverdun, we may mention an incident which occurred in 
 1805, and which was told us by an eye-witness. In those 
 days, Schmidt was very careless of his appearance, and 
 amongst other things wore a cap which was no longer pre- 
 sentable. One day, during a lesson that he was giving to 
 the children, de Murait entered the class, and seeing the 
 dirty cap on a form, threw it out of the window into the 
 
 The prave is on the left as you enter the cemetery. The following in- 
 scription has been added to the first : 
 
 The Worthy Wife 
 of 
 Pestalozzi, 
 The friend of the poor, 
 The benefactor of the people, 
 The reformer of education. 
 His close partner for forty- six years in his work 
 of self-sacrifice, she has left behind her a 
 blessed and venerated memory. 
 On the 11th of August, 1866, her mortal remains, which had been 
 resting in the garden of the Castle, were religiously removed to this 
 place by the municipality of Yverdun. 
 
DECLINE OF THE INSTITUTE. 317 
 
 river which ran under the walls of the Castle. The pupils 
 all laughed, but Schmidt did not take the least offence. 
 
 The man's overbearing manners, however, made it im- 
 possible for the old friends of Pestalozzi to remain in the 
 institute. Ramsauer left him in the early spring of 1816. 
 For a long time he had refused the most brilliant offers 
 rather than leave his benefactor, and it was only after 
 having been completely thrust aside by Schmidt that he 
 decided to accept one of three proposals that had just been 
 made to him. 
 
 The coadjutors formed by Pestalozzi were, in general, as 
 disinterested as himself, and had as little idea of the value 
 of money, often refusing very good offers for the sake of 
 retaining their modest and laborious positions, save when 
 the master himself, with a view to spreading his method of 
 education, encouraged them to leave. 
 
 Pestalozzi had always clung to the hope of founding 
 a new school for the poor, and had relied upon Ramsauer to 
 direct it ; indeed, ever since 1807, he had made him learn 
 several handicrafts for that very purpose. But, strangely 
 enough, this poor, neglected child, who had been so care- 
 fully trained to educate other poor children, was finally to 
 become the tutor of the princes and princesses of Olden- 
 burg. 
 
 One of the heaviest losses Pestalozzi had to endure was 
 that of his faithful housekeeper, Lisbeth Krusi, the woman 
 to whom he owed so much. Schmidt was anxious to effect 
 certain reforms in the housekeeping, which were no doubt 
 necessary, and which old Lisbeth was probably incapable of 
 carrying out. But, at any price, some quiet and comfortable 
 position in the house ought to have been found for her. It 
 would appear that nothing of the sort was done, for she 
 insisted on leaving. She had lost her husband many years 
 before, and had an only son, who was an idiot. Thus this 
 heroic woman, who had saved Pestalozzi and his family at 
 Neuhof, and who had served as a type for the character of 
 Gertrude, went away from Yverdun with her child, and 
 ended her days in the poor-house of her husband's parish, at 
 Gais. 
 
 Under the new housekeeper, Miss Ray, of Grandson, the 
 living became somewhat less coarse and a little more varied, 
 the soup and fruit being replaced at times by coffee, choco- 
 
3i8 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 late, and other delicacies. At the same time anything like 
 prodigality was carefully avoided. But for all this, alas! 
 the financial position was none the better. 
 
 Towards the end of 1816, the German masters in the 
 institute resolved to celebrate the triumph of German 
 independence. On the 18th of October, after dinner, they 
 marched to the hill called "The Duke of Burgundy," where, 
 according to tradition, Charles the Bold had fixed his tent 
 and camp during the battle of Grandson. There they 
 lighted a large fire, sang German hymns, and drank wine, 
 remaining until night-fall. 
 
 Pestalozzi, who was one of the party, was full of spirits 
 and mirth, but what he celebrated was not the triumph 
 of one nation over another, but the despot Napoleon's 
 fall that had set so many nations free. Ackermann, to 
 whom we owe the details of this little episode, tells us that 
 at that time the remains of the outer walls of the camp 
 were still to be seen, and that he himself climbed to the 
 top of the ruins and proposed a toast " To the liberty of the 
 whole human race," to which about thirty people drank 
 with a triple round of hurrahs. 
 
 In a very short time it was the German masters who 
 could no longer bear Schmidt's supremacy ; they felt that 
 he was perverting the spirit of Pestalozzi's institution and 
 injuring his reputation. They therefore resolved to lay 
 their complaints and fears before Pestalozzi in a joint letter, 
 which was drawn up by Blochmann, and signed by sixteen 
 masters, under-masters, and student-teachers. 
 
 Those who had signed the letter were one evening sum- 
 moned to the old man's bedside. Schmidt was already there, 
 and proceeded to read his written defence, after which, as 
 the complainants were neither satisfied nor reassured, 
 Pestalozzi declared that he would rather see them all go 
 than restrict in any way the power of the only man who 
 was capable of saving him. A most painful scene then 
 occurred, the old man at one moment deploring the decay 
 of his institute and asking for everybody's support, at 
 another, seizing Schmidt's hand and calling him his saviour 
 and guardian angel. But as Schmidt remained inflexible, it 
 was impossible to come to an understanding, and in the 
 following spring all the Germans left Yverdun. 
 
 Later on Blochmann acknowledged, in a really Christian 
 
DECLINE OF THE INSTITUTE. 319 
 
 spirit, that wounded pride had something to do with the 
 determination taken by his colleagues and himself, and that 
 their clear duty was to remain and suffer. 
 
 Certain children of the neighbourhood, of families in 
 needy circumstances, that is, had formerly been received 
 gratuitously into Pestalozzi's establishment, where they had 
 in time become under-masters. These men, with a few new- 
 comers, now did their best to replace the masters who had 
 left ; the teaching, however, suffered considerably. Niederer 
 and Krusi were almost the only good masters that remained 
 with Schmidt, but soon even their position became almost 
 unbearable. Krusi, simple-minded and modest, gentle and 
 affectionate, groaned in secret, but suffered everything 
 without complaining. Niederer, on the other hand, could 
 not submit to this new state of things, and was continually 
 at strife with Schmidt, the animosity between them becoming 
 more and more violent every day. 
 
 Meanwhile the financial position of the institute was 
 going from bad to worse. At the pressing solicitation 
 of Jullien, some experienced and honourable merchants of 
 the town had consented to come once a week to examine the 
 books and accounts; but their obliging intervention could 
 only confirm the existence of the evil, not cure it. In that 
 year of rain and floods, there was a dearth in the country, 
 and food had risen considerably in price. Pestalozzi decided 
 therefore to raise the school-fees; but even then he could 
 not meet the increased expenditure, although the number 
 of his pupils was rapidly falling off. 
 
 It was at this juncture that Schmidt conceived the idea 
 of publishing, by subscription, a new edition of Pestalozzi's 
 works, as a means of raising the money of which the insti- 
 tute stood so much in need. To this scheme he easily 
 induced the old man to consent. 
 
 We must here point out that the views of Schmidt and 
 Pestalozzi as to the destination of the funds to be yielded 
 by the subscription were not quite the same. 
 
 Schmidt wanted money to repair the finances of the 
 institute and secure its position, not only in the immediate 
 future, but even after Pestalozzi's death. The latter, on 
 the other hand, looked forward chiefly to at last finding 
 himself in a position to found and establish on a proper 
 basis that school for the poor which had been the dream 
 
3 2o PESTAL0ZZ1: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 of his whole life, a desire with which Schmidt had little 
 or no sympathy. As our history proceeds, this divergence 
 of views will stand out more and more clearly. 
 
 In the month of March, 1817, Pestalozzi issued an appeal 
 asking for subscribers to the complete edition of his works. 
 In this appeal he sets forth his position in a very touching 
 manner. After a long life of toil and sacrifice, he is in 
 danger of seeing the fruit of his labours lost for humanity ; 
 he has undertaken much beyond his strength, but he now 
 intends to turn his experience to the profit of the one aim of 
 his life, the raising of the people. At the same time he speaks 
 of his institute as of a work which no longer belongs to 
 him, but which ought to last in the interests of humanity. 
 Thus the destination of the proceeds of the subscription 
 is left so vague as to admit of all sorts of interpretations. 
 But everything concerning the conditions of sale and col- 
 lection of subscriptions is settled in a most business-like 
 manner, and all friends, schools, and governments are 
 entreated in the most pressing terms to subscribe and find 
 subscribers. 
 
 Niederer and Krusi refused to recognize the author of 
 this appeal in the noble Pestalozzi ; they felt that it was 
 Schmidt's work, and that the old man could not put his name 
 to it without dishonour. But their opposition was in vain, 
 and the appeal was published. It was then that they 
 resolved to leave their benefactor, him whom they called 
 their father, 1 and the old man was left alone with the master 
 he had chosen. From that day the ruin of the institute 
 was complete. 
 
 1 Krusi had imperative reasons for leaving the institute, for he had 
 been married some yeai-s previously, and his modest emoluments did not 
 suffice to keep his family. He now set up a boarding-school at Yverdun. 
 for a living. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 DEATH-AGONY OF THE INSTITUTE. 
 
 Despair of Pestalozzi on seeing himself forsaken by Niederer 
 and Krusi. He goes away ill to the Jura Mountains. Ne- 
 gotiations with Fellenberg for securing quiet independence 
 for Pestalozzi fall through. Success of the subscription for 
 Pestalozzi 1 s works. His discourse of the 12th of January, 
 1818. Foundation of a pauper-school at Clendy. Its success. 
 It is soon made part of the institute at the Castle. Gottlieb 
 Pestalozzi returns to Yverdun and marries Schmidt's sister. 
 Pestalozzi quarrels with the Yverdun municipality. He 
 and Schmidt at law with Niederer. The Vaudese Govern- 
 ment intervenes, and brings about a settlement. " Views on 
 industry, education, and politics, in connection with the 
 state of our country before and after the Revolution," by 
 Pestalozzi. Fall of the institute. Schmidt expelled from 
 the canton by the Government. Pestalozzi goes with him. 
 
 We must give this title to that long period of seven years, 
 during which Pestalozzi's institute still existed at the castle 
 of Yverdun, although little more than the shadow of what it 
 had been. 
 
 Henceforth Pestalozzi is entirely in Schmidt's hands, 
 whom he regards not merely as a son who has sacrificed all 
 to come to the aid of his father, and to whom he owes eternal 
 gratitude, but as a saviour, who is alone capable of sustain- 
 ing him, and whose daily support has become indispensable. 
 He thus thinks himself compelled to do everything to please 
 him, espouses all his quarrels, and, at his bidding, repels all 
 his own old friends, and even refuses to take the hands 
 stretched out to save him. 
 
 These unhappy years were further troubled by disputes 
 and law- suits. Niederer and Schmidt first attacked one 
 another in pamphlets and newspapers, and then brought 
 actions for calumny, ih which, unfortunately, since he ac- 
 
322 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 cepted the responsibility of all Schmidt's actions, Pestalozzi 
 himself had to appear. The unfortunate controversy pro- 
 duced an impression on the public mind that was unfavourable 
 even to Niederer, and far more so to Schmidt. Some bio- 
 graphers have even gone so far as to credit certain unproved 
 statements about them, which we, however, believe to be 
 slanders, and will not repeat, preferring to confine ourselves 
 to authenticated facts. These two colleagues of Pestalozzi 
 were associated with his work too long, and rendered the 
 cause of education too many services, for us to remember 
 errors committed under the influence of passion. 
 
 Whilst Pestalozzi thus seemed to follow Schmidt blindly, 
 and showed himself more than ever incapable of the admin- 
 istration and direction of a large institute, his genius for 
 philosophical investigation, and his enthusiastic devotion to 
 the cause of the poor and weak of this world were as great 
 as ever. 
 
 In this latter respect his views were not in harmony with 
 Schmidt's, and in this one point he never ceased to struggle 
 with the man who, in other matters, was his absolute master, 
 often, as we shall see, coming off victorious. We shall see 
 him steadily working at the development and improvement 
 of his doctrine, deluding himself with the illusions of a 
 young man, zealously reorganizing and planning new founda- 
 tions, and, at the very moment when all that remained of his 
 practical work was about to crumble under his feet, opening 
 and successfully conducting a new school for the poor. 
 
 For the sake of characterizing the period which is the 
 subject of this chapter, we have been obliged to anticipate 
 somewhat ; we must now take up the thread of events. 
 
 After the departure of Blochmann and his German col- 
 leagues in 1816, a few good masters still remained with 
 Schmidt, Niederer, and Krusi. Among the number were 
 Boniface, who is already known to us; Stern, who taught 
 Latin and Greek well, and who afterwards became the 
 director of the Gymnasium at Stuttgart ; Knusert, who had 
 left the French army in 1814, after the peace, and had 
 resumed his duties in Pestalozzi's. establishment, where, 
 amongst other things, he looked after the military drill ; 
 and Hagnauer, a talented young Swiss, who was subsequently 
 appointed to the cantonal school of Aarau. 
 
 We have said that the masters who had left had been 
 
DEATH-AGONY OF THE INSTITUTE. 323 
 
 replaced by young men who were not always very highly 
 qualified ; we must, however, make an exception in favour 
 of one particularly able teacher, who at this critical period 
 proved to be of very great help to Pestalozzi. This was 
 Lange, a man of good education and manners, and though 
 kind and gentle, of great firmness of character. He spoke 
 Trench well, and conducted morning prayers in that lan- 
 guage for pupils ignorant of German. 
 
 But when in the spring of 1817 Niederer and Krusi decided 
 that they must leave Pestalozzi, the masters just mentioned 
 were not long before they followed their example. 
 
 The appeal for subscribers to Pestalozzi's works, the 
 appeal, that is, that had brought about the rupture, was 
 published in the last days of March, 1817 ; but it appears 
 that Niederer and Krusi had made up their minds as early 
 as the 14th of the month, for on that day they had asked 
 the municipality for a certificate of good conduct during 
 their residence at Yverdun, either because they thought 
 such a document was necessary before they could live in the 
 town apart from Pestalozzi, or else because they were afraid 
 of Schmidt's attacks. Naef, director of the institute for 
 deaf mutes, made a similar demand the same day, although 
 his position was already quite independent of Pestalozzi's 
 institute. 
 
 On the 5th of July, 1817, Pestalozzi obtained a promise 
 from the municipality that the gratuitous enjoyment of the 
 Castle should be continued for five years after his death to 
 such persons as he would appoint to succeed him. 
 
 Some days after that, he asked to be allowed to rent, for 
 purposes of cultivation, a field of some four or five acres just 
 outside the town, and requested further that the lease might 
 hold good after his death, like that of the Castle. This fresh 
 request was also granted by the municipality. 
 
 The reader already sees the object of these requests ; it 
 will be made still clearer to him as we proceed. 
 
 Meanwhile Pestalozzi had refused to believe himself 
 really forsaken by Niederer and Krusi, nor were his eyes 
 opened until he received a rather harsh letter from Niederer, 
 telling him that his old coadjutors would keep themselves 
 aloof so long as he chose to retain Schmidt. 
 
 The old man's grief and anger knew no bounds : at times 
 he was almost beside himself, and it was feared that his 
 
324 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 reason would give way. Schmidt advised a change of air on 
 the Jura, as a means of restoring his health and helping him 
 to recover from the effects of this cruel blow. Pestalozzi 
 accordingly spent a few weeks in the village of Bullet, which 
 is some three thousand feet above the lake of Neuchâtel, 
 and was at that time almost uninhabitable. He occupied a 
 miserable room in the cottage of an old woman, who could 
 barely supply him with what he required. But he breathed 
 a pure and bracing air, and had a splendid view before his 
 eyes. In the immediate foreground lay the plain of Yverdun, 
 with the lakes of Neuchâtel and Morat ; then the Vaudese 
 table-land, with its infinite variety of detail ; farther on, the 
 lake of Geneva, and on the horizon the long chain of the 
 Alps, with their rugged, snow-capped peaks. In this elevated 
 solitude the old man at last found the repose he so much 
 needed ; and yet it was a troubled repose, and full of grief, 
 grief which he poured out in snatches of poetry that deserve 
 to be preserved, not indeed for their literary merit, but 
 merely as evidence of the sorrows that his own weakness 
 had brought upon him. Pestalozzi, although a poet in heart 
 and imagination, had rarely written poetry, and it would be 
 difficult to understand why he wrote verses at this time, 
 if we did not know that for some time previously he had 
 been working out a series of elementary exercises in lan- 
 guage, to which he had often added rhythm and rhyme as 
 a means of facilitating their study for the child. And now 
 the same form presented itself almost naturally to him as 
 he breathed forth his woes at Bullet. 
 
 We can do no more than give the drift of a few of his 
 verses : 
 
 Happy the spot where I can pray at rest, 
 Unhappy that where I do evÛ. 
 Sad is the place where I take refuge in tears, 
 But terrible is the abyss I flee from ; 
 And, wishing to avoid it, I draw near it, 
 And as I draw near it, 1 am in doubt, 
 And, in my doubt, I throw myself into it . • 
 Into the tomb of despair. 
 
 O ! bow of heaven ! bow of heaven ! 
 Thou shadowest forth the joys of the Creator ; 
 Shed on me, too, thy colours and soft brightness ! 
 Come, shine in the angry tempest of my life ! 
 Usher in a brighter morn ! eend me a better day 1 
 
DEATH-AGONY OF THE INSTITUTE. 325 
 
 ! bow of heaven ! bow of heaven ! 
 God hath sustained me in the days of storm ; 
 My soul, give praise to the Eternal ! 
 Must I die before thou appear 
 To bring me the joys of a happier day? 
 Must I drink to the dregs the cup of enmity and malice ? 
 Must I die before I find my peace, the peace I am seeking ? 
 I acknowledge my own faults and weakness, 
 And I forgive others their faults ; 
 I forgive them with love and tears. 
 It is in death alone that I shall find peace ; 
 The day of my death will be my happiest day ; 
 How beautiful wilt thou be when thou proclaimest my happier days, 
 Shining on my forgotten tomb, 
 bow of heaven ! bow of heaven ! 
 
 At the death of my dear companion, 
 
 The pure snow-flakes of winter 
 
 Fell as a sweet testimony 
 
 Into her open grave. 
 
 And thus, O bow of heaven! 
 
 Do thou bring me a friendly testimony 
 
 On the day of my death. 
 
 God hath sustained me in the days of trouble; 
 
 My soul, give praise to the Eternal, 
 
 For God Himself dwells in thee, 
 
 In thee is His temple. 
 
 Praise God, my soul, 
 
 Priestess of the temple of thy God ! 
 
 Neither the heights of the earth, nor the heights of the heavens, 
 
 Neither the sea of stars, nor the army of clouds, 
 
 Shall pluck from thy being the presence of thy Creator. 
 
 No human science, no worldly honour 
 
 Can take away thy God, whom thou seest in thyself, 
 
 As thou dost in the spider and the worm. 
 
 Rest and mountain air, however, soon restored the old 
 man's strength and calmness, and he returned to Yverdun. 
 It was then that his friends tried once more to rescue him 
 from Schmidt's domination, and make his last days happy 
 and peaceful. Jullien, Fellenberg, and Charles Hitter 
 endeavoured between them to find some means of saving 
 the old man and his institute. Pestalozzi went several 
 times to Hofwyl, often staying some considerable time. On 
 these occasions he always recovered his courage and cheer- 
 fulness, and worked unceasingly at his exercises for the 
 elementary teaching of language. One evening even, after 
 walking from Berne to Hofwyl, a distance of nearly four 
 miles, he asked for a light, that he might write, according 
 
326 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 to habit, through the night. Fellenberg, wishing to spare 
 the old man the noise of his school, had found rooms for 
 him in the neighbourhood in the house of a Dutch gentle- 
 man, Mr. Van Muyden, who took a great interest in all 
 questions of education, and afterwards became a Councillor 
 of State in Lausanne. 
 
 On the 17th October, 1817, after much discussion, Pesta- 
 lozzi and Fellenberg drew up an agreement in eighteen 
 articles, the principal provisions of which were as follows : 
 
 A poor-school was to be founded, at a place to be deter- 
 mined afterwards, according to the plans and directions of 
 Pestalozzi. This school was, financially, to be quite inde- 
 pendent of the institute at Yverdun, which, in its turn, was 
 to be reorganized under the joint supervision of Pestalozzi 
 and Fellenberg, who together would appoint a director and 
 the staff necessary for a good educational establishment for 
 the middle classes. The institute was henceforth to be 
 self-supporting, and any surplus in the receipts was to be 
 employed for the admission of poor children. When Schmidt 
 was no longer necessary at the institute, he would leave 
 Yverdun, and come and direct the new poor-school under 
 Pestalozzi, who would provide him with two assistants. To 
 guarantee the existence of the institute and poor-school, 
 these two foundations would be placed under the protection 
 of a large Commission, composed, with their consent, of the 
 following friends of humanity : Zellweger, of Trogen ; de 
 Rougemont, of Neuchâtel ; May de la Schadau, of Berne ; 
 de Mollin, of Lausanne ; and Father Girard, of Freiburg. 
 Gottlieb, Pestalozzi's grandson, was to go at once to Hofwyl 
 to take a course of instruction in practical agriculture, and 
 to see the working of Fellenberg's poor-school, so that he 
 might be in a position to manage the Neuhof estate, as well 
 as the school which Pestalozzi was anxious to establish 
 there. 
 
 But Schmidt had made Pestalozzi promise not to conclude 
 anything without consulting him; and so the old man, 
 although he agreed with Fellenberg on all the points of the 
 agreement, would not sign it till a clause had been inserted 
 leaving him free to withdraw at the shortest notice. 
 
 As a matter of fact, Schmidt disapproved of the whole 
 arrangement, and persuaded Pestalozzi that this agreement 
 left him entirely at Fellenberg's mercy. The matter, there- 
 
DEATH-AGONY OF THE INSTITUTE. 327 
 
 fore, fell through, the natural consequence of which was 
 that from this time the old man's friends no longer dared 
 attempt anything in his favour. 
 
 In an account of Pestalozzi's last years that he afterwards 
 published, Pellenberg relates the whole of these negotiations 
 in detail, with documents in corroboration, and judges 
 Schmidt with extreme severity, declaring that he was 
 actuated merely by motives of personal interest. But how- 
 ever this may have been, we are strongly of opinion that a 
 lasting connection between Pestalozzi and Fellenberg was 
 no more possible in 1817 that it had been in 1805. By the 
 end of 1817, Jullien, all the French boys, a large number 
 of other pupils, and most of the good masters had left the 
 institute, which in every respect was in a most deplorable 
 condition. 
 
 On the other hand, however, the subscription to Pesta- 
 lozzi's works had met with extraordinary success, so great 
 still was the sympathy for the celebrated old man in many 
 parts of Europe. The Emperor of Russia, the King of 
 Prussia, and the King of Bavaria had each subscribed largely, 
 and, thanks to the ability of Schmidt, and to the kindness 
 and care of the publisher, Cotta of Stuttgart, the author of 
 Leonard and Gertrude, without having run the least risk, 
 was the fortunate recipient of some two thousand pounds. 
 
 This success revived Pestalozzi's courage and hope, but 
 also, alas ! his illusions. He thought the moment had at 
 last come for realizing the dreams of his life, and accordingly 
 sent for his grandson Gottlieb, his sole heir, in the hope of 
 being able to fit him for carrying on his work. 
 
 Gottlieb, who had formerly been a pupil in the institute 
 at Yverdun, had shown so little taste for study that his 
 grandfather had thought it better that he should learn some 
 handicraft. He had therefore become a tanner at Zurich. 
 
 Pestalozzi's discourse of the 12th of January, 1818, his 
 seventy-second birthday, is one of the most interesting and 
 important he ever made. In it we find his educational and 
 philanthropical views stated perhaps with more force and 
 clearness than anywhere else ; all his projects, plans, and 
 hopes for the future ; and, lastly, his feelings with regard 
 to the various people he has about him, and even the old 
 friends who have just left him. 
 
 As the length of the discourse prevents us from giving it 
 
328 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 in full, we shall translate those parts only which seem to us 
 the most instructive : 
 
 u I now find myself in the position of a father, who, seeing 
 his end approaching, and being anxious to prepare his house- 
 hold, calls his people around him, and solemnly opens his 
 heart to them about the state of his house, the projects and 
 desires of his life, and entreats them not to disappoint him 
 in their efforts for the realization of his hopes. 
 
 " To-day I enter on the seventy-third year of my life, a 
 life which has always been rather public than private. And 
 so it is not my private life, my own personal position, that 
 occupies my mind at this moment ; I am thinking rather 
 of my public work, for the continuation of which after my 
 death I am most anxious to provide, and of the little that 
 I have been able to do towards a great end, the discovery 
 and diffusion, that is, of true principles of philanthropy and 
 education, an end which requires the earnest co-operation of 
 all men devoted to their country and humanity. 
 
 " Friends ! I feel to-day obliged to say, and I say it with 
 a firm and unalterable conviction, that our part of the world, 
 so far at least as education and the condition of the poor 
 are concerned, has long been plunged in a foul atmosphere 
 of error, and that men, in their attempts to mend matters, 
 have employed such unnatural and artificial means, that 
 they have only succeeded in making matters worse. This 
 error has indeed pervaded the mind, sentiments, and habits 
 of men to such a degree, that truth and love are powerless 
 against it; it is like a thick, impenetrable fog, against 
 which the sun is powerless. I am aware that what I am 
 now saying will be misunderstood, but that will be only 
 because this erroneous habit of thought has become, for the 
 men of our century, almost a second nature. And just 
 as this inveterate error perverts the views and methods of 
 those who are willing to help the needy, so it perverts 
 the views, sentiments, and aspirations of those who require 
 the help. 
 
 " But I, who speak to yon, am dead to the present ; this 
 world and century are nothing more to me. I am possessed 
 by a dream, by the thought of what the education of man, 
 of the people, of the poor, will be, in a world shorn of false- 
 ness and artificiality. And now, as I indulge in my dream, 
 
DEATH-AGONY OF THE INSTITUTE. 329 
 
 it inspires me, and I see that higher education of the soul 
 as a tree planted by the waterside. Behold it, with its roots, 
 trunk, branches, and fruit ! Whence are they ! See, you 
 put a small kernel in the ground, and in that kernel is the 
 spirit of the tree, its essence and its life. But the Father 
 and Creator of the kernel, as of the fruitful ground, is God, 
 and it is He who makes the seed to grow, 
 
 " The seed is the spirit of the tree, and makes a body for 
 itself. See it when it leaves the bosom of the earth, its 
 mother ; even now it has already put forth its first roots, 
 for as its internal essence develops, its external envelope 
 must disappear. Its inner organic life has now passed into 
 the root, and from the root everything, pith, wood, bark, 
 and fruit will come. In trunk, branches, and twigs it is 
 always the same pith, wood, and bark, — distinct and separate, 
 yet continuous and connected, — protecting, sustaining, and 
 nourishing each other, living the same organic life, and 
 developing in accordance with Nature and the essence of the 
 tree. 
 
 " As the tree grows, so, too, does man. Even before the 
 child is born there are within him the invisible germs of 
 those tendencies that life will develop. The various powers 
 of his being and his life are developed, as in the tree, by 
 remaining united, yet distinct, during the whole course of 
 his existence. 
 
 " And just as the essential parts of the tree, animated 
 by the invisible spirit of their physical organism, working 
 together, that is, in the sure and pre-established harmony 
 of God, co-operate, though distinct, in the formation of the 
 final product of their power, the fruit ; so, too, in the man, 
 all the faculties of knowledge, power, and will, distinct but 
 united by the invisible spirit of the human organism, work- 
 ing together in the Divine harmony of faith and love, 
 co-operate to form that spiritual being distinct from flesh 
 and blood, that eternal witness to justice and holiness, man 
 created in the image of God to become perfect as his Father 
 in heaven is perfect. 
 
 " It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing. 
 The spirit of man is not in any particular physical power, 
 it is not in what we call his strength, nor in his hands, nor 
 in his brain. No, his real and effective strength, the point 
 where his powers meet, is in his faith and love. . , . 
 23 
 
33o PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 These forces of the heart, faith and love, do for immortal man 
 what the root does for the tree. . . . 
 
 " But do not only look at the tree that nourishes, look also 
 at that whose root lights upon a hard rock, a burning dry 
 sand, or a stagnant pool ! Then watch the root dry up and 
 wither, and mark how the whole tree perishes with it! 
 Then examine yourselves, and see whether the organic 
 powers which were intended to give you life are not decay- 
 ing and leaving you in danger of perishing." 
 
 After having developed the foregoing ideas, and admitted 
 that the human organism differs from the vegetable and 
 animal organism in the possession of liberty and conscience, 
 Pestalozzi explains that it is the part of education to en- 
 courage and direct the development of the best powers of the 
 child, as a gardener encourages and directs the growth of a 
 tree. He then adds : 
 
 " Each of our moral, intellectual, and physical powers must 
 depend for its development upon itself alone, and not on any 
 artificial external influences. Faith, that is, must proceed 
 from faith, and not from the knowledge and understanding of 
 what is to be believed ; thought must proceed from thought, 
 and not from the knowledge and understanding of what is to 
 be thought or of the laws of thought ; love must proceed from 
 love, and not from the knowledge and understanding of what 
 love is and of what deserves to be loved ; art, too, must pro- 
 ceed from actual art and skill, and not from endless discus- 
 sions about them. And this return to the true method of 
 Nature for the development of our powers, absolutely requires 
 the work of education to be subordinated to the knowledge 
 of the various laws which control those powers. . . ." 
 
 Pestalozzi then passes in review his whole life, so far at 
 least as it has been devoted to searching for the means of 
 raising the people by education. He acknowledges that he 
 has always been too incapable to succeed in any of his enter- 
 prises ; but experience, which has taught him many things, 
 still instructs him every day, and now he thanks God for 
 not having permitted him to put his hand to the work before 
 he was ready, and for having forced him in this way to 
 labour continually. He brought ruin and suffering upon him- 
 self by trying to establish a home for the poor at Neuhof, and 
 
DEATH-AGONY OF THE INSTITUTE. 331 
 
 yet the memory of that attempt is dear to him, and although 
 the property costs him much more than it brings in, he has 
 never been willing to sell it, for he still hopes to found a 
 school for the poor there, and is looking forward to beginning 
 the necessary repairs next spring. Farther on he acknow- 
 ledges that an institution of this kind can in no way replace 
 a home warmed by the love of father and mother, and 
 adds : 
 
 " The religious spirit which sheds a blessing on the 
 domestic hearth, still exists in our midst, but is without 
 inner life, and is reduced to a mere reasoning spirit which 
 does nothing but discourse on what is holy and what is 
 Divine. . . . However, the blessed spirit of the true 
 doctrine of Christ seems to throw out new and deep roots in 
 the midst of the corruption of our race, and to maintain in 
 thousands of souls a pure inner life. It is, in truth, to that 
 alone that we can look for the principles and power neces- 
 sary for battling with the ideas, sentiments, desires and 
 habits of our century, chief cause, as it seems to me, of the 
 debasement of the people. It is by this means alone that we 
 can resume and employ beneficently the only true methods 
 of popular and national education, methods which God has 
 placed in the home and maintained from time immemorial 
 by the inexhaustible treasure of parental love." 
 
 Pestalozzi then asks what there is to be done to fight the 
 evil he has just described, and suggests seven chief lines of 
 action. He points out that it is neither with the rich nor 
 the poor that the first efforts must be made, but with the 
 great middle-class, with whom success will be much easier 
 than with the others, because they have, in a measure, pre- 
 served the habits and virtues of the domestic hearth. More- 
 over, it is from the middle class that regeneration will spread 
 most surely and easily to the other portions of society, for, 
 on the one hand, they give instructors to the rich, and on the 
 other, they supply the poor with the example and advice of 
 protectors, near enough to them to know them well and to 
 be sure of being listened to. 
 
 It is because the institute of Yverdun is intended for 
 middle-class children that Pestalozzi attaches such great 
 value to it as a means of regeneration, and is so anxious for 
 
332 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 its continuance after his death. He declares that he could 
 not have found a country, town, or spot more fitted for his 
 purpose, and congratulates himself on the sympathy, facilities 
 and welcome accorded him by the authorities and inhabitants 
 of Yverdun, and especially by the educated portion of the 
 community. It is at Yverdun, moreover, that he has made 
 many important preparations, and it is at Yverdun that his 
 institution must remain. After having developed the fore- 
 going ideas at considerable length, Pestalozzi comes back 
 once more to his doctrine of elementary education, as being 
 the only means of regenerating, not merely the poor, but all 
 classes of society. He then continues : 
 
 "Elementary education is nothing else but a supreme 
 return to the truest and simplest form of educational art, the 
 education of the home. This is indeed the supreme art. 
 Its means are not special gifts of knowledge and skill, 
 like the watering-pots with which a gardener waters a 
 thirsty ground, after which the earth dries up again and 
 waits for a careful hand to water it once more ; no, no ; the 
 means of elementary education are rather like a running 
 spring which is always flowing and never allows the ground 
 to dry. No, no ; the effects of true elementary culture are 
 not transient, for it is they that set in action those powers 
 of human nature on which all skill and knowledge de- 
 pend. . . . 
 
 " With the two thousand pounds resulting from the sub- 
 scription, I propose to form an inalienable capital, the annual 
 interest of which will be perpetually employed as follows : 
 
 " 1. To continue experiments in pursuit of ever simpler 
 means for elementary teaching in the home. 
 
 "2. To train in this spirit and for this purpose, proper 
 masters and mistresses. 
 
 " 3. To found one or several model schools for the instruc- 
 tion of children according to the principles indicated above. 
 
 "4. To continue the search for the most suitable means of 
 regenerating domestic education among the people. 
 
 " Now I have done my part according to my strength, and 
 have deposited my mite on the altar of my country and of 
 humanity. But my age tells me that my personal influence 
 cannot last much longer, for which reason I shall do all that 
 is necessary to strengthen my establishment by outside sup- 
 
DEATH-AGONY OF THE INSTITUTE. 333 
 
 port. I shall address myself to de Rougemont, of Neuchâtel ; 
 Mollin, of Lausanne ; Doxat, of Turin ; and Constançon, of 
 Yverdun ; I am, indeed, already in communication with the 
 two last concerning my financial arrangements, and shall ask 
 these gentlemen to receive all moneys resulting from the sub- 
 scription, invest it safely, and pay the interest each year to 
 the persons appointed by me to carry on my work. 
 
 I am well aware that the amount produced by the subscrip- 
 tion is quite inadequate for such a purpose ; but I look upon 
 our past labours and experiments as the real capital of my 
 foundation, and I should hope, too, that the mite I add will 
 not remain quite alone. By the work of my life, and by 
 that of Niederer, Krusi, Mieg, Jullien, de Murait, Henning, 
 and many other friends, most of whom are now far away, the 
 interest of a great number of men has been aroused in favour 
 of our enterprise, the importance of which is generally felt. I 
 hope, therefore, that a large number of my contemporaries will 
 take part in it, and that my small contribution will disappear 
 under the abundance of their gifts." 
 
 Pestalozzi then announces that he will work to the end of 
 his days to increase his contribution ; that he will leave the 
 subscription open, and add to his works many important 
 manuscripts, as yet incomplete ; and further that he is going 
 to begin at once the publication of a journal, entitled, Journal 
 of the Foundations of Yverdun. In short, he will no longer 
 consider the institute of Yverdun as his private property, but 
 as having an independent moral personality of its own. He 
 also points out that the income of the institute will be very 
 small during the first few years. 
 
 Pestalozzi refers once more to his attempt to found a school 
 for the poor at Neuhof fifty years before, and regrets that his 
 wife, to whose devotion he then owed so much, is not still 
 living to see him resume the execution of this project. He 
 also thanks God for having consoled his old age by making it 
 possible for him to do this, and announces that he is on the 
 point of setting to work ; he wishes it, however, to be known 
 that the new asylum of Neuhof will merely bring help to a 
 few unfortunates who are suffering, and cannot wait; whereas 
 the entire realization of his ideal can only come later, and as. 
 the result of the work which will be carried on in his founda- 
 tions at Yverdur. 
 
334 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 Further on, Pestalozzi points out that in the middle classes 
 there are many families who cannot pay the price of their 
 children's schooling, and that it is precisely from these child- 
 ren, brought up in poverty and economy, that most is to be 
 expected for the success of his undertaking. For that reason 
 he has made up his mind to admit them into the institute at 
 reduced prices, provided only that their moral nature is good 
 and that they are thoroughly intelligent. Such children are 
 not accustomed to have wine and meat every day, nor will 
 they have them at the institute ; there will be a separate table 
 for them, but the moral equality will not be affected. Pes- 
 talozzi himself will eat with them, and he will take care that 
 they do not regret the other table. 
 
 After having thus exposed all his projects, Pestalozzi 
 addresses his grandson Gottlieb, who is once more present, 
 after an absence of four years. He thanks him for returning, 
 and for saying that he is ready to devote his life to his grand- 
 father's work, and to do his best to be like him, and that he 
 will be content with the fortune left by his grandmother, and 
 never regret that which has been given to the foundation. 
 Pestalozzi praises him for having thus chosen the good part ; 
 and says that he now feels free to make over everything he 
 possesses to his work, since he leaves his grandson a vocation 
 that is worth more than all the gold in the world. He in- 
 spires Gottlieb with courage, gives him advice, and tells him 
 that he will find Schmidt a strong and devoted support. After 
 reminding his hearers that Schmidt alone had saved and 
 sustained him, he proceeds to speak of him in terms of the 
 highest praise, denying, however, that he has ever made an 
 idol of him. Every one has his faults, and Schmidt has his ; 
 Pestalozzi, indeed, knows them well, for they often cause 
 him pain, but Schmidt has so many of the qualities that are 
 wanting in the old man, that it would be difficult to find 
 two men more different. Schmidt brings Pestalozzi power, 
 perseverance, and absolute devotedness. 
 
 Then he enters upon the divergencies of views which have 
 manifested themselves in his house, and the fatal dissensions 
 which followed. The explanation he gives is as follows : 
 
 In the first days of his association with his coadjutors, 
 Pestalozzi seemed to see that the world wished what he 
 wished, and loved what he loved ; the Government supported 
 him, the public admired all he did, often even before he himself 
 
DEATH-AGONY OF THE INSTITUTE. 335 
 
 quite knew what he wanted to do. Full of blind trust, he 
 thought everything easy, and so allowed himself to be drawn 
 into a complicated undertaking, without reflecting that he 
 was incapable of managing a numerous staff, and without 
 remarking that the truth accepted by all his coadjutors was 
 taking a different development with each of them, because they 
 were all free to work in their own way and follow their own 
 individuality. "When Pestalozzi perceived this, he thought 
 it better to shut his eyes to it, and his negligence in this re- 
 spect lasted for many years, in fact, till confusion and anarchy 
 were threatening the success of his work. Then at last he 
 felt the need of ruling, and, in his weakness, looking about 
 for help, he presently found a sure support. In this way he 
 came into collision with his collaborators, who all felt that 
 their own particular views were the only true ones. 
 
 Pestalozzi recognizes that he is himself the cause of this 
 evil, and blames nobody ; at the same time it seems to him 
 that his friends might rise above this divergence of ideas, and 
 work together for an object which is both great, just, and 
 holy. He has, to-day, surmounted many obstacles, and is at 
 last in possession of the means for realizing the projects which 
 have occupied his life, but he still needs capable and devoted 
 men at his side to support him. 
 
 He continues thus : 
 
 " I turn first to you, Niederer and Krusi. Now that I am 
 laying the foundations of a work that our grandchildren will 
 bless, it is to you I call ; become once more my sons and help 
 me in this undertaking. Some day, when our human sorrows 
 have been long forgotten, and our flesh long hidden in the 
 tomb, numbers of happy poor, profiting from our labours, and 
 blessing all who took part in the work, will bless you also as 
 members of this holy association. And you are, indeed, asso- 
 ciated with this work for the salvation of the poor, Niederer 
 and Krusi ; for you have spent a great part of your lives in 
 endeavouring to make it possible. I have not, it is true, suc- 
 ceeded as I could have wished, nor you either ; but without 
 you nothing would have been possible, and the service is great 
 that your lives have rendered to my undertakings. It is the 
 Lord's hand that has guided you towards my aim, my aim 
 which is also yours. Forget, then, what is behind you, and 
 march forward with me to our common aim. Embrace to-dav 
 
336 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 the cause of our foundation, and let us unite once more in 
 purity and hope. 
 
 " Niederer, I am laying to-da}?- the first stone of an edifice 
 which, small at first, may some day become the great temple 
 of education as you yourself conceive it, and which, with 
 God's blessing, is likely to realize your highest aspirations. 
 Niederer, I am incapable, from the very nature of my 
 mind, of teaching men the truth as I feel it, and so I ap- 
 proach my end by the heart only. But this is not enough, 
 and I need the help of men like you, who have the power of 
 seeing truth as a connected whole, a power I do not possess. 
 Have we not all different talents, Niederer ? Recognizing 
 yours, we feel that we need it to make our truth into a science, 
 and show the thinkers and teachers of the world that it is in 
 perfect harmony with faith in Jesus Christ. We recognize, 
 too, that by your efforts in this direction you are satisfying 
 the highest need of our time, and rendering a true service to 
 humanity. And, Niederer, we honour you for striving, in 
 your teaching, to free the human will from the power of the 
 flesh, an aim which must always remain the essential aim of 
 education. We have witnessed the success of your efforts 
 upon a great number of the noblest of our children, and at 
 this solemn hour, in thanking you for what you have done, we 
 entreat you not to deprive our establishment of your precious 
 influence, either now or after my death, 
 
 " And you, too, dear Krusi, think, I implore you, of the old 
 days, and believe that my friendship is unchanged. We still 
 prize your goodness and kindness, and are most anxious that 
 your heart should once more be ours. Think of the vast 
 amount of good to result from the means at present in our 
 hands. We once more ask your help in our common work 
 and for our common happiness. At the moment of setting 
 my house in order, Krusi, to go in peace to that place where 
 all the passions of life are ended, and all its difficulties and 
 illusions lost in God's soft light, at this solemn moment I beg 
 you to bring your whole energy back to the aid of this holy 
 and all-important work. 
 
 " I address myself to you, too, my dear Lange ; you brought 
 me help at a time when I was in urgent need, and when my 
 enterprise was struggling between life and death. . . . 
 Such hours of salvation are sacred, and inspire the truest and 
 deepest gratitude. Join us, then, in founding this new 
 
DEATH-AGONY OF THE INSTITUTE. 337 
 
 association, and become one of the leaders of our institute, 
 destined now to become far more important than it has ever 
 been, My friend, 3^ou are rejoining my establishment at. a 
 time when it is no longer anything but a moral personality, 
 solemnly consecrated to the poor, and unable to offer any 
 pecuniary advantage to those who work for it. 
 
 " And you, too, Schmidt ! You have renounced your rights 
 and interests not only for the present but for the future. But 
 I will not say any more about you now, for on several points 
 where I should but be expressing my inmost convictions, I 
 might not be believed. Continue only to do what you have 
 done hitherto, and, though you have been misunderstood, still 
 labour for me and my house with the strength you have 
 already devoted to the work. All opinions, no matter how 
 obstinately adhered to, will finally be overcome by persever- 
 ing action. 
 
 " I now address myself to you, my colleagues, and to all 
 whom it shall please God to send to us. I implore you all 
 to continue to take an active, affectionate and increasing 
 interest in this my life-work, for which to-day God is giving 
 me such help as may prove to be a fruitful source of blessing 
 for our country and humanity. Let us earnestly look to the 
 duties thus imposed upon us by Providence. 
 
 " Friends, the essential aim and first duty of our associa- 
 tion is not a new method of education, in spite of the fact 
 that the latter, by means of faith and love, is to bring about 
 a realization of the spirit of Christianity ; no, the chief aim 
 and first duty of our association is to take the most conscien- 
 tious care of the children entrusted to us, that we may both 
 carry out what we have promised and justify the hopes we 
 have raised. ... I have now more courage than ever, 
 for I know that I shall not die till I have done all that is 
 necessary to ensure my children being at every moment of 
 the day under the eyes of men working for their own salva- 
 tion in fear and trembling, and working for the children's 
 as for their own. Friends, I thank you for all you are doing 
 in our midst for art and science, and for the help you are to 
 me in the management of the establishment. But what I 
 particularly want to ask of you — and this is our holiest and 
 highest obligation — is that you will earnestly watch over our 
 children, praying both with them and for them. Friends and 
 brothers, in this solemn hour, when I am setting my house in 
 
338 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 order at the entrance of the valley of death, a valley, how- 
 ever, which leads to resurrection, I beg of you not to judge 
 of me by the weakness of my life, but to remember my words. 
 You know now with what feelings I call you all to this holy 
 alliance. Love one another, as Christ loved us. Love suffereth 
 long, and is kind ; love envieth not ; love vaunteth not itself, 
 is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh 
 not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil ; re- 
 joiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth; 
 beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, 
 endureth all things. Friends and brothers, do good to those 
 who hate you ; bless those who curse you ; heap coals of fire 
 on the head of your enemies. Let not the sun go down upon 
 your wrath. "When you bring an offering to the altar, first 
 be reconciled with your brother and then bring your offering. 
 Let there be no hardness among you, even towards those who 
 do us wrong. Let all human hardness disappear before the 
 holiness of our Christian faith. Let none of you excuse hard- 
 ness towards those who have done wrong. Let no one say 
 that Jesus did not love the unjust and the wrongdoers. He 
 loved them with a Divine love ; it was for them that He died. 
 It was not the just, but sinners that He called to repentance. 
 He did not find the sinner humble and faithful, but made him 
 so by His own faith and humility. It was, indeed, by His 
 Divine service in His most lowly position that He overcame 
 the pride of the sinner, and inspired him with the Divine faith 
 and love with which His own soul overflowed. Friends and 
 brothers, if we do likewise, and love each other as Christ 
 loved us, we shall then be able to surmount every obstacle 
 that separates us from the aim of our life, and found the 
 happiness of our house on the eternal rock on which Grod 
 Himself founded the happiness of humanity in Jesus Christ." 
 
 This discourse is interesting and instructive in many 
 ways; full of Pestalozzi himself, it yet bears traces here and 
 there of Schmidt's influence. We should like to have given 
 it in full, but in its first edition, it filled no less than a hun- 
 dred and thirteen pages. In Cotta's edition, however, there 
 were many long and important omissions, omissions which 
 can only be attributed to Schmidt. It no longer contains, for 
 instance, the urgent appeal to Niederer and Krusi, which, 
 as we shall see, remained without effect. As a general rule, 
 
DEATH-AGONY OF THE INSTITUTE. 339 
 
 Pestalozzi's real thoughts must be looked for in the first 
 edition of his works, which, unfortunately, is no longer to 
 be found. Seyffarth's edition, however, gives the original 
 text, together with most of the subsequent alterations. 
 
 Pellenberg relates, in his book already referred to, that 
 on the 12th of January, 1818, immediately after the old 
 man had finished his discourse, Schmidt announced that, 
 though he did not approve of Pestalozzi's gift, he was 
 anxious to associate himself unreservedly with his founda- 
 tion, and would therefore make over to him his whole fortune, 
 consisting of about two hundred and forty pounds. Pellen- 
 berg asserts that Schmidt did not really mean this ; that it 
 was, moreover, merely for the purpose of increasing the 
 subscriptions that he had induced Pestalozzi to announce 
 his plans for a new foundation; and that two years later, 
 when Gottlieb became his brother-in-law, it was also he who 
 compelled the old man to declare that he was not in a 
 position to carry out the engagements into which he had 
 entered ; but as it is known that Pellenberg greatly disliked 
 Schmidt, and judged him very harshly, such a statement 
 must be received with the extremest caution. 
 
 The poor-school, however, remained Pestalozzi's favourite 
 project ; he was always coming back to the idea, and forgot, 
 in this dream of his youth, the far greater plans which he 
 had only lately conceived. He was very anxious to at last 
 take some practical steps in this direction; but Schmidt, who 
 felt that there was enough to be done already, offered a 
 strenuous opposition. The old man insisted, and, in spite of 
 Schmidt's obstinate resistance, returned incessantly to the 
 attack. An absurd episode of the struggle has been related 
 by an entirely reliable eye-witness — a lady who, in 1818, 
 was living, a child of thirteen, in the Castle at Yverdun, and 
 who in 1874 was still alive in Burgdorf. She tells how 
 Pestalozzi one day earnestly begged Schmidt to allow him 
 to found his poor-school; how the latter, refusing to listen, 
 turned his back and ran away, and how the old man pursued 
 him for some time, and at last, angry at being unable to 
 catch him, threw his shoes at him. 
 
 And yet this time it was Pestalozzi who got the upper 
 hand ; for in this same year, 1818, the poor-school was 
 opened at Clendy, a hamlet just outside Yverdun, in the 
 house afterwards occupied by Daulte's boarding-school, It 
 
340 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 began with twelve poor children, of both sexes, most of them 
 orphans, or forsaken by their parents. In spite of his 
 seventy-two years, the old man devoted himself to them 
 with the same activity, the same zeal, the same love as in 
 his youth, and, what seems hardly credible, with the same 
 wonderful success as had crowned his first efforts at Neuhof, 
 Stanz, and Burgdorf. Such is the power that an education 
 which conforms to the laws of human nature has over the 
 heart, that this man, absent-minded, awkward and incapable 
 in practical life, and entirely without external advantages, 
 was able, as though by enchantment, not only to gain the 
 attention and affection of the children by whom he was 
 surrounded, but to make them eager to learn. 
 
 In a few months the number of the children at Clendy 
 had risen to thirty, and marvellous progress had been made. 
 To give some idea of the school, we will translate the 
 account given by Professor Heussler, one of Pestalozzi's best 
 biographers : 
 
 " Children of five and six years old joyfully spent hours 
 together at exercises in number and form, and even still 
 younger children learned something from merely being 
 present at the lessons. Some were so zealous that they 
 needed restraining rather than encouraging. The best 
 scholars were soon set to teach others, which they did well 
 and gladly. Winter and summer, day and night, they 
 would run off to Grandson, a village in the neighbourhood 
 of Yverdun, to give lessons to people older than them- 
 selves, often sitting up a part of the night. At Yverdun 
 their teaching was preferred to that of some of the masters. 
 'They know,' it was said, 'how to give instruction to the 
 children without letting them feel that they are expected 
 to learn anything, and often they seem to be drawing the 
 knowledge from the very children they are teaching.' " 
 
 This fresh success excited fresh admiration, and people 
 came from all sides to see the new school at Clendy. The 
 English were especially enthusiastic, as the Germans and 
 French had been previously. They even encouraged the old 
 man to think that England might be won over to his system 
 of education, and asked him to receive at Clendy a certain 
 number of rich children, who would pay for their instruction, 
 
DEATH-AGONY OF THE INSTITUTE. 341 
 
 and afterwards carry his method across the Channel. Pesta- 
 lozzi was weak enough to consent, and the character of his 
 institution soon changed. The teaching became less ele- 
 mentary and more scientific, English was studied, and at 
 the same time the internal arrangements lost something of 
 their original simplicity. 
 
 It was then that Schmidt, who had only reluctantly con- 
 sented to the foundation of a poor-school, cleverly took 
 advantage of this change in its character to prevent its 
 continuation. In view of the success that the scho]ars had 
 obtained in teaching, he advised Pestalozzi to turn it into a 
 training school, and transfer it to the Castle, where all the 
 necessary means of instruction were ready to hand. In a 
 pamphlet published in 1820, entitled, A Word on the State 
 of my Pedagogical Labours and the Organization of rny 
 Institute, Pestalozzi himself admits that this advice was 
 given him by Schmidt. 
 
 But the idea of uniting the two establishments in the 
 Castle already existed in the spring of 1819, as is clear from 
 a printed leaflet, which was freely circulated in Yverdun 
 and the neighbourhood. This leaflet was written in Prench, 
 signed by Pestalozzi, and dated the 26th of May, 1819 ; it 
 ran as follows : 
 
 "Por the fifteen years that I have been settled in this 
 town, my educational establishment has been freely open to 
 everybody from morning till night, not indeed without 
 certain inconvenient results, which were, however, not 
 entirely insupportable, and to which I have submitted in 
 consideration of the circumstances. But these circumstances 
 having now in part changed, this easy access can no longer 
 continue, at any rate to the same extent. And so, although 
 it is part of my plan to act openly, and although I desire 
 nothing better than to make my efforts and experiments 
 known to all who are interested in education, I cannot help 
 begging those who may wish to see my institute at Clendy, 
 to leave word first at the office of the Castle, so that a con- 
 venient hour may be fixed for their visit. 
 
 " As the children of the new establishment form rather 
 a family than a school, and take part in the domestic work 
 of the house, they are no more prepared to receive visits 
 from strangers at any moment than any other family. As, 
 
342 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 too, it is my duty to fit these children for their ultimate 
 duties as quickly as possible, I am obliged to observe the 
 strictest economy in the employment of their time. The 
 results of their education will, p]ease God, soon be visible 
 in the institute of the Castle, and I shall be in a position, 
 not only to carry out on a much larger scale what is being 
 done at Clendy by the children themselves, but also to open 
 a course of lessons in those parts of the method already 
 perfected, for persons not attached to the institute of the 
 Castle, lessons to which the most advanced children of the 
 institute of Clendy will be admitted, and in some of which 
 they will be employed. There will shortly be lessons in 
 the English language, for instance, given at the Castle by 
 Englishmen, and not only to men, but to women, if there 
 are any who desire it. Some Englishmen are coming next 
 summer to study certain branches of the method, and I will 
 willingly grant permission to other persons to attend the 
 lessons they will give. The public may rest satisfied that 
 I shall in no wise slacken in my efforts for the improvement 
 of education ; but though I am perfectly ready to put myself 
 at the service of all who take a real interest in my work, 
 nobody can be offended if I ask that my two institutes may 
 be spared such visits as have no other motive but curiosity, 
 and only uselessly waste my time and that of the children 
 entrusted to my care." 
 
 It is a very great pity that Pestalozzi should have put his 
 name to this document, which aimed, it is true, at doing 
 what was really necessary and ought to have been done long 
 before, but which at the same time degenerates into a sort 
 of advertisement in which we no longer recognize the noble- 
 hearted educational reformer. 
 
 In July of that same year, the institute of Clendy was 
 united with that of Yverdun in the Castle, the young girls 
 being installed in the second storey of the north wing, in 
 the rooms formerly occupied by Pestalozzi and his wife. At 
 the same time various repairs were carried out in the Castle, 
 several new rooms being built in the towers, and fire-places 
 supplied to those rooms that were without them. 
 
 On the 23rd of July, 1819, the Yverdun municipality, 
 having to communicate with Pestalozzi concerning the 
 repairs, took advantage of the occasion to let him know 
 
DEATH-AGONY OF THE INSTITUTE. 343 
 
 that they regretted this fusion of the two schools, and that 
 public opinion did not at all approve of young people of 
 different sexes being brought together in the same building. 
 
 The Clendy poor-school had only lasted a year, but it had 
 brought the old man one more taste of joy. In these last 
 days, days embittered by disappointment and failure, it had 
 shone for a moment brightly and serenely, as though in 
 answer to the desire he had expressed at Bullet for a rain- 
 bow to shine upon his tomb. 
 
 This last success, short-lived as it was, was not without 
 important results for humanity. The little children, who 
 were assembled at Clendy, amused, occupied and instructed 
 by the rational, gentle and paternal discipline of Pestalozzi, 
 furnished the model of one of the most valuable educational 
 institutions of our century. Speaking of this in his Remi- 
 niscences, Professor Vulliemin says : 
 
 "The effect of Pestalozzi's action has already lasted longer 
 than his institute, and longer than he himself, nor will it 
 cease for a long time to come ; for though the flower and fruit 
 have disappeared, the seed has been scattered over the globe. 
 There is no new book on education in which Pestalozzi's 
 name does not occupy a place of honour. Think, too, of the 
 mothers taught by him to give increased care and attention 
 to their children's early years, and of the schools that are 
 the better for his influence. As for the infant schools, which 
 nowadays exist everywhere, it was he who originated them, 
 in a manner which I myself saw, and will now describe. 
 
 " The Yverdun institute was drawing near its end, when 
 Pestalozzi, at the age of seventy-two, conceived the idea of 
 returning to his earliest interests, and founding outside the 
 institute a school for poor children. You know the hamlet 
 of Clendy, on the shore of the lake to the east of Yverdun. 
 It was there that I saw him resume his first efforts, with the 
 same devotion, the same youthful enthusiasm, and with even 
 a purer faith ; there that I saw him obtain the same suc- 
 cesses, and split on the same rocks. Clendy fell, as, before 
 very long, the great institute itself was to fall. But there 
 was a man there who had taken part in the short-lived 
 enterprise, a man of Christian spirit and enlightened under- 
 standing. This man, who was an Englishman, by name 
 Greaves, carried the ideas he had gathered at Clendy back 
 
344 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 to England, where they took root, and became the origin of 
 infant schools. From England these schools returned to us, 
 first to Greneva, then to Nyon, then everywhere. We had 
 not understood Pestalozzi ; but when his methods came back 
 from England, though they had lost something of their 
 original spirit, their meaning and application were clear." 
 
 The year 1820 was another time of illusions and dreams 
 for Pestalozzi. He had brought together in the Castle rich 
 and poor, boys and girls, an elementary class for little chil- 
 dren, a school and a training college. The poorer children, 
 who were admitted out of charity and paid little or nothing, 
 lived more simply than the rich, and during the hours of 
 recreation, when the others were enjoying themselves, took 
 part in the domestic work. As a general rule, it was out 
 of these poorer children that the future schoolmasters and 
 schoolmistresses were to be made. 
 
 Schmidt had probably only consented to this amalgamation 
 from motives of economy, but to Pestalozzi it meant a new 
 and important condition of success for his work. In order 
 to get others to share his opinion in this matter, he pub- 
 lished the pamphlet already referred to, entitled, A Word on 
 the State of my Pedagogical Labours 1 etc., which begins thus : 
 
 u In acquainting the public to-day with the new organiza- 
 tion of my establishment, I find myself compelled, on the one 
 hand, to say a few words as to my previous efforts in the 
 cause of education, and on the other, to give a few general 
 explanations as to what I feel able and bound to do for the 
 purpose of consolidating my work, and assuring its con- 
 tinuation after my death." 
 
 After reminding his readers that the aim of his earlier 
 labours was to comfort and raise the people by education, 
 and after admitting that he lacked the necessary strength 
 and capacity when he founded his institute of Burgdorf, he 
 speaks of the dissension with which his own weakness has 
 surrounded him as being the chief cause of the defects 
 which have ruined his work. But to-day these troubles 
 have disappeared, and all his collaborators are harmoniously 
 walking in the path that leads straight to his end. Nor is 
 the progress of the institute any longer hampered by the 
 
DEATH-AGONY OF THE INSTITUTE. 345 
 
 financial difficulties from which it has long suffered. But 
 as, notwithstanding all this, the public is not yet able to 
 appreciate the bearing of his labours, he concludes that 
 their prejudices will have to be eradicated, not by words, 
 but by action and by time. He then continues : 
 
 " The resolution of my grandson to continue my work, to 
 dedicate his whole life to it, and to unite himself to my 
 friend Schmidt by the closest ties, 1 gives our undertaking, 
 even from a financial point of view, as much solidity as we 
 could desire. 
 
 " But what is still more important than financial sound- 
 ness, and all other external means for forwarding our work, 
 is that, by my new institution for forming masters and 
 mistresses, I have succeeded in laying a sure foundation for 
 the realization of the most important parts of my earlier 
 undertakings, a statement which no one will doubt after 
 seeing the results of the union of my two institutes, which 
 has now lasted for more than eighteen months. 
 
 " The facts will show that the children of the two insti- 
 tutes joyfully work together, full of kindness, help and 
 mutual attentions, each of them advancing according to 
 his diligence and talents without either jealousy or humilia- 
 tion. Yes, I venture to say, with the most profound con- 
 viction, that when rich and poor children live together in 
 the same institution, under different regulations and condi- 
 tions, they may often find in this very circumstance a most 
 valuable means of moral development." 
 
 Pestalozzi then explains at length the advantages of his 
 new organization. In the first place, his institute being 
 more like a family than a school, the children enjoy all the 
 advantages of home life, and become imbued with a sense 
 of what is owing to parents and brothers and sisters ; both 
 boys and girls, too, learn something of the gentleness, 
 modesty, and respect which should, in ordinary life, charac- 
 terize the relations between the sexes. In the second place, 
 he speaks of the social advantages of his institute, and the 
 wholesome influence they are likely to exercise in the future. 
 Children of both rich and poor mix freely together, the 
 
 1 Soon after this Gottlieb married Schmidt's sister. 
 24 
 
346 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 difference in tastes and habits, however, and in the positions 
 they will some day be called upon to occupy being strictly 
 kept in view ; they receive the same education and the 
 same elementary instruction, and profit equally from all 
 the resources of the institute. In this way they learn to 
 know and respect one another, and on going out into the 
 world do much to weaken the prejudices which foster such 
 dangerous antagonism between the different classes of 
 society. 
 
 Pestalozzi recognizes with regret that his magnificent 
 ideal of social regeneration has not yet been realized in his 
 own establishment, but the experience of the last year and 
 a half leaves no doubt in his mind as to its possibility. He 
 also recognizes his own incapacity, but counts on Schmidt, 
 who already bears the whole burden, to continue and com- 
 plete his work. After once more speaking in terms of the 
 highest praise of this valiant collaborator, whose full value 
 he alone appreciates, he concludes by giving the conditions 
 of admission, terms, etc., for the different classes of pupils. 
 
 But neither Pestalozzi's experiment, nor the pamphlet 
 which gave such a favourable account of it, succeeded in 
 convincing the public. The well-to-do parents, little inclined 
 to believe in the value of such a mixed institution, removed 
 their children without delay, and Pestalozzi once more found 
 himself in a position of grave financial embarrassment. 
 
 The year 1821 was filled with Pestalozzi's, or rather 
 Schmidt's disputes with the Yverdun Municipality ; for, in 
 spite of the great falling off in the number of the pupils, 
 and in spite of the fact that most of those who remained 
 were poor children, Pestalozzi actually allowed himself to 
 be persuaded that the rooms were not comfortable enough, 
 and required considerable alteration. Accordingly, on the 
 12th of January, he w T rote to the Municipality reproaching 
 them with causing the decline of the institution by their 
 neglect of the buildings, asking for repairs to the amount 
 of nearly two hundred pounds, and threatening legal pro- 
 ceedings if they did not carry out their engagements. 
 
 On the 2nd of February the Municipality, which till now 
 had always readily acceded to Pestalozzi's requests, replied 
 that these recriminations and threats were in striking con- 
 trast with the friendliness of their previous relations, and 
 that it could only attribute the tone of Pestalozzi's letter 
 
DEATH-AGONY OF THE INSTITUTE. 347 
 
 to the secretary lie had been pleased to employ. It ex- 
 pressed surprise that additional accommodation should be 
 required when the number of pupils had so much diminished, 
 and pointed out that the nature of the institute had been 
 changed, on the one hand by the addition of the poor-school, 
 and on the other by the attempt to adapt the internal 
 arrangements to the luxurious habits and tastes of the many 
 English who had come there, and who were dissatisfied with 
 the simplicity of the life, a simplicity, however, which had 
 formerly been accompanied by so much prosperity. In con- 
 clusion, the Municipality promised that a Commission should 
 be appointed to confer with Pestalozzi, and see if some 
 understanding could be arrived at. 
 
 On the 13th of February, Pestalozzi, in another letter, 
 asks that the free use of the Castle to be granted after his 
 death to persons named by him, shall be not for five years 
 only but for twenty. 
 
 On the 24th, the Municipality suggests that the expense 
 of the repairs shall be borne partly by Pestalozzi and partly 
 by the town, and consents on these conditions to grant the 
 free use of the Castle for at least fifteen years from 1821. 
 In a further letter, on the 3rd of March, Pestalozzi refuses 
 to bear any part of the expense of the repairs. The Munici- 
 pality accordingly retracts its offer, and awaits the threat- 
 ened proceedings. 
 
 Before very long these proceedings were really commenced, 
 but only after the Municipality had made another fruitless 
 effort to come to an amicable arrangement. On the 17th of 
 August, and while the case was proceeding, a still further 
 effort was made, the Municipality offering to pay Pestalozzi 
 a hundred pounds on the condition that he would not ask 
 for any more money for five years, and that after that time 
 the expense of repairs should be divided equally between 
 himself and the town, the town's share never to exceed 
 fifteen pounds a year. 
 
 But this new proposal was also rejected, and the case 
 went on till the 15th of November, when Pestalozzi with- 
 drew. Even then, out of consideration for him, the munici- 
 pality undertook to pay the costs, which amounted to nearly 
 twenty pounds. 
 
 While Schmidt was thus compromising Pestalozzi's name 
 by these miserable disputes, the old man, paying little 
 
343 PESTALOZZI; HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 attention to administrative details, never ceased to work at 
 the application of his principles to elementary instruction 
 and the raising of the people. 
 
 On the 12th of January, 1822, his seventy-sixth birthday, 
 he presented a child with a copy of Leonard and Gertrude, 
 the gift being accompanied by the following letter : 
 
 " My dear Child ! 
 
 " If I were not so near the grave, if I could hope to see 
 with my own eyes your early development, I would not, in 
 memory of my experiences and views, offer you this poor 
 gift, but would joyfully devote all my remaining powers to 
 awakening and developing yours. 
 
 " But my time is past, and so I can only give you this 
 dead book, Leonard and Gertrude, to remind you of my 
 life. May it, by its impression on you, lead you to the same 
 wisdom, the same strength, and the same holiness in things 
 human as in things Divine ! 
 
 " My child, the world is full of evil; beware of its cunning 
 devices, its enchantments and its gold ; beware, above all, 
 of your own weakness. Learn to know yourself. Examine 
 and consider well what great powers God has given you, 
 what goodness and holiness He has put in your heart ; for 
 it is here that you will find your first help against your 
 flesh and against the world with its corruption. Pray God 
 that none of His precious gifts be lost through your own 
 fault. Bury none of your talents, like the worthless steward 
 in the Gospel, but endeavour in all things to become perfect 
 as your Father in heaven is perfect. Sanctify by faith and 
 love these gifts of God, that they may become holy powers 
 within you, devoted to the imitation of your Saviour and 
 the service of God and man. For, my dear child, in develop- 
 ing that which is Divine within you, you must not neglect 
 that which is human. Let your holiness go hand in hand 
 with the manifold duties of your earthly life, guiding you, 
 supporting you, and strengthening you at all times and in 
 all places. 
 
 " Pestalozzi. 
 
 " Yverdun, the 12th of January, 1822 ; my birthday." 
 
 This letter shows that at seventy-six years of age Pesta- 
 lozzi had lost none of his activity of heart and mind, 
 
DEATH-AGONY OF THE INSTITUTE. 349 
 
 although the poor old man blindly allowed himself to be 
 dragged into groundless law-suits and impossible undertak- 
 ings. But it is also interesting for another reason. At this 
 time the canton of Vaud was the scene of what has been 
 called a religious revival. To profound convictions on many 
 neglected points of Christian doctrine, the leaders of the 
 movement joined a narrow party-spirit, the tendency of 
 which was to place believers outside the conditions of 
 ordinary life, to the very great detriment of both family 
 and social relations. The letter shows us Pestalozzi, alarmed 
 by this tendency, endeavouring to ward off the danger from 
 a child in whom he is evidently deeply interested, the 
 essential point of his exhortation being as to the necessity 
 of not separating the Divine and human elements in our 
 lives. 
 
 During this same year, 1822, Pestalozzi continued to work 
 at the elementary teaching of language with the ardent 
 zeal and obstinate perseverance that form one of his most 
 remarkable characteristics. In this connection Miss Cha- 
 vannes, in her biography of Pestalozzi, quotes au interesting 
 passage from Professor Charles Monnard's article on him in 
 the Encyclopedic Review : 1 
 
 "The first thing to strike us, when we consider Pestalozzi's 
 career as a whole, is the decision and boldness with which 
 he had grasped, at the very outset, the central idea of all 
 his subsequent labours, labours which were continued even 
 upon his death-bed. As he thus began, as it were, with a 
 conception of his completed system, his first steps betokened 
 an assurance, and his first experiments a sincerity, an inde- 
 pendence, and a boldness which could only be the outcome 
 of genius. The astonishment of his contemporaries, their 
 mockery, their criticism, their indifference even, nothing 
 could daunt him. In his work, as in his writings, there is 
 indeed development and progression, but the aim is always 
 the same, and there is always the one dominant idea, the 
 soul of his labours as of his life. A single fact will suffice 
 to show the constancy with which he followed this idea, it 
 might almost be said, his only idea. In the last years of his 
 life, he endeavoured to apply his method to the study of 
 
 1 1836, p. 295. 
 
35o PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 Latin. As lie honoured the writer of this article with his 
 friendship and confidence, he came to him one day and 
 explained at some length what he had already accomplished. 
 This was in July, 1822. Shortly afterwards I had to take 
 a journey which kept me away from Pestalozzi for more 
 than eighteen months; but I was no sooner back than he 
 came to me again, and after asking for my family and health, 
 at once took up our conversation on the teaching of Latin 
 where we had dropped it in Jury, 1822, exclaiming : ' Let 
 us begin at once, and lose no time.' " 
 
 It is now our painful duty to turn to the deplorable 
 quarrels between Pestalozzi and Schmidt, and their old 
 collaborators. In the first place, Niederer, to excuse him- 
 self for having left the institute, attacked Schmidt ; and 
 then Schmidt, to justify himself, attacked Niederer. The 
 controversy became more and more bitter and violent. 
 Pestalozzi was not really concerned in it, but as he was 
 unwilling to leave Schmidt in the breach, he accepted the 
 responsibility of all his acts. Niederer, out of respect for 
 his former master, did what he could to spare him, but 
 unfortunately the severe blows he aimed at Schmidt all fell 
 on the old man. 
 
 The better to satisfy his animosity, Schmidt had invented 
 two ways of attacking his adversaries, both in the osten- 
 sible interests of Pestalozzi and his institute. 
 
 The first was in connection with the girls' school which 
 Pestalozzi had founded and made over to the Niederers. 
 Schmidt maintained that the transaction had never been 
 closed, and that there was still money owing to Pestalozzi, 
 an allegation which Niederer entirely denied. After the 
 dispute had lasted some years, Pestalozzi and Schmidt with- 
 drew their claim. 
 
 The other method was to induce the Government of the 
 canton of Vaud to forbid those of Pestalozzi's collaborators 
 who had left the institute to open private educational estab- 
 lishments in Yverdun; and with this object Pestalozzi 
 addressed a memorial to the Government, a copy of which 
 he sent, on the 23rd of October, 1818, to the Yverdun 
 Municipality, with the request that they would support his 
 demand. But the Municipality refused, saying that as 
 perfect liberty of action in such matters was guaranteed 
 
DEATH-AGONY OF THE INSTITUTE. 351 
 
 in the canton, the Council of State itself would not have 
 the right to do as he wished. On the 30th of the same 
 month, Niederer, Krusi and Naef asked the Municipality to 
 acquaint them with the tenor of Pestalozzi's memorial, a 
 request that was also refused. We do not know what precise 
 answer the Government made Pestalozzi, but it was bound 
 to be in the negative. 
 
 Niederer continued therefore to direct his institute for 
 girls, and Naef his for deaf mutes, while Krusi and Knusert 
 together founded a boarding-school for boys, the sole direc- 
 tion of which, however, soon devolved upon Knusert, Krusi 
 being called away to direct the cantonal school of Trogen in 
 his native canton. 
 
 Meanwhile Niederer had commenced proceedings against 
 Schmidt for libel. After a long trial, however, Schmidt was 
 acquitted. 
 
 But this state of things, which had already deprived the 
 institute of the support it most needed, and was now fast 
 bringing about its final ruin, made Pestalozzi exceedingly 
 unhappy, so that he was ready to do anything for the sake 
 of peace, except indeed the one thing necessary, which was 
 to dismiss Schmidt. • Since the death of his wife he had 
 been without the advice and affectionate sympathy that 
 for forty-five years had supported and cheered him through 
 the hardest trials ; and though his belief in his work, his 
 devotion, vivid imagination, and persevering activity were 
 still the same, they not infrequently gave way to periods 
 of grief and despondency. In February, 1823, during one 
 of these sad times, he wrote to the Niederers, begging them 
 to put an end to the proceedings they had instituted against 
 Schmidt, and in which the old man, anxious to answer for 
 his friend, had found himself involved. This letter, which 
 Pestalozzi afterwards printed in the Experiences, runs as 
 follows : 
 
 " I implore you, in the name of God, deliver me from the 
 martyrdom that I am suffering in this guilty war, which 
 for nearly six years has been raging between our two so- 
 called Christian institutions with wicked and anti-Christian 
 obstinacy. Think, my dear Niederer, of all we have hoped 
 together, and of what we have been for each other ; become, 
 so far as possible, my old friend again, as I would fain be 
 
352 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 once more yours. Oh, Niederer, would that our former love 
 might so strengthen and sanctify us that we might go and 
 take the sacrament together without fearing to cause sur- 
 prise and scandal amongst our neighbours ! . . . Dear 
 friends, I am standing on the brink of the grave ; will you 
 not let me go down to it in tranquillity ? But there is also 
 something left for me to do on earth ; I implore you, there- 
 fore, free me from the tortures that these miserable quarrel- 
 lings inflict upon me, that henceforth I may go on with my 
 work in peace. Grant me this help, and I promise you my 
 love and gratitude till my life's end." 
 
 One wonders how Niederer can have resisted such an 
 appeal, and whether he had completely lost the admiration 
 and respect he had once felt for Pestalozzi. This was cer- 
 tainly not the case, but the fact is that he dared not trust 
 the feeble old man so long as he remained such a mere tool 
 in Schmidt's hands. 
 
 Meanwhile the Vaudese Government, enlightened either 
 by Pestalozzi's request as to the collaborators who had left 
 the institute, or by the reports of the Yverdun municipality 
 on the proceedings that had been instituted against them, 
 had become aware of this unhappy state of things ; and, 
 fearful lest these painful disputes should result in the ruin 
 of a useful and celebrated institution, determined to put an 
 end to them. It accordingly instructed its representative 
 at Yverdun to interpose and make an effort to bring about 
 a reconciliation, which, after much trouble, he succeeded in 
 doing, the contending parties consenting to sign a sort of 
 treaty of peace, which was drawn up in French by Niederer 
 himself. It will be observed that in the preamble of this 
 document, which we give below, Pestalozzi occupied a place 
 apart, as if he were not really concerned in the matter : 
 
 11 The undersigned, Doctor Henry Pestalozzi, founder and 
 head of an educational institute in Yverdun, together with 
 Hermann Krusi, director of the cantonal school of Appenzell 
 at Trogen, Conrad Naef, head of an institute for deaf-mutes, 
 and Doctor Jean Niederer, minister of the Gospel and head 
 of an institute for girls, of the one part, and Joseph Schmidt 
 of the other part, having resolved to terminate their differ- 
 ences amicably, and in a manner consistent with the personal 
 
DEATH-A.GONY OF THE INSTITUTE. 353 
 
 character, dignity, and civil and social position of those 
 concerned, have agreed on the following points : 
 
 " I. They declare to be contrary to truth, their better 
 knowledge, and their real convictions, all the slanderous 
 statements and imputations that have, as the result of cer- 
 tain misunderstandings, been spoken, written, or printed 
 since the return of the above-named Joseph Schmidt to the 
 institute of Pestalozzi in 1815, whoever may have been the 
 subject of the said statements and wherever they may have 
 originated. They particularly make a formal retraction of 
 the charges and counter-charges made in connection with 
 certain financial disputes, as being without foundation, and, 
 so far as they affect the honour and uprightness of the 
 persons concerned, as being the result of a misapprehension 
 and of the heat of passion. 
 
 " II. The law-suits now pending to be withdrawn by the 
 proper party, each side paying its own costs. 
 
 " III. The still unsettled financial question to be referred 
 to four arbitrators, who, in the event of equal votes, shall 
 choose a further arbitrator to decide the matter. Each 
 "side to choose its own arbitrators, and to have absolute 
 freedom of choice. The decision to be made public, if so 
 desired. 
 
 " IV. As it is essential, on the one hand, that the internal 
 harmony of the establishments and the free action of those 
 who direct them be undisturbed, and, on the other, that the 
 means at present existing for Pestalozzi's undertaking be 
 made the best possible use of, Messrs. ÏSTaef and Niederer 
 offer to do what they can to further his efforts, provided, 
 that is, that they can be useful to him and that he makes 
 them a personal request, and on the understanding, of 
 course, that they will as carefully avoid all interference 
 with the internal relations and management of Pestalozzi's 
 institute as Pestalozzi would avoid interference with theirs. 
 
 " V. In the event of new misunderstandings and dissen- 
 sions arising in connection with Pestalozzi's wishes concern- 
 ing the before-mentioned persons and their establishments, a 
 contingency of which we are not at all afraid, the differences 
 to be settled in a frank and generous spirit by arbitrators 
 appointed in Yverdun itself. 
 
 " VI. In the event of Pestalozzi's unwillingness to make 
 the whole of this agreement public, Messrs, Krusi, Naef, 
 
354 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 and Niederer will be satisfied with the publication of the 
 first three points or the first alone. 
 
 " Yverdun, the 31s£ December, 1823. 
 
 " Pestalozzi, J. C. Naef, 
 
 J. Schmidt. J. Niederer, in my 
 
 own name and in 
 that of 
 Mr. Hermann Krusi." 
 
 This document was published in 1824 in the ninth volume 
 of Cotta's edition of Pestalozzi's works, where it is accom- 
 panied by a declaration, dated the 17th March, 1824, which 
 begins thus : 
 
 " I am grieved beyond measure to be obliged to insert 
 here this memorial of a most unhappy time ; but I cannot 
 do otherwise, for these hostilities, which from their first 
 causes to their final consequences lasted no less than ten 
 years, have crushed all my hopes by slowly destroying 
 every means I possessed of reaching the end to which I 
 had devoted my life. I hope the public will share the 
 sorrow I feel in thus being compelled to declare that these 
 circumstances have rendered the foundation from which I 
 expected such good results entirely impossible, and have 
 made me absolutely incapable of fulfilling the engagements 
 I contracted with so much ardour." 
 
 Pestalozzi then goes on to explain how these dissensions 
 brought trouble into his establishment, robbed him of the 
 confidence of the public, and so ruined his institute, upon 
 which he counted as a fundamental and indispensable part 
 of his projected enterprise. He adds, that he has spent his 
 last farthing, that he has even had to use some of his 
 grandson's money, that his pen is the only resource left him 
 for carrying on the work of his life, that he already has 
 several manuscripts almost completed, and that he is going 
 to work with redoubled zeal. 
 
 Few of Pestalozzi's friends read this declaration without 
 a feeling of burning shame. They accused Schmidt of having 
 excited illusory hopes in the old man so long as there was 
 a chance of increasing the subscription to his writings, of 
 having caused him to waste the proceeds of this subscrip- 
 
DEATH-AGONY OF THE INSTITUTE. 355 
 
 tion in law-suits and fruitless efforts to give an appearance 
 of vitality to an institute already as good as dead, and lastly, 
 of not having opened his eyes till it was impossible to go on 
 any longer. 
 
 The fact is that Pestalozzi never had the disposal of his 
 two thousand pounds ; that Schmidt, clever as he was, was 
 a very bad administrator ; and that the noble friend of 
 humanity died as poor as he had lived. 
 
 The final and complete ruin of his hopes seems to have come 
 upon Pestalozzi suddenly, for, a few weeks before the date 
 of his declaration to the public, he was still occupied with 
 the question of repairs, towards which, on the 30th of 
 January, 1824, the municipality had voted him a grant of 
 fifty pounds. 
 
 Meanwhile all the pupils in a position to pay had left the 
 institute, a few poor children alone remaining. Gottlieb 
 and his wife had gone to farm at Neuhof ; and Pestalozzi, 
 almost penniless, still owed the town arrears of rent for 
 the field that he had taken on lease in 1817. 
 
 The rest of this year, 1824, was spent in struggling 
 against these financial difficulties, the old man's distress at 
 one time being so great that he allowed himself to be per- 
 suaded to take a step which, in spite of our knowledge of 
 Schmidt's ascendancy over him, would be absolutely incre- 
 dible were it not that the proof of it is still to be seen in the 
 Yverdun archives. When pressed by the Municipality for the 
 arrears of rent above mentioned, the old man, in a letter dated 
 the 5th of November, 1824, asked that his debt should be re- 
 duced by the amount of an indemnity due to him for having 
 been to Basle in 1814 at the time when it seemed likely that 
 a military hospital would be established in Yverdun. 
 
 As Schmidt took the management of these financial matters 
 entirely out of Pestalozzi's hands, the old man was able to 
 devote a great deal of attention to his literary work. He 
 was chiefly engaged now in elaborating his elementary 
 exercises of language, but he also, about this time, com- 
 pleted and published a pamphlet of some eighty pages, 
 entitled : Views on Industry, Education, and Politics, in 
 connection ivith the State of our Country before and after 
 the Revolution, and bearing the motto, Know Thyself 
 
 In this interesting work, which deserves to be better 
 known, the author looks forward to a great development of 
 
356 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 industry and capital, and to a correspondingly great increase 
 in the numbers of those who, dependent upon their daily 
 earnings for a livelihood, are more exposed than any other 
 class to discontent and misery, a state of things which will 
 only serve to aggravate the existing antagonism between 
 the classes. The only remedy for all this lies, in his opinion, 
 in a good system of popular education. At the end of the 
 book are two appendices ; one giving " the picture of a poor- 
 school," the other treating of " the religious education of 
 the children of the poor." 
 
 Whilst Pestalozzi, carried away by his heart and imagina- 
 tion, was thus giving himself up to philanthropic specula- 
 tions, his ruin was slowly being consummated. 
 
 Schmidt's harshness and domineering spirit had made him 
 many enemies. People blamed him for the man}' unworthy 
 things Pestalozzi had done in the last few years, and re- 
 proached him for having caused the ruin of the institute. 
 Under these circumstances it was soon felt that it would be 
 well to get him out of the place, and so render a signal 
 service not only to Pestalozzi and his institute, but also to 
 the town. Schmidt had never complied with the formalities 
 that the law required from all strangers domiciled in the 
 canton, and ugly rumours — which, however, we have reason 
 to believe were unfounded — had been circulated about his 
 morality. Representations to this effect were now made to 
 the Council of State of the canton by some persons whose 
 names have never transpired, but whose opinions were 
 certainly shared by the great majority of the inhabitants 
 of Yverdun. These complaints had the desired result ; for 
 there is an entry in the secret register of the Council, dated 
 the 6th of October, 1824, which runs as follows : 
 
 11 The commissioners of police report that having been 
 informed that Mr. Victor Joseph Schmidt, a Tyrolese, had 
 encouraged certain acts of immorality in Mr. Pestalozzi's 
 institute at Yverdun, they instructed the justice of the 
 peace to examine Mr. Theodore Prank, a master in the said 
 institute, who was said to be in a position to give informa- 
 tion in the matter. 
 
 "From this gentleman's depositions, and from further 
 information furnished by the justice of the peace, Mr. 
 Schmidt appears to be gravely compromised. 
 
DEATH-AGONY OF THE INSTITUTE. 357 
 
 " The Council of State therefore, adopting, with certain 
 modifications, the suggestion of the commissioners, have 
 decided to expel Mr. Schmidt from the canton, and write the 
 following letters : 
 
 11 1. To the Justice of the Peace of the District of Yverdun. 
 " Sir,— 
 
 " The Council of State requests you to inform Mr. Victor 
 Joseph Schmidt, who is from another canton, and has been 
 living in Mr. Pestalozzi's institute without having first ob- 
 tained the right of residence in Yverdun, that he must leave 
 the canton within six weeks from this date. 
 
 "In this connection the Council of State cannot refrain from 
 expressing its surprise that Mr. Schmidt should have been 
 allowed to reside in Yverdun for so long without fulfilling 
 the necessary conditions of residence, and requests that for 
 the future you will see that the law is more strictly observed. 
 
 "2. To the same. Confidential. 
 " Sir,— 
 
 " Considering the relations which exist between Mr, 
 Pestalozzi and Mr. Schmidt, it is probable that the latter 's 
 expulsion will cause this old man, to whose many misfortunes 
 nobody can be indifferent, considerable pain. The Council 
 of State being anxious, as far as possible, to soften this blow 
 to Mr. Pestalozzi, requests you therefore, before notifying 
 its decision to Mr. Schmidt, to send for Mr. Pestalozzi, and, 
 without entering into any details as to the charges brought 
 against his colleague, give him to understand that important 
 considerations, affecting both his institute and public order, 
 have compelled the Council to take this step ; but that the 
 esteem and respect in which he has always been held are 
 by no means shaken, and that the Government's interest in 
 his work will remain the same. 
 
 " You will easily understand that the object of this con- 
 fidential letter is, on the one hand, that you may avoid 
 anything which would be likely to give publicityto these un- 
 pleasant facts ; and, on the other, that you may do all you can 
 to spare the feelings of an old man who, on account of his use- 
 ful work, his devotion to his fellow-creatures, and his present 
 unfortunate circumstances, deserves especial consideration." 
 
 The justice of the peace was thus instructed to make 
 
358 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 Pestalozzi understand a decision of which he was not even 
 to be told the reason — a difficult task, in which he does not 
 seem to have thoroughly succeeded. Be that as it may, 
 Schmidt easily persuaded Pestalozzi that the blow was 
 directed against his institute and himself, and the old man 
 accordingly addressed violent protestations to the Council, 
 pointing out that to send away a man whom he could not do 
 without was tantamount to making him go himself. But his 
 protestations were in vain ; the Council would grant nothing 
 but a few months' respite. 
 
 In letters dated the 19th and 21st of February, 1825, 
 Pestalozzi announced to the Municipality that he was leaving 
 Yverdun ; but he also announced that he should some day 
 return, and that he still claimed possession of the Castle. 
 Now that his institute had ceased to exist, however, the 
 Municipality did not feel bound to allow him the use of the 
 Castle any longer ; and yet it was not till they had been in 
 correspondence with him for two years, and had actually 
 begun to take legal steps for its recovery, that they regained 
 possession of the building, in which Pestalozzi had left a 
 single servant and his natural history collections, everything 
 else having been sold. 
 
 It was with some show of reason, therefore, that Schmidt, 
 in a pamphlet published in 1847 entitled, Pestalozzi and his 
 Neuhof, attributed the final closing of the Yverdun institute 
 to the Vaudese Council of State. 
 
 Pestalozzi left Yverdun with Schmidt early in March, 1825, 
 and found a home with his grandson Gottlieb, at Neuhof, a 
 place he had himself made and the scene of his first efforts 
 for helping the people. 
 
 Some of his biographers have stated that Pestalozzi was 
 anxious to take to Neuhof the pupils still left at Yverdun, 
 but that none of them were willing to accompany him. The 
 Municipality, on the other hand, in a report addressed to the 
 Council of State, affirms that some time before the institute 
 was closed there was not a single pupil left. Both of these 
 statements, however, are incorrect ; for, as we shall see 
 presently, it is certain that at least four of his former pupils 
 went with him to Neuhof. 
 
 The institute of Yverdun had lasted for twenty years, and 
 had enjoyed an unexampled prosperity ; before it ceased to 
 exist, it had fallen to the lowest degree of abasement. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 In retirement at Neuhofhe writes his last works and builds a 
 pauper- school. Papers read before the Helvetian Society 
 at Langenthal, and the Society of the Friends of Education 
 at Brugg. Last sign of his love for the poor. Biber"s 
 pamphlet. Death of Pestalozzi. His funeral. His present 
 tomb. 
 
 Pestalozzi, nearly eighty years old, has now lost his last 
 hopes and last illusions ; he has outlived his work, a calamity 
 the very thought of which had made him shudder. The 
 great dream of his life is over ; the ideal which he has so 
 passionately striven after from his youth, which has been, 
 as it were, the one object of his love and faith, and to which 
 he has sacrificed everything else, is now for ever gone. 
 Schmidt, his self-imposed master, is still with him, leading 
 him like a child, but there can be little doubt that this 
 tyrannical control was very irksome to the old man, for 
 though he had submitted to it voluntarily, it was only because 
 it seemed to him like a fatal necessity imposed upon him by 
 his gratitude and the interests of his work. Already in his 
 discourse of the 12th of January, 1818, he had admitted that 
 he was well aware of Schmidt's faults, and often suffered 
 from them. 
 
 One would imagine that so much misfortune and so many 
 disappointments would have broken the old man's courage, 
 and crushed the activity and originality of his genius. But 
 it was not so, for he had no sooner reached Neuhof than he 
 eagerly took up his pen again, writing first his Song of the 
 Swan, one of his most remarkable works, and as it were his 
 dying instructions to posterity in the matter of education ; 
 and then the Experiences of My Life, a book in which he 
 gives an account of his whole career, blaming himself for 
 all his misfortunes, and endeavouring to exculpate Schmidt, 
 
36o PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 sometimes even at the expense of Niederer. Besides these 
 two publications, of which we shall have more to say pre- 
 sently, he was also working at a fifth part to Leonard and 
 Gertrude / a new manual lor mothers, with instructions for 
 the education of children up to the age of seven, to supple- 
 ment the Book for Mothers already published, with which 
 he was not entirely satisfied ; and lastly, a series of elementary 
 exercises for teaching children Latin as they learn their 
 mother-tongue. 
 
 All this literary work did not in the least interfere with 
 his plans for a poor-school, which he now looked forward to 
 establishing in the very spot where he had made his first 
 unsuccessful attempt fifty years before. With this end in 
 view, he gave orders, almost immediately after his arrival, 
 for the necessary buildings to be commenced. As the work 
 proceeded, much too slowly for the impatient old man, he 
 would go and spend hours teaching in the village school at 
 Birr. He also took great delight in visiting his old acquaint- 
 ances the peasants, talking over their affairs with them, and 
 giving them advice and encouragement. 
 
 On going back to his grandson at Neuhof with Schmidt, 
 Pestalozzi had been followed by four of his pupils, two of 
 whom had been sent to him from Cadiz. He was so eager 
 to spread his method in France, England, Spain, and 
 Portugal, that he sent Schmidt to both Paris and London in 
 furtherance of this object, and even meditated the publica- 
 tion of a periodical in French. 
 
 We owe these details to Henning, a former Yverdun 
 pupil, who had become the director of a training school, 
 and who visited Pestalozzi at Neuhof, in August, 1825. 
 His account of his visit is as follows : 
 
 " I had not seen him for thirteen years, and found him 
 looking older certainly, but on the whole very little changed. 
 He was still active and strong, simple and open ; his face 
 still wore the same kindly, plaintive expression ; his zeal 
 for human happiness, and especially for the education of 
 poor and little children, was as keen as thirteen years before. 
 . . . In spite of the heat he accompanied me to Lenzburg, 
 and valiantly mounted the two or three hundred steps 
 leading to the Castle. . . . The vivacity of his speech 
 and the vigour of all his movements inspired me with the 
 
PESTALOZZPS LAST YEARS. 361 
 
 hope that the term of his earthly existence was still far off. 
 My heart was full when I took leave of the kind old man. 
 I shall never forget the time that it was my good fortune to 
 spend with him." 
 
 It is evident then that in these last days, Pestalozzi, 
 though still controlled by Schmidt in material affairs, freely 
 carried on the philanthropic work to which his life had been 
 devoted. 
 
 On the 3rd of May, 1825, Pestalozzi was present at a 
 meeting of the Helvetian Society, at Schinznach. He was 
 welcomed with every demonstration of respect, and chosen 
 as president for the following year. At the banquet which 
 followed the meeting, he proposed a toast to u the Society 
 that does not bruise the broken reed or quench the smoking 
 flax." 
 
 On the 26th of April, 1826, the Society met at Langenthal. 
 Pcstalo.zzi had prepared an address, which was read by 
 Scimler, of Aerlisbach, and which was afterwards printed 
 in Cotta's edition of his works. In the next chapter we 
 shall give some account of this interesting document, in 
 which the author touches on many social questions that are 
 still burning to-day. 
 
 In the summer of the same year, Pestalozzi and Schmidt 
 paid a visit to the institute for orphans founded by Zeller, 
 at Beuggen, near Rheinfelden. Zeller managed his estab- 
 lishment with much zeal and talent, and in most respects 
 followed Pestalozzi's method. Being one of those Christians, 
 however, who think that a child's natural tendencies are all 
 bad, he blamed Pestalozzi for looking on education as a mere 
 development of what is by nature good. In his religious 
 ardour Zeller loved dogmatism no less than Pestalozzi 
 feared it. 
 
 In spite of these differences, the old man was received at 
 Beuggen with every expression of esteem and respect. The 
 children sang a poem of Goethe's, quoted in Leonard and 
 Gertrude, and peculiarly applicable to the sad circumstances 
 of their guest ; they then offered him a crown of oak, which, 
 however, he refused to accept, saying, with tears in his 
 eyes, " I am not worthy of this crown ; leave it for inno- 
 cence ! " 
 
 On the 21st of November of the same year, 1826, the 
 
 25 
 
362 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 Society of Friends of Education assembled at Brugg. 
 Pestalozzi, who was present at the meeting, had prepared 
 a paper on " The simplest means of educating children at 
 home, from the cradle to the age of six." After this paper 
 had been read by his friend and neighbour, the pastor of 
 Birr, Pestalozzi himself rose to add a few new developments, 
 and spoke with such warmth, such zeal for his idea, such 
 passionate love for children, that he seemed to have recovered 
 all his old strength. 
 
 The same compassion for the poor that had inspired 
 Pestalozzi's earliest efforts continued to inspire him to the 
 end. As winter approached he was troubled to see that the 
 rise in the price of firewood would prevent many of his 
 neighbours from laying in a sufficient stock for the severe 
 weather. Fearing that this would entail a terrible amount 
 of sufferkig and disease on many families, he tried to find 
 some means of prevention. The poor people, he thought, 
 would spend their winter under much healthier conditions 
 if the bare ground on which their cottages stood was covered 
 with a layer of gravel, to keep the damp away, and then 
 with two or three layers of straw-matting. It seemed to 
 him that such a simple thing as this would be within every- 
 body's reach. But not satisfied with merely advising the 
 peasants what to do, he sought to set them the example by 
 making the experiment himself. 
 
 With this object he selected in his still unfinished house 
 a room on the ground-floor, where the flooring had not yet 
 been laid, and, having filled his pocket with small stones, 
 proceeded to throw them in through the open window. 
 Seeing this, his grandson had a few loads of gravel shot 
 before the house, and offered to help him, but the old man 
 would not accept any further assistance, and even in the 
 month of December was still to be seen kneeling in the snow, 
 with trembling hands throwing the gravel into the room. 
 At last, however, the severity of the weather and his ever 
 increasing weakness interrupted the work, which he was 
 destined never to resume. Long after his death the heap of 
 gravel was still to be seen before the window, last token, as 
 it were, of his compassion for the poor. 
 
 We give these last facts, on the authority of Mr. Lippe, 
 of Lenzburg, who, at this time, paid frequent visits to 
 Pestalozzi at Neuhof. 
 
PESTALOZZFS LAST YEARS. 363 
 
 But there was still another sorrow in store for the old 
 man, a sorrow more poignant than all the rest, and one which 
 was to deal him his death-blow. 
 
 In writing the Experiences, Pestalozzi, influenced by 
 Schmidt, whom he was seeking to defend, had allowed him- 
 self to be led into many unfortunate exaggerations, and had 
 been very unjust to those of his old collaborators who had 
 forsaken him. Niederer especially had been deeply hurt, 
 and had vented his indignation in Yverdun with his character- 
 istic energy. His grievances had been eagerly taken up 
 by a man named Edward Biber, of Wurtemberg, who was 
 employed in the school lately founded by Krusi. This man 
 had arrived at Yverdun after Pestalozzi's departure, had 
 stayed but one year there, and had then gone to Saint Grallen, 
 where he wrote, in Niederer's justification, a pamphlet, 
 entitled : Notes for the biography of Henry Pestalozzi, and 
 for the better understanding of his late work : Experiences 
 of my Life. 
 
 Biber was entirely devoid of tact or feeling ; his pamphlet 
 is little more than a long insult to the venerable philan- 
 thropist who, after devoting himself for eighty years to the 
 service of humanity, was ending his days in misfortune. 
 Pestalozzi's character, religion and educational doctrine, were 
 alike attacked, and as the pamphlet contained expressions 
 which were known to have been used by Mederer in his 
 anger, people readily enough believed that he, if not actually 
 the writer, was at least the instigator of it, whereas no one 
 was more genuinely indignant with the infamous production. 
 In spite of the differences which had arisen between Pestalozzi 
 and Niederer, the latter had never ceased to express respect 
 and admiration for his former master, and yet he was the 
 man most deeply wronged by Biber's pamphlet, for which, 
 indeed, certain recent biographers still hold him responsible. 
 
 Pestalozzi's grief was naturally very great when he found 
 the work he held so dear thus spitefully attacked ; but when, 
 in a notice of Biber's work in a Zurich paper, he read : " It 
 seems that Pestalozzi is like certain animals who hide at 
 sight of the stick ; otherwise he would reply to these attacks," 
 he was almost beside himself with indignation, crying, " I 
 can bear this no longer." 
 
 Utterly prostrated by this terrible blow, he fell seriously 
 ill. To his doctor, Doctor Stsebli of Brugg, he said: "I 
 
364 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 feel that I am going to die ; but I must have six weeks 
 longer to refute these shameful calumnies." 
 
 The doctor sought to reassure him, but strictly forbade him 
 to work in the state in which he then was. The old man, 
 however, took no notice of his orders, and forthwith set to 
 work to write his answer. But the little strength he had 
 left soon failed him, and the pen fell from his hands. 
 
 The following lines, written during these last days of 
 suffering, were found on his table : 
 
 " My sufferings are inexpressible ; no man could under- 
 stand the sorrow of my soul. People despise me as a feeble, 
 infirm old man ; they no longer think me good for anything ; 
 I do but excite their derision. It is not, however, for myself 
 that I am troubled, but for my idea, which shares my fate. 
 My most sacred possession, the belief that has inspired the 
 whole of my long and painful life, is scornfully trodden 
 under foot. To die is nothing ; I even welcome death, for 
 I am weary, and would fain be at rest ; but to have lived a 
 life of sacrifice and to have failed, to see my work destroyed 
 and go down with it to the grave, this is frightful, more 
 frightful than I can express. Would that I could weep, but 
 my tears refuse to flow. 
 
 " And you, my poor ones, the oppressed, despised and 
 rejected of this world ; you too, alas ! will be forsaken and 
 ridiculed, even as I am. The rich, in their abundance, care 
 nothing for you ; they may, indeed, cast you a morsel of 
 bread, but nothing more, since they too are poor, having 
 nothing but their gold. As for inviting you to the spiritual 
 banquet, and making men of you, the world has not yet 
 thought of it, nor will it for a long time. But God who is 
 in heaven, God who cares even for His sparrows, God will 
 not forget you, but will comfort you, even as He will com- 
 fort and not forget me." 
 
 By thus insisting on writing in spite of his weakness and 
 suffering, the old man had several times taken cold, and 
 thus considerably increased the gravity of his symptoms. 
 His complaint was gravel, and as the excessive pain neces- 
 sitated frequent surgical aid, the doctor wished to have his 
 patient near him at Brugg. 
 
 Gottlieb Pestalozzi accordingly hired a small room l in the 
 
 1 The room in which Pestalozzi died is now the post-office. 
 
PESTALOZZFS LAST YEARS. 365 
 
 principal street of the little town, and when everything was 
 prepared, although there was thick snow on the ground, 
 took the old man there, well wrapped up, in a closed sledge. 
 This was on the 15th of February, 1827. 
 
 The next day Mr. Lippe arrived from Lenzburg to see his 
 old friend, but found him unconscious. In the morning a 
 paroxysm of frightful pain had been followed by delirium, 
 which had ceased about noon, since when he had not spoken. 
 
 By four o'clock the next morning the crisis was past, and 
 the old man regained consciousness. He seemed easy and 
 composed, helped to arrange his bed, and talked to those 
 about him for nearly an hour. 
 
 " My children," he said, " you cannot carry out my work, 
 but you can do good to those about you, you cau give land 
 to the poor to cultivate. As for me, I am soon to read in the 
 book of truth. I forgive my enemies ; may they find peace, 
 even as I am now about to find the peace which is eternal. 
 I should have been glad to live six weeks longer to finish 
 my writing, and yet I thank God for taking me away from 
 this earthly life. You, my children, remain quietly at 
 Neuhof, and look for your happiness in your home.' : x 
 
 About six o'clock Doctor Stsebli arrived. There was no 
 fever, no pain, but he saw that the end was near ; indeed, 
 little more than an hour afterwards, Pestalozzi, with a smile 
 on his lips, quietly breathed his last. " He seemed to be 
 smiling at the angel who had come to fetch him," was the 
 testimony of those who were present. His grandson's wife 
 had watched over him tenderly to the last. 
 
 Pestalozzi's great-grandson, Colonel Charles Pestalozzi, 
 of the Zurich Polytechnic School, who at this time was not 
 more than three years old, relates that he has often heard 
 his mother talk of his great-grandfather's last days. Always 
 kind and thoughtful, patient when suffering most keenly, 
 cheerful and affectionate the moment he was free from pain, 
 grateful for the least attention, and calmly happy even at 
 the moment of death, he had borne his sufferings with a 
 fortitude that she never wearied of recalling. 
 
 1 Several biographers place this speech before the removal from 
 Nftnhof. It is an open question. We have taken the view which seemed, 
 after careful investigation, to be the best. 
 
366 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 On the 19th, the mortal remains of the great philosopher 
 and philanthropist were committed to the ground in the 
 village of Birr, near Neuhof. The news of his death had 
 scarcely reached Aarau, and people did not expect the inter- 
 ment to take place so soon ; the communications, moreover, 
 were almost interrupted by the snow. The consequence was 
 that many who loved and respected Pestalozzi were absent 
 from the ceremony, though the inhabitants of the neighbour- 
 hood were there in great numbers. 
 
 The coffin was borne by schoolmasters, and was followed 
 by Gottlieb and a few relations and friends, villagers and 
 children being the only other mourners. As this simple 
 procession entered the churchyard, it was met by some 
 eighty village schoolmasters of the district chanting a psalm. 
 In the course of his address, Pastor Steiger said: "If ever 
 Pestalozzi was truly great, it was in his last days. Why 
 could we not all be witnesses of his patience and resignation, 
 of the calm trust with which he relinquished the world and 
 all his earthly hopes ? " The simple, touching ceremony 
 closed with a h}^mn that had been expressly composed for 
 the occasion by Pastor Frœhlich. 
 
 When Pestalozzi had been asked what sort of monument 
 should be raised to him, he had replied : " A rough, unhewn 
 stone, such as I myself have always been." He had asked 
 to be buried at Birr, near the school, without pomp, and 
 followed by children and peasants. This last wish at least 
 had been fulfilled. His grave was in a narrow strip of the 
 churchyard, lying between the church and the school, and 
 for nineteen years was marked by a siugle rose-tree. As it 
 had then become necessary to rebuild the school, the Great 
 Council of Aargau, feeling that the country still owed a debt 
 to the memory of its immortal benefactor, decided to honour 
 him by some more fitting memorial. A side of the new 
 school was chosen for the purpose, and as the buildings still 
 adjoined the churchyard, although a new grave was neces- 
 sary, it was only a few steps distant from the old one. 
 
 The inauguration took place on the 12th of January, 1846, 
 the hundredth anniversary of Pestalozzi's birth, in the 
 presence of delegates from the Council of Public Instruction, 
 the various school-commissions, and many other public 
 bodies. A great crowd of other people were also present. 
 The singing of several choral societies alternated with the 
 
PESTALOZZPS LAST YEARS. 367 
 
 sound of the church bells, whilst the coffin was being raised 
 from its original resting-place, and lowered, covered with 
 wreaths, into the new tomb. 1 
 
 The memorial is plain and suitable : above the grave is 
 a paved space enclosed by an iron railing, and in the middle 
 of the wall a niche containing the bust of Pestalozzi, be- 
 low which is the following inscription : 
 
 Here Rests 
 
 Henry Pestalozzi ; 
 
 Born at Zurich, the 12th of January, 1746, 
 Died at Brugg, the 17th of February, 1827. 
 
 Saviour of the poor at Neuhof, at Stanz the father of 
 orphans, at Burgdorf and Munchenbuchsee founder of the 
 popular school, at Yverdun the educator of humanity ; man. 
 Christian, and citizen. All for others, nothing for himself, 
 Peace to his ashes. 
 
 To our Father Pestalozzi 
 
 Grateful Aargau. 
 
 1 The same day witnessed the inauguration of a still worthier memorial 
 to this faithful friend of the poor. 
 
 Pestalozzi's friends had thought that the hest way of celebrating his 
 jubilee would be to found at last at Neuhof the poor-school he had so long 
 di earned of. A printed appeal, circulated in Switzerland and abroad, 
 had at once brought in a considerable sum of money, but unfortunately 
 this first generous impulse had soon been checked by the political and 
 religious discords which were at that time troubling the Confederation. 
 Not being in a position then to purchase Neuhof, the committee had 
 been obliged to begin operations on some land at Olsberg, near Rhein- 
 felden, the property of the State. There, under the name of the Pesta- 
 lozzi Foundation, a poor-school was established for children of both sexes, 
 with separate divisions for Catholics and Protestants. It has lately been 
 proposed to enlarge this foundation by the addition of a training-school 
 for forming teachers for similar institutions, and of an establishment for 
 reforming vicious children. 
 
 French Switzerland ought also to have had her Pestalozzi Foundation. 
 An appeal sent out from Yverdun had been everywhere well received, 
 and success seemed certain ; in consequence, however, of the revolution 
 of 1845, and the resignation of the Protestant ministers, party feeling 
 ran so high in the canton that each side, dreading the political and 
 religious tendency of the other, insisted on having the direction of the 
 establishment in its own hands, and this being impossible, the enterprise 
 had to be abandoned. 
 
. CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 PESTALOZZl'S LAST WRITINGS. 
 
 The " Song of the Swan." The " Experiences of My Lifer 
 Discourse read at Langenthal. 
 
 We were unwilling to interrupt the sad story just concluded 
 to speak of the works written by Pestalozzi during the two 
 last years of his life. 
 
 The Song of the Swan and the Experiences were origin- 
 ally intended as parts of the same work, but the author 
 soon decided to keep them separate ; and it was well that he 
 did so, for the first would certainly have suffered from being 
 connected with the second. 
 
 In the life of Pestalozzi by J. Paroz, there is an interest- 
 ing summary of the Song of the Swan in the form of a 
 discourse supposed to be spoken by Pestalozzi; but any such 
 reconstruction is necessarily too artificial and too arbitrary 
 to leave the reader's judgment thoroughly unbiassed. We 
 think it best not to attempt anything of the sort, but to give 
 the author's principal ideas in his own words. In this way, 
 by a series of quotations, we shall be able to convey some 
 idea of this supreme appeal, addressed by the octogenarian 
 to his contemporaries in vain, but from which posterity may 
 yet profit. 
 
 The Song of the Swan. 1 
 
 Preface. 
 
 " For half a century I have been seeking with unwearied 
 activity to simplify the elementary instruction of the people, 
 and find for it such a path as Nature follows in developing 
 and perfecting a man's various powers. During all this 
 time, despite my many weaknesses, I have worked zealously 
 for this one end. My want of skill has indeed often shown 
 
 1 In both Cotta's and Sevffarth's editions. 
 
PESTALOZZPS LAST WRITIAGS. 369 
 
 itself in the conception and execution of my enterprises, and 
 has brought upon me endless sorrows ; but till now I have 
 borne them with unfailing patience, and without ever inter- 
 rupting my serious efforts towards my end. 
 
 u It is impossible that during such a life I should not have 
 made important experiments in the subject of my investi- 
 gations, and that I should not have arrived at certain results 
 to which the friends of humanity and education cannot be 
 indifferent. 
 
 " I am now eighty years old, an age at which a man is 
 wrong not to think of himself every day as on his death-bed. 
 I have felt this more than ever for some time past, and 
 hence I am unwilling any longer to put oif publishing an 
 account of my experiments, an account which will be as 
 clear and precise as I can make it, and will tell not only of 
 what has succeeded, but also of what has failed. This will 
 explain the title of my work. 
 
 " Friends of humanity ! take it for what it is, and do not 
 expect more literary graces from me than I am able to give. 
 My life has produced nothing complete or perfect, nor can 
 my writing do so either. Such as it is, grant it an attentive 
 examination, and whenever you happen upon a truth that 
 3^ou think likely to benefit man kind, do what you can for it, 
 less for my sake than for that of the end I have in view. I 
 ask nothing better than to be put on one side, and replaced 
 ■by others, in all questions that others understand better than 
 I, so that they may be enabled to serve humanity better than 
 I have ever been able to do. 
 
 " I know not if it be necessary to add that a man of my 
 age repeats himself often and deliberately, and that when 
 his end is near, nay, even on his death-bed, he cannot 
 repeat himself enough, nor weary of speaking of what he 
 has in his heart till his last breath. But nobody takes this 
 amiss ; most people indeed are touched by it. I hope then 
 that, considering my age and position, I shall be forgiven if 
 in the following pages I repeat myself too often, and forget 
 many important matters which in other circumstances I 
 should not have forgotten. 
 
 " As for those who might like to have a more complete 
 knowledge of my educational experiments and institutions, 
 I must beg them to read the history of my undertakings, 
 which is to appear with the present volume." 
 
37o PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 I. (Passages taken from pages 1 to 9.) 
 
 " Examine everything, and hold fast to that which is good ! 
 If anything better has matured in j^ou, add it in truth and 
 love to what in truth and love I am attempting to give you 
 here! 
 
 " The idea of elementary education, to which I have 
 devoted my life, consists in re-establishing the course of 
 Nature, and in developing and improving the tendencies and 
 powers of humanity. 
 
 " But what is human nature ? It is, at bottom, that which 
 distinguishes the man from the animal, that which should 
 predominate and control whatever they have in common. 
 Thus elementary education must aim at developing heart, 
 mind, and body in such a way as to bring the flesh into sub- 
 jection to the spirit. 
 
 " Now it is evident that this development must follow a 
 certain course, that this course must be the course of Nature, 
 and that it is regulated by immutable laws. 
 
 "Indeed, however great the diversities of men may be, 
 they do not in any way affect either the unity of human 
 nature or the universality of the laws which govern its 
 development. 
 
 " These laws apply to the whole of a man's nature, and 
 serve to maintain the necessary harmony between his heart, 
 his intellect, and his physical powers. Any educational 
 method which neglects either of these three sides, does but 
 encourage a partial development. False to Nature, it pro- 
 duces no real and lasting results ; it is as sounding brass 
 or tinkling cymbal, and exercises a fatal influence on the 
 harmony of the natural development. 
 
 "The idea of elementary education involves the equili- 
 brium of a man's powers, and the equilibrium of the powers 
 involves the natural development of each of them. Each 
 power develops according to the particular laws of its 
 nature, which laws are not the same for heart, mind and 
 body. 
 
 " And yet all human powers may be developed in the 
 simplest way by use. Thus a man lays the foundation of 
 his moral life of love and faith, by the practice of these 
 virtues ; of his intellectual life of thought, by thinking ; of 
 his industrial life, by making use of his physical powers. 
 
PESTALOZZPS LAST WRITINGS. 371 
 
 " Indeed, man is impelled by the very nature of the powers 
 he possesses to use and train them, and thus to develop and 
 improve them, as far at least as they are susceptible of 
 development and improvement. These powers exist at first 
 but in germ, but the desire to use them increases with 
 every successful attempt, though it decreases and sometimes 
 disappears with failure, especially if the failure should cause 
 suffering. 
 
 " Further, the idea of elementary education consists in so 
 regulating the use of the different powers that every effort 
 shall succeed, and none fail ; and this must be the case no 
 less with the intellectual and physical than with the moral 
 powers. 
 
 " The natural means for this early education are to be 
 looked for in the enlightened love, faith, and tenderness of 
 parents, made wise by a knowledge of all the conquests 
 humanity has won. 
 
 "The method of Nature is in its principle holy and Divine, 
 but if left to itself, it is often disturbed and perverted by 
 the predominance of the animal instincts. Our duty, our 
 heart's chief desire, the aim of our faith and wisdom, should 
 be to keep it truly human, to quicken it by means of the 
 Divine element within us. 
 
 " Let us now examine the natural and fundamental means 
 of human development, from the three sides of the moral 
 life, the intellectual life, and the industrial life." 
 
 II. — The Moral Life. (Pages 9 to 15.) 
 
 "The first cares of a mother for her child are for its 
 physical needs; she satisfies these with unfailing tender- 
 ness, enjoys the child's contentment, smiles at it with love, 
 and receives an answering smile of love, trust, and gratitude. 
 These are the first manifestations of the moral and religious 
 development. 
 
 " But the child must also feel the peace which proceeds 
 from satisfied needs ; this peace of the soul is indeed an 
 essential condition of the moral development. It is no sooner 
 replaced by anxiety and trouble than love, trust, and grati- 
 tude give way to selfishness, pride, and other evil passions. 
 
 " This want of peace in a child's soul often results from 
 its needs not being promptly satisfied ; after a time, expecta- 
 
372 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 tion becomes painful, and irritates the child, so that when 
 at last the long looked-for satisfaction arrives, it no longer 
 awakens a quiet pleasure, the source of love, trust, and 
 gratitude, but merely appeals to the violent instincts of an 
 animal. 
 
 " This discontent in a child often proceeds too from quite 
 an opposite cause, from the excess of care, that is, with 
 which we try to procure it pleasures by anticipating all its 
 wants and encouraging its pride or animal tastes. In this 
 way, instead of confining ourselves to satisfying real needs, 
 we awaken a certain covetousness, which gives no peace. 
 And as this covetousness cannot always be satisfied, the 
 child is necessarily exposed to disappointments and refusals, 
 which not only sour its temper, but stop the development 
 of good in its heart. 
 
 "A good mother tries to avoid each of these two ways 
 of destroying her child's contentment, and is enabled to do 
 so by her tenderness and by the natural tact of her maternal 
 instinct. She is much helped, too, when the circumstances 
 of the home are moderately comfortable, by the ordinary 
 conditions of daily life. 
 
 " Unfortunately, however, it too often happens that a 
 mother's tenderness is paralyzed by vice and her tact ruined 
 by error and prejudice, and that the circumstances of the 
 home are either so straitened as to prevent the immediate 
 satisfaction of all the child's wants, or so easy that there is 
 a temptation to anticipate them, often indeed to exaggerate 
 them, and increase its real wants by artificial ones. 
 
 " When the mother succeeds in keeping the child con- 
 tented, the benefit is felt by every member of the family. 
 The home becomes a cer v .re of moral and religious life, and 
 the child, whose trust in its parents nothing can shake, loves 
 what they love, believes what they believe, and worships 
 the same God and Saviour. 
 
 " But when this peace is wanting from the very cradle, 
 the home, troubled in every part, is no longer a sanctuary 
 of peace and happiness, and its good influence on the moral 
 and religious development disappears." 
 
 III.— The Intellectual Life. (Pages 15 to 23.) 
 
 " The starting-point of thought is sense-impression, the 
 direct impression, that is, produced by the world on our 
 
PESTALOZZPS LAST WRITINGS. 373 
 
 internal and external senses. Thus the power of thinking 
 is formed and developed first of all by the impressions of the 
 moral world upon our moral sense and by those of the 
 physical world upon our bodily senses. 
 
 " These impressions, acting on the understanding of the 
 child, give him his first ideas, and at the same time awaken 
 in him the desire to express them, by signs first, then by 
 words. 
 
 " To speak, we must have not only ideas, but practised and 
 supple organs. And further, we can only speak clearly and 
 exactly of those things from which we have received clear 
 and exact impressions. 
 
 " To teach a child to talk, then, we must first make him 
 see, hear, and touch many things, and especially things which 
 please him, so that he may readily give his attention to 
 them ; we must also make him observe them in order, observ- 
 ing each thoroughly before he proceeds to another. At the 
 same time he must have constant practice in putting his 
 impressions into words. All this is what a good mother does 
 for her child when it is beginning to speak. 
 
 "Afterwards a foreign or dead language maybe learned 
 differently ; partly because the organs of speech have already 
 been trained, partly because most of the fundamental ideas 
 are already there, and lastly, because the mother-tongue 
 supplies the child with a point of comparison. 
 
 " But before a child can compare things and exercise his 
 judgment about them, his thought must also have practice 
 in the two other chief elements of human knowledge, number 
 and form. 
 
 " The fundamental elements, then, that serve to develop 
 the power of thought are language, number, and form, and 
 it is the business of education to present these elements to 
 the child's mind in the simplest possible manner, and in 
 psychological and progressive order." 
 
 Pestalozzi here places the following sentence, which he 
 had written in 1824, and which shows that the old man had 
 retained certain illusions to the end : 
 
 " What was done at Burgdorf, and what has since been 
 done, even more thoroughly, at Yverdun, for the elementary 
 study of number and form, has sufficed, in spite of many 
 
374 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 dangers, to keep the latter establishment from ruin ; and even 
 now, that it seems near its end, I am still, thanks to this 
 spark, inclined to hope great things from it." 
 
 IV. — The Industrial Life. (Pages 23 to 26.) 
 
 " Art, practical knowledge, bodily skill, whatever in short 
 enables a man to make what he has conceived in his mind, 
 is what we call the industrial life. What are its fundamental 
 elements ? How may they be developed ? 
 
 "Its fundamental elements are two: the power of the 
 thought within, the practical skill of the senses and limbs 
 without. To be completely useful, it must be the outcome 
 of the harmonious development of heart, mind, and body. We 
 have already spoken of the two first ; it remains for us now 
 to consider the fundamental elements of physical develop- 
 ment. 
 
 "Just as elementary exercises in number and form are 
 necessary as training for the intellectual life, so elementary 
 exercises in art and practical work are a necessary part of 
 that physical training which is essential to success in the 
 industrial life. Technical apprenticeship is but one particular 
 form of this training. 
 
 " And further, just as our moral and intellectual powers 
 are naturally inclined to be active, and attract us to what- 
 ever exercises them, so our industrial powers have a similar 
 natural tendency, and attract us to whatever exercises and 
 develops them. 
 
 " The physical instinct which leads us to use our senses 
 and limbs is generally connected with our animal nature, and 
 needs no assistance from us. But this instinct must be sub- 
 ordinated to the moral and intellectual elements which con- 
 stitute the superiority of human nature. To bring about this 
 subordination is the essential work of education. 
 
 " The exercise of the physical powers in due subordination 
 to the moral and intellectual powers results naturally from 
 the discipline of a well-regulated and laborious family life. 
 
 " This exercise, however, varies enormously with the par- 
 ticular circumstances of each family, but even amidst this 
 diversity is to be found the general law of all human develop- 
 ment. Thus the child always begins by fixing his attention 
 and observing ; he then proceeds to imitate, at first slavishly, 
 
PESTALOZZFS LAST WRITINGS, 375 
 
 but presently with more and more freedom, till at last inven- 
 tion comes, and he produces spontaneously." 
 
 V.— My Idea of Elementary Education. (Pages 26 to 137.) 
 
 " It consists in developing, according to the natural law, the 
 child's various powers, moral, intellectual, and physical, with 
 such subordination as is necessary to their perfect equilibrium. 
 
 " This equilibrium alone can produce a peaceful, happy 
 life, and one likely to profit the general welfare. Piety, 
 faith, and love bring a man peace, and are indeed its con- 
 ditions, for without these virtues the highest development of 
 intellect, art or industry brings no rest, but leaves the man 
 full of trouble, uneasiness, and discontent. 
 
 " As an individual, the man who is not at peace with him- 
 self generally feels his misery and weakness. But as a 
 member of a whole, of a party, of a sect, he no longer feels his 
 position ; he is blinded, dazzled. He thinks himself strong in 
 the strength of others, skilful with their skill. Eaith in a 
 majority, a party, a sect, takes the place of faith in himself ; 
 loyalty to a society takes the place of virtue, public opinion 
 that of truth. 
 
 "Loyalty, whether it be to a religious sect or a political 
 party, comes rather from the flesh than the spirit ; it is the 
 business of elementary education to correct and weaken it by 
 harmoniously developing the personal powers in a really 
 religious direction. 
 
 " I now come to consider the idea of elementary education 
 from the point of view of the means of instruction. From its 
 very nature, it demands the general simplification of its means, 
 which simplification was the starting-point of all the edu- 
 cational labours of my life. At first I desired nothing else, 
 but merely sought to render the ordinary means of instruction 
 for the people so simple as to permit of their being employed 
 in every family. And so, in every branch of popular know- 
 ledge or talent, I set to work to organize a graduated series 
 of exercises, the starting-point of which was within every- 
 body's comprehension, and the unbroken action of which, 
 always exercising the child's powers without exhausting them, 
 resulted in a continuous, easy, and attractive progress, in which 
 knowledge and the application of knowledge were always 
 intimately connected. 
 
376 PESTAL0ZZ1 : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 " There exist general laws for the development of the human 
 powers and for their application in every direction of their 
 activity, but there is also a great diversity in the methods of 
 their development, according to the objects to which they are 
 applied, and according to the position, faculties, and character 
 of individuals. 
 
 "It is the duty of elementary education to reconcile these 
 diversities with the natural and general law, and to bring 
 about a complete development of the different powers, what- 
 ever may be the particular methods of their application. It 
 does this by making every step the child takes complete and 
 perfect before allowing him to take another. Thus the child 
 contracts the habit and the need of doing well all he does, and 
 of tending towards perfection, not only in the matter of his 
 instruction, but in his life generally. 
 
 "Before proceeding to point out the consequences which 
 result from this point of view, there is one further question 
 that I must consider : Is not my idea of elementary education 
 a dream ? Can it be made the foundation of practical work ? 
 On all sides, I am told, people are asking: Where has it 
 really been realized ? 
 
 " I answer : Everywhere and nowhere. Everywhere par- 
 tially, nowhere completely. 
 
 " It nowhere exists as a method that has been fully organized 
 and applied to everything. There is no school or institute 
 whose organization is entirely elementary. 
 
 u The knowledge and talents of the human race, even of 
 its highest and best representatives, are and will always 
 remain incomplete and fragmentary. There are not, and 
 never will be, conditions admitting of the complete realiza- 
 tion of the great idea of elementary education. Human 
 nature itself offers an insurmountable obstacle to it, since 
 the weakness of our nature, the Divine element of which is 
 hampered by the desires of the flesh, does not allow us to 
 look for complete perfection in anything. And what is true 
 in the case of individual men is still more true in the case 
 of the general education of the human race. No institution, 
 whatever its resources may be, will ever be able to realize 
 and spread over a country an elementary method of instruc- 
 tion and education at once general, complete, and practical. 
 In this respect the idea, it is true, is not realizable, and is 
 but a dream. 
 
PESTALOZZPS LAST WRITINGS. 377 
 
 " And yet, it has already been partially realized, not only 
 in institutions and schools, but in families ; it has already 
 been the cause of much good and much progress. At all 
 times and in every country it has been the condition and 
 the means of the harmonious development of man's powers, 
 and of the supremacy of the spirit over the flesh. It is the 
 condition and means of true civilization, of the improvement 
 of humanity, an improvement which is our essential and 
 necessary object, for which we shall never cease working, 
 and which we dare not declare to be impossible. In this 
 respect the idea of elementary education is no longer un- 
 realizable ; it is no longer a dream, and we must strive for 
 it unceasingly, as we strive for good and perfection. 
 
 " My idea of elementary education was suggested to me 
 by the sight of the evils I saw about me, evils resulting 
 from the routine of the ordinary education. Everywhere 
 the course pursued was in direct opposition to that of Nature, 
 everywhere the flesh predominated over the spirit, and the 
 Divine element was ignored ; everywhere selfishness and the 
 passions were made the motives of action, and everywhere 
 mechanical habits took the place of intelligent spontaneity. 
 
 " I had no other strength in me but that of a heart full of 
 compassion and love for my fellow-men ; I had neither 
 ability, talent nor practical skill. Against me were old 
 institutions and habits, the idleness, interests, and passions 
 of people cleverer than myself. I was like a child struggling 
 with grown men. 
 
 " The idea which I felt to be my strength was but an 
 impracticable dream ; impracticable, that is, in proportion to 
 the blindness and hardness of men governed by routine and 
 selfishness, and by indifference to progress and the spiritual 
 interests of humanity. In certain of its applications, and 
 for certain minds, this idea has already ceased to be a dream, 
 and the more civilization advances, the more of a reality 
 will it become, though it can never reach absolute perfec- 
 tion. 
 
 " It is life that educates. Such is the principle which has 
 guided me in all my experiments in elementary education, 
 the results of which we will now consider from the moral, 
 intellectual, and industrial points of view. 
 
 u On the moral side, elementary education is connected 
 with the home ; for its chief methods, are to be found in the 
 26 
 
378 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND V/ORK. 
 
 domestic affections, those natural and instinctive sentiments 
 that have been implanted by God in humanity as the eternal 
 starting-points of love and faith, or, in other words, of 
 morality and religion. In our institute, it is true, our experi- 
 ments did not begin while the child was yet in the cradle. 
 And yet the simpleness of our methods would have allowed 
 us to use them for the moral development of much younger 
 children than those entrusted to us. The child loves and 
 believes before thinking and acting ; the influences of home 
 captivate him and develop in him an inner sense of his own 
 moral strength. One certain result of our experience, and 
 one in which many noble men have rejoiced besides our- 
 selves, is that the methods of our elementary education, 
 which enabled each child to hand on his small stock of 
 acquirements to others, showed in a thousand ways their 
 influence on the moral development, and caused a trust and 
 brotherly love to reign in our house which, with the artificial 
 and unnatural methods of ordinary education, would have 
 been almost impossible. 
 
 "On the intellectual side, it is again life that educates; 
 for life develops, in turn, the power of receiving impressions, 
 the power of speaking, and the power of thinking. 
 
 " The power of receiving impressions by observation and 
 experience furnishes the child with ideas and sentiments. 
 
 " The power of speaking is developed by use ; it enables 
 the child to make himself understood and to understand 
 others. The power to speak does not proceed from the 
 knowledge of the language; it is rather the knowledge of 
 the language which proceeds from the power to speak. 
 
 " Speech is not only a result of life, but a condition of 
 life. This is the reason why its development varies with 
 social position. The methods of teaching then must vary 
 too, and be determined by the resources and needs of earthly 
 life. But there are other needs which necessitate a higher 
 development ; man does not live by bread alone ; every 
 child needs a religious development, needs to know how to 
 pray to God with love and faith and in simpleness of heart. 
 This need is a privilege which ennobles the very humblest, 
 and, since it can only be satisfied by means of language and 
 thought, develops them both morally and intellectually. 
 
 " When the power of speaking does not grow out of life 
 itself, it neither develops the powers of the mind nor pro- 
 
PESTALOZZVS LAST WRITINGS. 379 
 
 duces anything but an empty verbiage. This is an evil from 
 which all classes of society are at present suffering, the 
 lowest as well as the highest. 
 
 " The power of receiving impressions and the power of 
 thinking are separated by a wide gulf, which can only be 
 bridged by the power of speaking. 
 
 "Just as the child must not speak of anything but what he 
 has himself experienced, so he must not, and indeed cannot, 
 examine his thought until he has clearly expressed it in 
 words. Grammar is practice in the power of thinking, a 
 philosophical study of the thought itself as well as of the 
 form of the language which expresses it. The child must 
 be thoroughly acquainted with this form first ; then only is 
 he in a position to examine and study it, and learn foreign 
 and dead languages. 
 
 " A child soon learns to speak a foreign language with an 
 illiterate person who merely talks to him without any attempt 
 at instruction, whereas he does not learn to do so with a 
 skilled teacher who adopts the mechanical, grammatical 
 method. 
 
 " It is also in life itself that we must look for the means 
 of developing the power of thinking. 
 
 " When a child's sense-impressions have resulted in clear 
 and settled ideas, and when he can express these ideas in 
 speech, he feels the need of examining, separating, and com- 
 paring them ; this is a pleasure to which life itself invites 
 him, and in which he finds the surest aid for the development 
 of his judgment and power of thinking. 
 
 " To encourage, facilitate, and strengthen this development 
 has at all times been the aim of education, though it has 
 paid little heed to the laws of Nature and of life. 
 
 " At one time it has put before the child a mass of ready- 
 made judgments that his memory alone has been able to 
 grasp, and which, instead of strengthening his thought, have 
 allowed it to wither in inactivity. At another time, under 
 the name of logic, it has offered him a system, more subtle 
 than clear, of the eternal rules which regulate human 
 thought ; rules, however, which are but a closed book for the 
 child who does not yet possess the power of thinking. 
 
 " The best elementary exercises for developing the child's 
 power of comparing and judging, and thus strengthening his 
 thought, are those in number and form. But if the study 
 
3So PESTAL0ZZ1; HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 of number and form is to have any real educational value, it 
 must not consist in shortened, mechanical methods, but in 
 a series of exercises so well graduated that the child may 
 take pleasure in the study, and succeed in it ; that his think- 
 ing powers may be always active ; that his judgments may 
 be really his own, and that all he does may be closely con- 
 nected with his real everyday life. 
 
 " On the industrial or artistic side, it is also life that 
 educates. The industrial power comprises tw T o elements : the 
 one, intellectual and interior, which is but the power of 
 thought developed by the practical study of language, num- 
 ber, and form ; the other, physical and exterior, which is but 
 the power of the senses and limbs developed by use. These 
 different developments must be in keeping with the idea of 
 elementary education, that is, with the method of Nature, 
 and must result from a connected and carefully graduated 
 series of exercises founded on the tendencies, needs, and 
 natural tastes of the child. 
 
 " The exercises intended to develop the industrial or 
 artistic power must also be determined by the general cir- 
 cumstances of the child's life ; for again it is life that 
 educates. 
 
 " With regard to art and industry then, it is in the condi- 
 tions and needs of actual life, and in the heart of his family, 
 that the child must first learn how to use and improve his 
 powers. 
 
 " The lesson is much easier and much more fruitful and 
 valuable in those families which have to work hard for a 
 livelihood than in those richer homes where the need of work 
 is not felt, and where the child's help is not required. 
 
 11 Thus the idea of elementary education applies to the 
 physical powers as well as to those of the heart and mind ; 
 it encourages the child's activity from the very first ; it leads 
 him to produce results which are really his own, and it 
 gives him at the same time both the power and the will to 
 rise without slavishly copying others. 
 
 "It is because these principles of education are still so 
 widely ignored that we see so many people entirely without 
 skill, taste or originality. This is why ninety-nine hun- 
 dredths of the world unthinkingly follow the stream of custom 
 or fashion, incapable of producing anything by themselves ; 
 this, too, is why, even in the upper classes, the pleasure of 
 
PESTALOZZrS LAST WRITINGS. 
 
 luxury is much more a matter of vanity than a matter of 
 taste." 
 
 The foregoing is a condensation of the first third of the 
 Song of the Swan, with all unnecessary developments 
 omitted. We have not space, however, to treat the rest of 
 the book in the same way, nor indeed would it be necessary, 
 since the other parts have far less importance. Farther on, 
 too, the order and connection of the ideas are sometimes hard 
 to follow, repetitions abound, developments are carried too 
 far, and the style generally loses much of its force. But in 
 spite of these defects, the Song of the Swan is full, to the 
 end, of true, original, and pregnant ideas. A man who could 
 reproduce them in their logical order with clearness and 
 eloquence would make an admirable treatise on education. 
 
 We can do no more than glance at the remaining two- 
 thirds of the book, quoting a few of the most striking 
 ideas : 
 
 " A child accustomed from his earliest years to pray, think, 
 and work, is already more than half educated. 
 
 "The general effect of the methods employed by the 
 education of our time is rather to send us forth into un- 
 known regions than to develop that which is within us, and 
 of which, as independent beings, we stand in need. 
 
 " Any particular knowledge or skill is, in itself, of little 
 value as a means of development and education; it is by 
 combining and acting on each other that they give harmony 
 to our nature. It is the early and harmonious cultivation of 
 all branches of activity that develops our moral, intellectual, 
 and physical individuality. 
 
 "If the religious element does not penetrate the whole 
 education, it has but little influence on the life, and remains 
 formal and isolated. 
 
 " Religion is not an effect of what we do, but of the Divine 
 element within us, and of God's grace. 
 
 " Elementary education, by developing all a man's natural 
 powers, develops also, and from the very first, the real reli- 
 gious element in his nature, and is thus in perfect accord 
 with Christianity." 
 
 In writing the Song of the Swan, Pestalozzi had been 
 actuated by an ardent desire to save from his own fate the 
 
382 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 fundamental idea of the educational reform he was urging on 
 humanity. Fearing to see it involved in the discredit which 
 the failure of the establishments he had founded had brought 
 upon himself, he endeavours to show that this failure had 
 been entirely his own fault ; and in support of this view, he 
 gives, starting from his earliest education, the story of his 
 life. It was in this part of the book that his first biogra- 
 phers found their information, information true and valuable 
 enough in itself, but so fragmentary that for forty years, — till 
 Morf 's work appeared that is, — there was no complete account 
 of the great educational reformer. 1 
 
 In the course of his account of the Burgdorf institute, 
 Pestalozzi says : 
 
 " I must say here openly what, during my years of mis- 
 fortune, I have often and often said secretly to myself, that 
 at the very first step I took in Burgdorf Castle I was lost. 
 I was indeed embarking on a career that could only end in 
 misfortune, seeing that the post I was to occupy demanded 
 the very strength and administrative talents I so terribly 
 lacked." 
 
 A little farther on, after having compared his institutes to 
 a tower of Babel, he adds : 
 
 " This confusion, so fatal to the spirit of our work, was 
 bound at last to come to an end ; and this being so, I feel 
 very strongly that the fall of my establishments at Yverdun, 
 since it gave me the opportunity I so much wanted of placing 
 my work once more upon a clear basis, should be looked upon 
 as a piece of good fortune, and not at all as a proof of the 
 worthlessness of my undertaking and of my inability to pro- 
 duce any useful results." 
 
 The last page of the book well sums up its character and 
 aim. It runs as follows : 
 
 " At this solemn moment, I dare, calmly and earnestly, to 
 express my conviction that certain ideas connected with this 
 great question of elementary education have ripened in me 
 more perhaps than in most other men, more even than they 
 would have done, but for the vicissitudes and misfortunes of 
 
 1 Morf s work does not go beyond Burgdorf. 
 
PESTALOZZTS LAST WRITINGS. 383 
 
 my life. The results of my work, few and scattered, it is 
 true, seem to me to be hanging like ripe fruit on the tree of 
 my life, and I am unwilling that any hand, friendly or un- 
 friendly, should shake them to the ground. Poor as they 
 are, they are yet so near maturity that I feel it to be a sacred 
 duty to do my utmost for their preservation. The hour has 
 not yet sounded when, satisfied as to their fate, I can resign 
 myself to repose. In the meantime this other hour has 
 sounded, in which, full of grief and bitterness, I find myself 
 compelled to beg that the soundness of my conception of 
 elementary education be once more examined and put to the 
 proof. This once done, and in such a way as is meet, I shall 
 have nothing left to wish for. And so I close my dying 
 strain with the words with which I began it. 
 
 " Try all things, hold fast to that which is good, and if any- 
 thing better has matured in you, add it to what, in love and 
 truth, I am here attempting to give you. In any case, do not 
 reject the work of my whole life as a thing already condemned 
 and unworthy of further examination. It is not yet con- 
 demned, and merits most serious attention, not indeed for my 
 sake, but for its own." 
 
 My Experiences in my Educational Establishments of 
 Burgdorf and Yverdun. Leipzig, 1826. 1 
 
 . In writing this book, Pestalozzi's original intention was 
 merely to give the reasons of his many misfortunes, and 
 explain the failure of the various establishments he had 
 founded; but his desire to justify Schmidt, and make the 
 public share his own admiration for the man, led him into 
 making a personal attack that was most unworthy of him, 
 and for which it is hard not to hold Schmidt in a great 
 measure responsible, seeing that he was the person chiefly 
 interested, and that he exercised such a great influence over 
 the old man's mind. 
 
 The attack, which is most unfair, is chiefly directed against 
 the Niederers, their faults being cruelly exaggerated, while 
 Schmidt's are more or less condoned. But even this unfair- 
 ness was far from justifying Biber's venomous reply, which, 
 as we have seen, finally hastened Pestalozzi's death. 
 
 1 Not in Cotta's edition, but in the fifteenth volume of Seyffarth's. 
 
384 PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 If the book were merely polemical, we should have nothing 
 more to say about it ; but happily Pestalozzi often forgets that 
 he is pleading for Schmidt, and becomes the educational en- 
 thusiast again, and at these times he is admirable. 
 
 On the very first page he says : 
 
 " At Burgdorf I soon had a very great number of pupils, 
 and unfortunately a hundred times as many belauders. To- 
 day all this praise and success seems to have been the work 
 of enchantment. Intoxicated with pleasure, joy, honour, and 
 hope, we lived in a sort of paradise, with little fear of the 
 serpent that in every earthly paradise lays snares for the ruin 
 of poor humanity, so weak, so vain, and so easily misled." 
 
 Pestalozzi then refers to his proved incapacity to direct or 
 manage an institution, and declares that his own weakness 
 and mistakes have been the cause of all his misfortunes. 
 He also points out that such an educational establishment as 
 he had dreamed of was, by its very nature, an impossibility, 1 
 and that those he had founded were, from the very first, 
 doomed to destruction. This being so, it seems strange that 
 he should ever have attributed his failure to the opposition 
 which, almost from the beginning, had manifested itself be- 
 tween Niederer and Schmidt. 
 
 But however this may be, Pestalozzi does himself an 
 injustice when he speaks of being utterly incapable. Was 
 he not pre-eminently successful every time that, unchecked 
 by material obstacles, he was able to act freely ? And with 
 regard to the education of children, were not his efforts at 
 Neuhof in his youth, at Stanz and Burgdorf in his maturity, 
 and even at Clendy in his old age, crowned with marvellous 
 success ? 
 
 He is also unfair to his schools when he says that they did 
 no good. From the point of view of the elementary method, 
 they brought about undeniable and important improvements 
 in most branches of teaching, improvements which, carried 
 into different countries by his pupils, gave the first impetus 
 to a general reform of the old mechanical methods. 
 
 When Pestalozzi comes to the foundation of the poor-school 
 
 1 The reasons of this impossibility have been pointed out in chapter 
 xiv. 
 
PESTALOZZrS LAST WRITINGS. 385 
 
 at Clendy, lie entirely forgets his polemical aim, and lovingly 
 describes this last undertaking, the beginnings of which had 
 so fully satisfied his longings. Then, after giving a few- 
 admirable precepts for the early education of the poor, and 
 for the training of primary schoolmasters, he deplores the 
 deviation from his principles to which he was obliged to 
 consent at Clendy, and which finally resulted in the ruin 
 of the establishment. This part of the book at least is full 
 of Pestalozzi himself, and is not likely to be forgotten. 
 
 At the end of the book, Pestalozzi gives the letter he had 
 written to the Niederers in 1823, in which he implored them 
 to forget the past and be reconciled to him, that he might die 
 in peace. He concludes by saying that though the letter 
 has had no effect, he is still of the same mind. 
 
 Before leaving the Experiences , we must quote the opinion 
 of the book expressed by Blochmann, who was an assistant of 
 Pestalozzi's from 1810 to 1816, and to whom, in a great 
 measure, Saxony owes the excellence of her public educational 
 establishments. The passage is taken from a memoir " of 
 Pestalozzi. We translate literally : 
 
 "In his Expériences he enunciates many great and striking 
 truths. Those who have lived with him and watched his 
 career will, I am certain, be convinced of the general sound- 
 ness of his views and judgments, in spite of the two great 
 illusions running through the book ; on the one hand, that is, 
 his injustice to himself and to the value and results of the 
 Yverdun institute; on the other, the blind obstinacy with 
 which he persistently over-estimates the value of Schmidt's 
 work, and refuses to recognize the true character of the man 
 behind his mask of fidelity and affection." 
 
 Discourse delivered at Langenthal on the 26th of April, 
 ■ 1826.1 
 
 The Helvetian Society had been formed with the threefold 
 object of cementing the different parts of the Swiss Con- 
 federation, encouraging those virtues upon which the liberty 
 and happiness of nations depend, and restoring some of the 
 simplicity of former times. 
 
 Pestalozzi's work had long kept him absent from the meet- 
 
 1 In the fifteenth volume of both Cotta's and Sevffarth's editions, 
 
386 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 ings of the Society, but he still entirely sympathized with the 
 spirit of its aim and efforts. He was, besides, one of the last 
 survivors of that knot of enlightened and devoted patriots 
 who, long before the French Revolution, might have carried 
 out useful reforms in Zurich, had they but had more practical 
 views and a better knowledge of human nature. 
 
 This conformity between the objects of the Helvetian 
 Society, and those which he had so enthusiastically worked 
 for in his youth, was the source of Pestalozzi's inspiration 
 for his address at Langenthal, which is written with extra- 
 ordinary force and spirit for an old man of eighty, suffering 
 under the effects of a heavy and recent misfortune. 
 
 The author begins by painting the happiness Switzerland 
 enjoyed after the wars that gave her her independence. At 
 that time she was tranquil at home and respected abroad ; 
 the needs of her inhabitants were proportionate to their 
 resources; religion, love of country, kindliness and modera- 
 tion reigned in every heart; there was a certain practical 
 equality too in the conditions, manners, and habits of life of 
 her people, in spite of the inequality of rights that resulted 
 from the feudal system. At that time, also, there were few 
 very rich people and few very poor, by far the greater number 
 of her inhabitants being peasant-proprietors. 
 
 Pestalozzi then shows the changes that this state of things 
 gradually underwent under the influence of closer contact 
 with foreign nations, the Reformation, and especially the 
 introduction into Switzerland of that industrial life which 
 draws so much capital into a country. 
 
 Wherever the larger industries have flourished, there has 
 alwaj^s been an increase of wealth and of general comfort, 
 accompanied however by a still greater increase in the general 
 needs, and an enormous inequality in the distribution of the 
 wealth. 
 
 On the one hand, a few colossal fortunes have been rapidly 
 amassed, and have given us an example of the luxurious life 
 of great cities ; on the other hand, the numbers of those who 
 have but their hands, and are so often wanting in wisdom, 
 foresight, and economy have been steadily increasing. As to 
 the small proprietors that were formerly so numerous, how 
 many of them, attracted by the golden bait of industry, have 
 forsaken the work of the fields and no longer possess any- 
 thing ? 
 
PESTALOZZPS LAST WRITINGS. 387 
 
 After showing that this state of things is growing worse 
 from day to day, and is likely soon to constitute an imminent 
 danger to social order and civilization, the author, as the only 
 means of fighting the evil and slowly curing it, urges that 
 elementary education shall be brought within the reach of 
 all, since it alone can give a natural development to all a 
 child's powers, especially his moral powers, in their applica- 
 tion to the practical life for which he is intended. 
 
 Such, in substance, is the last work we have of Pestalozzi's 
 We know, it is true, that on the 21st of November of the 
 same year, a paper of his, on the early education of children 
 in the home, was read before the Society of Friends of Edu- 
 cation at Brugg, but this paper has not been preserved. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 In relating the history of a great man to whom we are in- 
 debted for so many useful ideas, I have felt until now a very 
 natural repugnance to speak of my own impressions, formed 
 during the nine years that I was his pupil. Not only was I 
 afraid of interrupting my narrative or of unduly prolonging 
 it, but I wished first of all to place before my readers 
 authentic documents, my master's own words, and the 
 opinions of distinguished men far better qualified to judge 
 of him than myself. 
 
 At the same time, the numerous publications I have had 
 to consult would not always have enabled me to arrive at 
 the truth, if my own personal recollections had not helped 
 me to estimate the relative value of all these documents, at 
 times so contradictory. Especially in writing the sad story 
 of the decline and fall of the Yverdun institute was it im- 
 portant to have had a near view of men and' things, so as to 
 be able to pass over the many slanderous "imputations into 
 which passion dragged the men who were quarrelling round 
 Pestalozzi, to the misfortune of the honourable old man. 
 
 Moreover, as I have to sum up the views, teaching, and 
 lasting work of this extraordinary man, and as what I shall 
 have to say will not always conform to the generally re- 
 ceived ideas on the subject, I feel very strongly that my 
 readers have a right to know something of the personal 
 experience which entitles me as it were to their confidence. 
 I not only happened to be in an exceptionally favourable 
 position for becoming acquainted with the master's ideas 
 and those of his principal coadjutors, but I am to-day, prob- 
 ably, the last survivor of those who enjoyed the like privi- 
 lege ; and feeling that I have in my possession a most sacred 
 trust, I hold it to be my duty not to let it perish with me. 
 
 Born in 1802, at Yverdun, where my father, a French 
 
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 389 
 
 refugee, had married and settled, I entered Pestalozzi's 
 school in 1808, after having been prepared by one of the 
 under-masters for the elementary class, by some preliminary 
 sense-impressing exercises in number and form. I was only 
 a day scholar at the institute ; but as I stayed for lunch, 
 and often slept there, I was well acquainted with the work- 
 ing of the interior. 
 
 My first impression as I went into my class-room was a 
 disagreeable one. The room was very untidy, and the 
 furniture and other things of such a primitive kind as to- 
 day can hardly be imagined. There were tallow candles, 
 for instance, without candlesticks or snuffers, and just held 
 by a twisted wire stuck into a piece of wood. The language 
 and cries, too, of all these Germans grated on my ear, and 
 their manners seemed so strange that I felt as if I had sud- 
 denly been plunged into an atmosphere of gross vulgarity. 
 
 But this impression was of short duration. I was very 
 soon won over by Pestalozzi's gentle kindness, by his keen 
 yet tender look, and by the cordiality which seemed to per- 
 vade the house. I was soon caught, too, by the infectious 
 good humour of my companions, and the almost passionate 
 eagerness with which they did most of their work. The 
 following fact, which to-day I can hardly understand, proves 
 that I was very quickly captivated by the charms of Pesta- 
 lozzi's elementary education. I was not quite seven years 
 old, and yet when the winter came on, and I was obliged to 
 get up very early and set off' before it was light to the other 
 end of the town in order to be present at the first lesson at 
 six o'clock, I never dreamed of complaining. 
 
 When Pestalozzi met one of his young pupils in the 
 corridors, he would lay his hand caressingly on his hair, 
 saying : " You, too, mean to be wise and good, don't you ? " 
 Then he would talk to him of his parents and God, often 
 ending with a few words about the necessity of putting our- 
 selves into harmony with Nature, always good and beautiful, 
 like its Maker. I did not always quite understand these 
 little talks, but the impression that remained was a good 
 one. In the junior class in which I was placed, the teaching 
 was given in Prench, although during my first years at the 
 institute the mother-tongue of most of the pupils, masters, 
 and servants was German. Their language, tastes, and 
 habits regulated the whole of the internal life at the Castle ; 
 
390 PESTAL0ZZ1; HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 it was, in short, a German-Swiss household transplanted 
 into French Switzerland. Every one was obliged to speak 
 French at certain hours of the day, at other times all had to 
 speak German. In this way every pupil became more or 
 less quickly accustomed to the use of a foreign tongue ; but, 
 on the other hand, there resulted a sort of mixture of the 
 two languages which was not very good for either of them. 
 
 During my first four or five years at the institute, I was 
 too young to observe anything of Pestai ozzi's doctrine ; my 
 childish impressions, which were very favourable, alone 
 remain. I took pleasure in nearly all my lessons, especially 
 in natural history, geography, mental arithmetic, elementary 
 geometry, singing, and drawing. I have, moreover, pre- 
 served an affectionate and grateful remembrance not only of 
 Pestalozzi, but of most of the other masters, who looked after 
 us with so much kindness in our lessons, games, and walks, 
 and especially in our mountain excursions. 
 
 These excursions in the Jura were a source of great 
 delight to us. They were arranged to suit the ages of the 
 different classes, and as soon as I was seven I began to take 
 part in them. Our masters, of whom my favourites were 
 Krusi and de Murait, looked after us with almost motherly 
 solicitude, making frequent halts to rest our little legs, re- 
 freshing us, when we were tired, with a few drops of spirit 
 on a piece of sugar, and now and then, when the distance 
 was too great, procuring some rustic conveyance for us, in 
 which we would sing gaily as we passed through the villages, 
 where the peasants often gave us fruit. 
 
 As soon as we got to the high mountain pastures under 
 the pines, we lost our feeling of fatigue, and fell to playing 
 games or collecting herbs and minerals. We often gathered 
 at some good point of view to sing the wild, simple, Alpine 
 melodies our masters loved to teach us. To-day, after more 
 than sixty years, I can recall these songs as clearly as in 
 those early days when I first sang them, and they still seem 
 very beautiful to me. 
 
 On returning from these excursions, the pupils had to 
 describe them, either orally or in writing, according to their 
 ages. There was generally a great deal to say, as our atten- 
 tion was always carefully drawn to everything likely to 
 prove instructive. These excursions were, in fact, practical 
 lessons in natural history and geography. 
 
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 391 
 
 Pestalozzi took a singular pleasure in watching the games 
 of his pupils, which he considered of very great importance, 
 his idea being that children when not at work ought to enjoy 
 themselves, and that a state of total inactivity's bad, both 
 physically and morally. If he noticed a child taking no part 
 in the games during play-time, he could seldom rest till he 
 had tried to find him some other amusement. 
 
 In this connection an incident comes back to my memory 
 which did not strike me particularly at the time, but which I 
 now feel to have been exceedingly characteristic. One day, 
 when a fire of sticks had been lighted in the garden, the elder 
 pupils amused themselves by leaping over the flames through 
 the smoke, Pestalozzi eagerly encouraging them. When the 
 flames had died down, and little but hot embers and smoke 
 remained, the little ones leaped in their turn. But the scene 
 had other witnesses, for the little girls of the Niederer in- 
 stitute, the garden of which joined that of the Castle, were 
 looking through the palings at the beautiful flames and happy 
 leapers. No sooner did Pestalozzi see them than he went 
 and fetched them, and they too were soon jumping over the 
 remains of the fire. Never was delight so cheaply pur- 
 chased ! 
 
 As soon as I was twelve years old I began, thank» to a 
 special combination of circumstances, to fix my attention on 
 what was called " the method," in which I betrayed an in- 
 terest that was far beyond my years. 
 
 My parents, who were themselves admirers of Pestalozzi, 
 kept up friendly relations not only with him and his wife, 
 but with his principal assistants. My mother, who in her 
 anxiety for my progress was anxious to be able to follow my 
 lessons, set to work to learn German, and with such great 
 zeal that she soon mastered its difficulties. She even pub- 
 lished translations of several German works, partly to add 
 something to our modest resources, and partly to have more 
 to spend on my education. It was in this way that she came 
 to translate Leonard and Gertrude. 
 
 Pestalozzi himself took great interest in her work, and used 
 to come to our house nearly every day to examine it ; for my 
 mother never fair-copied anything without first consulting 
 him. As she thoroughly understood the old man's Zurich 
 dialect, she was able to act as interpreter for the rnanj' 
 French visitors who wanted to discuss his views, and so he 
 
392 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 was in the habit of bringing anybody with him to whom 
 he particularly wished to explain them. I remember, among 
 others, Jullien of Paris, the author of two large volumes on 
 Pestalozzi's Mind and Method. 
 
 About the same time Miss Rath, the distinguished painter 
 to whom Geneva owes the museum which bears her name, 
 came to Yverdun to paint Pestalozzi's portrait. As she was 
 intimate with my mother's sister, she stayed with us, and it 
 was in our house that Pestalozzi sat to her. 
 
 Also when Mr. Delbruck, the private tutor of the Prussian 
 princes, came to stay at Yverdun, for the purpose of studying 
 the method, my parents willingly consented to receive him 
 into their house. 
 
 The result of all this was that for several years our 
 drawing-room was one of the places where the Pestalozzi an 
 doctrine was most eagerly expounded and discussed, either 
 by the master himself and his disciples, or by strangers who 
 were generally well qualified to form an opinion. 
 
 I eagerly listened to these conversations and, although I 
 did not of course understand all I heard, I can still recall a 
 great deal. 
 
 A hundred times have I heard the master himself explain 
 his doctrine, and each time with a different illustration. 
 This profound philosopher had no love for philosophical 
 language, with which he had never been familiar. Nor 
 would he trust himself to use formulas, of which indeed he 
 had almost a dread. His thought, which had been shaped in 
 solitude and with no help from books, was simply the out- 
 come of observation and reflection, and so he preferred to 
 explain his views as he had formed them, and attached much 
 more weight to concrete facts, particular examples, and com- 
 parisons, than to abstractions and general ideas. 
 
 On Pestalozzi's return from Basle, where he had been 
 honoured with the gifts of princes, he at first took a child's 
 pleasure in showing these gifts, not indeed from any feeling 
 of personal vanity, but because they seemed to promise 
 support to his doctrine and the plans by which he hoped to 
 raise the condition of the people. About that time I was 
 invited to accompany my parents to an evening gathering at 
 his house. On that occasion, I remember, the old man wore 
 the cross of Saint Vladimir, and we all had to taste the 
 Austrian Emperor's Tokay ; but a few days afterwards he 
 
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 393 
 
 had ceased to think about it, and the cross lay forgotten in 
 his cupboard. Sometimes, however, when visitors of dis- 
 tinction arrived, he allowed himself to be persuaded to take 
 a little extra care with his toilette, and then some one would 
 hastily dress him, and make him as presentable as possible. 
 We children derived not a little enjoyment from seeing him 
 enter the class-room in his black coat and white cravat, with 
 the famous decoration at his button-hole. 
 
 Mrs. Pestalozzi's death in 1815 has left a sad impression 
 on me. Young as I was at the time, I was struck by the 
 marked change it caused in the internal life of the institute. 
 Neither the high intellectual and moral worth of this re- 
 markable woman, nor the value to her husband's work of 
 her tact, advice, and devotion have been sufficiently appre- 
 ciated. Although an invalid and confined to her room, she 
 continued to be a centre of attraction, and every one was 
 fond of coming to her, if only for a few moments, sure at 
 least of a kind word. 
 
 Of the large number of people present at the sad and 
 imposing ceremony of her fanerai, there was not one but 
 felt a personal regret; all felt instinctively, too, that the 
 unfortunate old man had now lost his chief support. 
 
 When the fierce hostility broke ' out between Schmidt 
 and his old colleagues, my parents were greatly grieved. 
 They fully appreciated the many good qualities of Niederer 
 and Krusi ; but having no personal interest in the quarrel, 
 they determined to remain trae to Pestalozzi, whatever 
 happened. One day Pestalozzi brought Schmidt to our 
 house, saying that his friend had something to read to us. 
 I rose to go, but Schmidt insisted on my staying " because 
 it was good for me to hear it." He then read us a fable, in 
 which he compared Pestalozzi to a man whose house is in 
 ruins, and who is obliged to rebuild it. Several of his elder 
 sons are ready to help him, but only on condition that the 
 house be built after their plans and made to suit their own 
 convenience ; one only, a younger son, offers to carry out 
 his father's plans and implicitly follow his directions, in- 
 curring in consequence his brothers' hate. This, then, was 
 Schmidt's view of the deplorable struggle which finally 
 ruined Pestalozzi and his establishment. 
 
 I did not leave the institute till September, 1817, when 
 [ went with my parents to live at Versailles. My father's 
 27 
 
394 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 intention had been to send me to the Polytechnic School ; 
 but I had the misfortune to lose him in 1819, and my mother 
 a few months afterwards. I stayed on at Versailles as a 
 boarder in the house of one of the masters at Saint-Cyr ; 
 and, thanks to the training I had received at Pestalozzi's, 
 made rapid progress in mathematics. I was, however, very 
 much behind in Latin, and could only be placed in the fifth 
 class at school ; but, by the help of some private lessons, I 
 managed in two years to work my way into the first class, 
 where I afterwards did fairly well. 
 
 After this I left Versailles for Paris, and till 1822 
 attended, as a day- scholar, the special mathematical classes 
 at the school of Louis-le-Grand. I then entered the Poly- 
 technic School, where I found several of my old Yverdun 
 comrades, amongst whom were Beauchatton, Jullien, and 
 Perdonnet, all distinguished by their aptitude for mathe- 
 matics. 
 
 Once, during my holidays, I went back to Yverdun, where 
 I found the institute still existing, it is true, but only the 
 shadow of its former self. I was only able to see Pesta- 
 lozzi in the presence of Schmidt, who never quitted him, 
 and who was the only one of my old masters left. I was 
 taken into the room formerly occupied by Mrs. Pestalozzi, 
 and found some young girls, under the direction of one of 
 Schmidt's sisters, speaking English and playing the piano ; 
 but whether this was the remnant of the poor-school of 
 Clendy, or the beginning of a training-school for school- 
 mistresses, I do not know. It was profoundly sad to see 
 those about Pestalozzi still encouraging the unhappy old 
 man in his illusions. 
 
 At this time, and at Yverdun especially, the decline of 
 the institute had very much shaken people's faith in the 
 views of its founder. They still had respect for his devo- 
 tion, his good intentions, and his misfortunes ; but it was 
 generally believed that his reason was entirely gone, a grave 
 error in which I myself, led away by appearances and the 
 current of public opinion, was very nearly sharing. 
 
 In 1824, owing to ill-health, I left the Polytechnic, and 
 went to stay with my mother's family. Shortly afterwards 
 I accompanied Biot on his scientific mission to Italy, and 
 then returned to Yverdnn, where I married and settled in 
 1826. 
 
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 395 
 
 I was almost at once made a member of the Commission 
 charged with the direction of the public schools of the 
 Commune. These schools were not yet influenced by Pesta- 
 lozzian ideas, and still followed the old system of routine. 
 There was one large elementary class, however, conducted 
 on the Lancastrian method, the master who directed it 
 having served his apprenticeship at Freiburg under Father 
 Girard. I could not help comparing what I then saw with 
 what I had seen in the French schools, and, before that, 
 at the Yverdun institute. Thus the question of method 
 was always in my mind, and soon became my favourite 
 study. 
 
 Pestalozzi's method seemed to me to be undoubtedly the 
 best and most natural, though I never got so far as to 
 formulate it satisfactorily. The twelve fundamental prin- 
 ciples discovered by Jullien did not satisfy me at all ; I 
 felt very strongly that the method was an organic whole, 
 and that there must be some single central principle 
 running through its various applications. 
 
 I therefore set to work to make a thorough study of 
 Pestalozzi's views, supplementing my personal recollections 
 from the master's own writings and the statements of those 
 of his old assistants who had survived him. 
 
 In Yverdun itself there were still three establishments 
 that had been founded by followers of Pestalozzi, in each of 
 which an attempt was made to put his method into practice. 
 These three establishments were the boys' school in the 
 Castle, directed by Rank and Kreis; Naef's institute for 
 deaf mutes ; and the Niederers' school for girls, which at 
 that time was in a highly flourishing condition and enjoyed 
 a great reputation. In each of these schools I found the 
 exercises of my childhood still in use, and followed by 
 about the same amount of success. 
 
 But it was chiefly to Niederer that I looked for help in 
 my researches, since it was he who had made the pro- 
 foundest study of Pestalozzi's doctrine. I was well aware 
 that the master had never entirely accepted his philo- 
 sophical explanation, and this caused me to approach him 
 with a certain mistrust ; but I never grew tired of listening 
 to him and making him repeat his explanations, which I 
 found of the greatest service. Niederer spoke French with 
 a strong German accent, and in ordinary conversation not 
 
396 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 very fluently; but he knew the scientific language thoroughly, 
 and on any subject connected with his philosophical studies 
 expressed himself with perfect ease and clearness, finding 
 the right word as unerringly as if he had been a French- 
 man. 
 
 His exposition of Pestalozzi's method generally reduced 
 itself to three points : aim, starting-point, and connection. 
 The aim is the development of man as a whole, with all his 
 moral, physical, and intellectual powers, the particular lines 
 of the development depending upon his position in the world 
 — in other words, upon the actual life that awaits him. 
 The starting-point of the exercises is to be found in the 
 notions the child has already acquired, in his present tastes, 
 needs, and powers. The connection of the exercises is the 
 order in which they follow each other, which order must be 
 so carefully graduated that each exercise shall give the 
 child the desire and the power to do the next. 
 
 But as I was also anxious for information from the other 
 collaborators of my venerated master, I decided to visit the 
 training-schools, orphanages, and other institutions directed 
 by followers of his, and make inquiries of all who were 
 known to have been specially connected with him and to 
 have witnessed his earliest efforts. In the years 1837 and 
 1838, therefore, I travelled about Switzerland for this pur- 
 pose. 
 
 It would take too long to give the names of all those who 
 received me with kindness and furnished me with valuable 
 information. Of the men who had actually worked with 
 Pestalozzi I will only mention Buss, Krusi, Lehmann, Senn, 
 Hagnauer and Gœldi ; and of the distinguished men who 
 had been intimately acquainted with him, Fellenberg, 
 Zschokke, Zellweger, Father Girard and Doctor Lippe. 
 
 In the course of my investigations I visited most of the 
 training-schools, and especially those of cantons Appenzell 
 and Thurgau. 
 
 The former, which was situated at Gais and directed by 
 Krusi, with whom I spent a week, interested me exceed- 
 ingly, presenting as it did a perfect example of a Pesta- 
 lozzian school. It was while listening to Krusi's explanations 
 that I began to see for the first time that the fundamental 
 principle of Pestalozzi's doctrine was the law of organism. 
 
 The training-school of canton Thurgau was situated at 
 
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 397 
 
 Kreuzlingen, on the borders of the Lake of Constance, and 
 was under the direction of Wehrli, the former director of 
 the poor-school founded by Fellenberg at Hofwyl. He was 
 an intelligent, warm-hearted man, and kept those about him 
 in a state of constant and healthy activity. But his task 
 was not an easy one, for the director's duty was not only to 
 see to the general instruction of the students, both Catholic 
 and Protestant, but to give them some acquaintance with 
 practical agriculture. 
 
 I also found another interesting though less faithful 
 application of Pestalozzi's principles in the training-school 
 directed by Scherr at Kusnacht, and in that directed by 
 Keller at Lenzburg. 
 
 At that time there were already several establishments in 
 Switzerland in which efforts were being made to carry out 
 Pestalozzi's ideas for the education of neglected or orphan 
 children. I visited a great many of these, particularly 
 noticing the Schurtanne Asylum near Trogen, founded by 
 Zellweger, and Zeller's institution at Beuggen near Bhein- 
 felden. 
 
 At different times afterwards I also visited the various 
 scenes of Pestalozzi's noble and indefatigable exertions. But 
 by that time his fellow-workers and contemporaries had all 
 passed away, and the only people I could question were old 
 men, who at the time of Pestalozzi's first experiments had 
 been little more than children. 
 
 At Yverdun itself I often had the pleasure of meeting 
 some of my old masters and comrades. All those who had 
 lived there before 1817, had retained such pleasant memories 
 of the place that they seldom lost an opportunity of revisit- 
 ing the spot where they had passed so many happy hours in 
 their childhood, " their dear Yverdun," as they used to call 
 it, and so I had many chances of reviving my old memories 
 and gathering fresh information. 
 
 It was in this way that I had the pleasure of receiving, in 
 my own house, my dear old French master, Alexander 
 Boniface. On leaving Yverdun he had established a Pesta- 
 lozzian school in Paris, which at first had met with consider- 
 able success ; but as the plan of studies was in opposition to 
 that of the University, the success was necessarily short- 
 lived. I also twice received Mr. Blochmann of Dresden, who 
 had taught me music and geography in the institute, and 
 
398 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 had afterwards become the King of Saxony's chief educa- 
 tional councillor. 
 
 Since then many years have passed ; none of my old masters 
 are left ; the very pupils of the institute, if still alive, are 
 old men, and their loving visits to Yverdun have entirely 
 ceased. And so, left almost alone, I have gathered together 
 these memories, feeling that I had not a day to lose. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 PESTALOZZI'S RELIGION. 
 
 At first sight, Pestalozzi's religion does not strike us very 
 favourably ; it was neither the mainspring of his life, nor 
 even the motive that induced him to embark on the enter- 
 prises of his early years. Even as a child, he admired the 
 activity of his grandfather, the pastor, rather from a temporal 
 than from a spiritual point of view, and his subsequent study 
 of theology did but serve to disgust him with a formal and 
 dead orthodoxy. His faith, too, was severely shaken by his 
 study of Housseau ; and in the various philanthropic plans 
 he formed at the time of his marriage, he cared less for 
 heaven than for earth. 
 
 At his son's birth, however, his religious sentiment revived, 
 and, as we see from certain fervent passages in his diary, 
 exercised no small influence over him, though even now his 
 faith was not in Jesus the Saviour of men, the need of whom 
 he did not feel till somewhat later, when working at the edu- 
 cation of his son, and of the poor children he had taken into 
 his home. When his first charitable effort had brought him 
 to the verge of ruin, he wrote as follows : 
 
 " Christ, by His example and doctrine, teaches us to 
 sacrifice ourselves and all we possess for our brother's good ; 
 He shows us that we have no absolute right to anything 
 that we have received, but that it is merely entrusted to us 
 by God to be administered in the service of charity." 
 
 Pestalozzi proved himself a Christian by his actions, his 
 whole life, his ardent and universal charity; he never 
 attacked any of the Christian dogmas, but neither did he 
 ever make any clear and formal profession of them, dreading 
 the influence of dogmatism on the development of the reli- 
 gious sentiment. Moreover, though a Protestant himself, 
 he was anxious to have his work accepted by Catholics, and 
 
4oo PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 accordingly, in all he wrote and said, he carefully avoided 
 everything that was likely to wound any man's religious 
 convictions. 
 
 Pestalozzi was certainly not one of those people who look 
 upon the Bible as a merely human book, bat neither was he 
 one of those who consider it to be entirely Divine. The 
 co-existence of the Divine and human elements in our sacred 
 books is, in our opinion, beyond dispute, but inasmuch as it 
 is a question that gives rise to such an infinite variety of 
 opinions, it is avoided by many, not from indifference, but 
 from a desire for unity. 
 
 Judging from Pestalozzi's writings, it would seem that he 
 accepted the Divine authority for everything affecting man's 
 sanctification, but for nothing else. His distinction between 
 Divine and human was not very clear or precise, however ; 
 indeed, his statements are sometimes so contradictory, that 
 even those who assert that he was a rationalist are able to 
 point to passages in support of their view. 
 
 Furthermore, Pestalozzi must have scandalized the Chris- 
 tians of his time by his contempt for the study of the 
 catechism, and indeed for verbal teaching in general as a 
 means for developing a child's religious sentiment. But in 
 this respect his ideas were not so new as was generally 
 believed, for they had been current as long ago as the 
 Reformation ; they had, however, disappeared before the 
 steadily increasing power of a formalism that cared for 
 nothing but words. 
 
 The following passage occurs in (Ekolampad's Antisyn- 
 gramma, published in 1526 : 
 
 " The outward word is not the object of faith, not that 
 which brings us the blood of Christ, food, and clothing. It 
 is given to us merely to incite us to find things, and these 
 we must look for in ourselves. Words teach us nothing but 
 words. If we do not first know the things themselves, how 
 shall we know what words are fit to express them worthily ? 
 If you do not already possess a certain knowledge, you may 
 listen to words for hours, but you will learn nothing." x 
 
 The ruin of the Yverclun institute coincided with the 
 1 See the Swiss Christian Revieic, December, 1872, p. 743. 
 
PESTALOZZPS RELIGION. 401 
 
 appearance in Switzerland of a religions revival which, bnt 
 for the errors with which it was accompanied, would have 
 filled Pestalozzi's heart with joy. At first the old man. saw 
 little else in the movement but a return to primitive Christian 
 simplicity, and welcomed it with eager gladness, as is proved 
 by the following passage of his discourse for the 12th of 
 January, 1818 : 
 
 " The religious spirit, the blessing of the house, still 
 exists among us ; but it is without inner life, and is reduced 
 to a mere reasoning spirit that does nothing but talk of 
 what is holy and Divine. . . . And yet, the true spirit 
 of Christ's teaching seems to be striking new and deep roots 
 amid the corruption of our race, and to be nourishing a pure 
 inner life in thousands of souls. Indeed it is this alone that 
 will furnish us with the strength and principles necessary 
 for fighting against the ideas, feelings, desires and habits 
 of our century, which are undoubtedly the chief causes of 
 the degradation of the people." 
 
 Before long, however, Pestalozzi, had ceased to be in entire 
 sympathy with the revivalists who, while preaching a truer 
 and more living Christianity than the philosophers of the 
 eighteenth century had left to the great mass of Protestants, 
 were also preaching a narrow, repressive theology, that left 
 hardly any place for free will, deprived man of the power of 
 working at his own sanctification, and above all refused to 
 recognize in the child any single element of good. It is 
 clear that such a theology as this could not be acceptable to 
 Pestalozzi, and so it came to pass that the leaders of the 
 movement refused to look upon him as a Christian. 
 
 This judgment was unfortunately confirmed by the testi- 
 mony of Pamsauer, a pupil of Pestalozzi, and one of his 
 best collaborators, who after leaving the Yverdun institute 
 had become a fervent Pietist. In the work we have already 
 quoted, while doing full justice to his old master, for whom 
 he is still full of gratitude and affection, he complains of 
 never having been instructed in sound Christian doctrine, 
 and especially in the doctrine of original sin. 
 
 And yet there can be no doubt that Pestalozzi recognized 
 the existence of evil in the human soul, for it is the obvious 
 teaching of his fable, The interior of the hill, already quoted. 
 
402 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 A similar view to Ramsauer's is expressed by writers who 
 shared his religious opinions, such as Blochmann, Chavannes 
 and Paroz, all enlightened and friendly critics. There has 
 even been published a German pamphlet, bearing the title, 
 Was Pestalozzi a Christian ? a question which the author 
 answers in the negative. 
 
 On the other side, however, we are glad to be able to 
 cite the testimony of Jayet, 1 an eager partisan of the revival, 
 and a man eminently qualified to form a correct estimate of 
 Pestalozzi. The following passage is taken from a letter 
 he wrote at our special request : 
 
 " The subject of your letter is one of those which have 
 the greatest claim on my interest. I owe much to Pestalozzi, 
 who was almost a father to me. But an answer is not easy ; 
 indeed I should need rather a pamphlet than a letter for my 
 recollections. This, however, is not what you ask for, nor 
 could I find time for it. I shall just jot things down then 
 as I remember them, beginning with the religious question 
 upon which you lay particular stress. 
 
 " There was certainly no lack of piety in Pestalozzi, though 
 certain important points of Christianity were not clear to 
 him. He did not believe in man's fall, for instance, or at 
 any rate he had not a sufficiently clear conception of it. 
 And so, as a natural consequence, he ignored the fact of 
 expiation and redemption by Christ's blood. In his efforts 
 to raise mankind he relied exclusively upon his method, or 
 rather upon a perfected method of education, ignoring all 
 other means, the great and chief means. 
 
 " I remember, however, that Pestalozzi, ignorant as he was 
 of the essence of the Gospel, had thoroughly caught its 
 spirit in his manner of treating us. Faith and love were 
 words that were constantly recurring in his religions dis- 
 courses. He seems to have taken as his model God's way 
 of turning men's hearts to Himself, who does not hold the 
 guilty innocent, and yet pardons men that they may fear 
 Him. Though Pestalozzi was not particularly strict, he had 
 no difficulty in controlling us. But his discipline was love. 
 
 1 Mr. Jayet was one of the first pupils entered at the Yverdun institute. 
 He afterwards became a pastor, and was one of the most ardent apostles 
 of the religious revival. 
 
PESTALOZZPS RELIGION. 403 
 
 When he scolded us, it was with his arms round our necks. 
 He reached our consciences through our hearts. And thus, 
 without knowing it, he prepared many a soul for the dis- 
 cipline of the Gospel and Grod's methods of salvation. I have 
 often been struck by the number of Pestalozzi's old pupils 
 who afterwards embraced the faith, for which they almost 
 seemed to have been prepared. . . . 
 
 "Pestalozzi aimed more at harmoniously developing the 
 faculties than at making use of them for the acquirement of 
 positive knowledge ; he sought to prepare the vase rather 
 than fill it. But this judicious plan not infrequently gave 
 rise to misapprehension, and I afterwards heard many 
 parents find fault with Pestalozzi, saying : ' As long as my 
 son was with Pestalozzi he learned nothing, but as soon as I 
 put him somewhere else he made rapid progress.' And I 
 often had the greatest difficulty to make these people under- 
 stand that this very progress was owing to the judicious 
 preparation their children had received from Pestalozzi." 
 
 These last remarks are important, and throw considerable 
 light on the many contradictory opinions that have been 
 expressed about Pestalozzi. 
 
 May we believe that after the time when Mr. Jayet was 
 a pupil in the institute, Pestalozzi accepted the truths of the 
 Christian dogma in a more complete manner ? His discourses 
 seem to prove that he did. 
 
 Here are a few extracts from the discourse pronounced 
 on Christmas Day, 1811, which is printed at the end of the 
 sixteenth volume of Seyifarth's collection : 
 
 " My children, we want you to share with us the joy of 
 knowing that Jesus Christ our Saviour came down from 
 heaven and became man among us. . . . Listen to the 
 words of the angel : '• Behold I tell you tidings of great 
 joy, for to-day a Saviour is born to you.' Keep these words 
 carefully in your hearts. . . . 
 
 " Ah, if I could make this day a holy and blessed day for 
 you, not merely a day of joy, but a day of salvation and 
 of sanctification ! If your joy, strengthening your faith in 
 Jesus Christ, could raise you to that life of truth, justice, 
 faith, and love which is in the spirit of Christ, and to which 
 Christ calls all men ! . . . 
 
404 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 " The whole Bible is nothing but a collection of the reve- 
 lations of God, calling men to rise above the vain service of 
 the world to the Divine service of a holy faith in Him." 
 
 And again, in the discourse of the 12th of January, 1818, 
 the following passage occurs : 
 
 " Let no one say that Jesus did not love the wicked, the 
 evildoers ! He loved them with a Divine love, He died for 
 them. It was not the just but sinners that He called to 
 repentance. He did not find the sinner a believer, but made 
 him a believer by His own faith ; He did not find him 
 humble, but made him humble by His own humility." 
 
 Later still, when the establishment at Yverdun was on 
 the verge of dissolution, Pestalozzi, with his characteristic 
 conscientiousness, reproached himself for not having given a 
 more solid religious foundation to his work. It was then 
 that walking one day in the garden of the Castle and looking 
 sadly at the old building, he said to his companion : " Ah, 
 my dear friend, I did not establish my house firmly enough 
 upon the true foundation, and thus it is threatened with 
 ruin." 
 
 On his death-bed Pestalozzi cried : " I am soon going to 
 read in the book of truth," knowing full well that man is 
 not permitted to understand everything here below. He 
 then added : "lam going to eternal peace," and died with 
 the joy and faith of a Christian. 
 
 The earth has now covered his mortal remains for sixty 
 years, and during that time men's opinions of him have 
 been considerably modified. His work is being slowly 
 understood, and people are beginning to see that he was 
 misjudged, only because he was ahead of his time. 
 
 During the last thirty years, even the most orthodox 
 Protestants have repudiated the narrowness of view, Puri- 
 tanical harshness, and petty intolerance that so long existed 
 among the partisans of the religious revival, and it is now 
 understood that there are different ways of being an evan- 
 gelical Christian. And so in recent works on Pestalozzi, 
 which have been especially numerous in Germany, we find 
 no trace of doubt as to the Christian character of his work. 
 
 This character, as we have seen, was evident enough in 
 
PESTALOZZPS RELIGION. 405 
 
 Pestalozzi's treatment of the children he sought to befriend, 
 but, it stands out most clearly when we compare his educa- 
 tional doctrine with the teaching of the Gospel. What 
 Jesus asks for is an inward development in spirit and in 
 truth, something which comes from the heart. When He 
 seeks to make us one with Him, it is that we may be nourished 
 by His love, His faith, and His humility, as the branch is 
 nourished by the sap of the vine. He always judges of an 
 act by the feeling behind it, thus making the hidden motives 
 of the human soul a measure of the real value of its external 
 manifestations. 
 
 And if we look at the comparisons by which Jesus teaches 
 His disciples, we shall find Him constantly taking vegetable 
 life as a type of the moral and religious life. The kingdom 
 of heaven is like a tree that has grown from a small seed. 
 The word of God is like a seed that falls upon good ground ; 
 it takes root and develops in a well-prepared heart. God 
 punishing the sinner is like a gardener pruning a tree that 
 it may bring forth more fruit. Every tree is known by its 
 fruits ; men do not gather figs of thorns, etc. 
 
 Everywhere, in short, He explains the development of the 
 human heart by likening it to the organic development of 
 the plant. We might indeed call this the philosophy of the 
 Gospel; we are about to see that it was certainly the 
 philosophy of Pestalozzi. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 PESTALOZZI'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Pestalozzi was, before everything else, a man of feeling 
 and imagination ; it was his feelings that led him to put 
 himself in the place of the unfortunate, it was by his power- 
 ful imagination that he so identified himself, as it were, 
 with children and poor people as to discover in them the 
 truths he was destined to reveal to the world. 
 
 He was, at the same time, a man of action. In devoting 
 himself to the people, it was by deeds and practical experi- 
 ments that he sought to serve them. He only began to 
 write when he could no longer act, and afterwards he only 
 wrote for the sake of making known certain views which he 
 was not in a position to test practically. 
 
 He would never admit that he had a carefully thought-out 
 system, his intuitions being so simple and so clear that he 
 thought they must be shared by everybody. It is true that 
 he was unable to formulate them in any general manner, 
 because, having so long forsaken books and the society of 
 scholars, he had no power of philosophical expression. And 
 yet he was delighted to hear from Fichte that his ideas 
 were in harmony with the philosophy of Kant. 
 
 It is somewhat difficult, then, to think of Pestalozzi as a 
 philosopher. And yet when we see his whole life animated 
 by one idea, an idea which enables him first to discover the 
 faults of the schools of his time, and the dangers to civili- 
 zation resulting therefrom, and then to apply remedies, 
 many of which, despite his awkwardness, met with admir- 
 able success, we can no longer doubt that some new and 
 fertile philosophical principle had been revealed to his 
 mind. 
 
 As a matter of fact, all the originality of his genius con- 
 sists in a new conception of man and man's nature, of his 
 powers, their mode of action, and development. This is 
 
PESTALOZZI'S PHILOSOPHY. 407 
 
 what we venture to call Pestalozzi's philosophy ; and when 
 it is once understood, his whole doctrine is seen to result 
 naturally from it. 
 
 In Pestalozzi's view, man is created by God and comes 
 into the world possessing in germ all the moral, physical, 
 and intellectual powers which, if exercised and developed 
 by the natural means the world offers him, will, by Divine 
 grace, enable him happily to accomplish the destiny to which 
 he is called. 
 
 In many of his writings, Pestalozzi formally recognizes the 
 necessity of God's grace, but he knows, too, that if it is 
 man's duty to ask for it as being powerless without it, he must 
 none the less work as if he could do everything for himself, 
 and apply his whole strength in the sphere of activity to 
 which God has called him. 
 
 The only means that the educator can make direct and 
 practical use of are those offered by the world in general 
 and the child's nature in particular ; it is these that Pesta- 
 lozzi studied and co-ordinated, for the purpose of employing 
 them in accordance with the natural law of the child's 
 development. 
 
 This law is the essential part of his discovery ; it is a 
 consequence of his philosophical conception of human nature ; 
 it became the fundamental principle of his educational 
 doctrine. 
 
 It appears in his mind as an intuition of his early youth. 
 As a general rule he does not so much state the law as take 
 it for granted, but he always observes it and acts in accord- 
 ance with it. We may say, indeed, that his whole life bears 
 its stamp. It is true that he nowhere formulates it as a 
 whole, but he gives its principal features in all his writings. 
 We find it, for instance, in the 'Evening Hour, his first 
 pedagogical work, and again in the Song of the Swan, the 
 last production of his old age. 
 
 As we have seen, this law of man's development is an 
 organic law ; that is to say, our true progress cannot result 
 from a mere combination of external circumstances, but only 
 from the work that goes on within us. In the physical or- 
 ganism the organs are increased and strengthened by use and 
 exercise only ; each of them profits chiefly and directly from 
 the exercise which is suited to it, but also to some extent 
 indirectly from the exercise of certain other organs, on 
 
4o8 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 account of the harmony and solidarity which exist between 
 the different parts of the same organism. Progress follows 
 progress in an unbroken sequence. The development, in 
 short, at whatever point it may be supposed to stop, always 
 forms a whole which is harmonious and complete. 
 
 Such are the essential features of this law, discovered by 
 Pestalozzi, and applied by him in all the enterprises of his 
 long life, so long, at least, as circumstances allowed him to 
 freely follow his own impulses. 1 
 
 It is the law of the natural development of man ; we may 
 therefore expect to find it living and active whenever this 
 development has not been interfered with by the prejudices 
 or passions of men and the artificial means they so generally 
 adopt. Hence Pestalozzi sees the type of the law in the 
 action of a good mother in her relations with her infant 
 child. 
 
 He wishes the mother to learn to continue and complete 
 this work she has so well begun, to teach always in the 
 same spirit all that the child is capable of learning, and to 
 make him discover for himself the elements of the knowledge 
 that he will afterwards acquire in the school. The work of 
 the school, in fact, is to be but the continuation of the work 
 begun by the mother. This work embraces moral develop- 
 ment, physical development, and intellectual development, 
 all of which were included by Pestalozzi in what he called 
 his " idea of elementary education." 
 
 In moral development each individual faculty of the heart 
 must be set in action and exercised, that it may not perish 
 but gain strength and breadth ; thus, all faith must proceed 
 from a first act of faith, all love from a first prompting of 
 love, all justice from a first sentiment of justice, and it is in 
 ordinary life and especially in the home that the means and 
 opportunities for this development of the heart are to be 
 found; " for," says Pestalozzi, "it is life that educates." 
 For the development of the moral nature the philosopher of 
 education did not propose any special and definite series of 
 exercises, for it would have been impossible to draw one up ; 
 
 1 In The Philosophy and Practice of Education we have shown that 
 this law results strictly from the observation of facts, we have formulated 
 it in its entirety, and we have endeavoured to apply it to all branches of 
 education. 
 
PESTALOZZPS PHILOSOPHY. 409 
 
 but he organized all the child's activity in such a way as to 
 give him no other motive power than feelings and desires 
 consistent with Christian morality, and in doing that he 
 freed the education of the heart from the subversive in- 
 fluences of the school. 
 
 In physical development the organic law had naturally 
 not been entirely ignored, but public education took little 
 notice of it. Pestalozzi revived gymnastics at a time when 
 Europe had allowed them to fall into complete neglect. In 
 his institutions he graduated these exercises in a manner 
 which has since been imitated and improved upon. 
 
 ~ut it was above all in what he did for intellectual develop- 
 ent that Pestalozzi obtained the success most calculated to 
 strike the public, a success which amazed his visitors and 
 brought general attention upon his undertakings. He sought 
 out the simplest elements of our knowledge in the form in 
 which they engage the attention of the little child ; he made 
 him acquire them by that direct and personal experience 
 which he calls sense-impression, and developed them by a 
 series of exercises which proceeded by almost imperceptible 
 degrees in one unbroken chain. This is what has generally 
 been called the " Method " of Pestalozzi. But however far 
 he and his fellow-workers may have carried their labours in 
 this direction, however remarkable their success may have 
 sometimes been in mathematics, drawing, geography, etc., 
 Pestalozzi was not satisfied. He used to say that that was 
 not the end to which he had devoted his life, but simply 
 one of the special means by which he hoped to reach it, and 
 so he worked on and never ceased in his search. 
 
 In reality, in wishing to show his doctrine in the light of 
 its practical results, he had set himself a task for which a 
 man's whole life would hardly have sufficed, even had he 
 possessed all the strength and resources that Pestalozzi 
 lacked. Often and often in the course of his experiments 
 he had recognized their defects and insufficiency, he had 
 seen that they were not giving an exact and complete idea 
 of his doctrine, and he had tried to make up for this by his 
 writings. It was in this mind and with this intention that 
 he published most of his books, but in none of them did he 
 concentrate his ideas or co-ordinate his principles in such a 
 way as to make a connected whole of his thought. And 
 thus the world has never found in his works a clear answer 
 28 
 
4io PESTALOZZI : HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 to the often-repeated question : " What is the Pestalozzian 
 method ? " 
 
 The Song of the Sican was the last of these attempts, but, 
 notwithstanding the luminous touches in which it abounds, 
 it was no better understood than the others. The fact is, 
 that in order perfectly to understand Pestalozzi's philo- 
 sophical thought, it is necessary to follow him throughout 
 his life, and above all throughout his long series of writings. 
 There can then no longer be any doubt that what he aimed 
 at, what he preached, and what he partially realized in his 
 practical work was, if we may use the word in an immaterial 
 sense, an organic education. 
 
 But the benefits of a true philosophy are not confined to 
 those alone who are able to formulate it. Whole nations 
 are almost unconsciously penetrated by philosophical ideas, 
 which, gradually influencing feelings, opinions and conduct, 
 lend to each civilization its distinctive features. 
 
 Pestalozzi's philosophy has already begun to produce an 
 effect of this sort. It is very little known and yet its 
 influence is spreading. Among the men who occupy them- 
 selves with education, there are few whose minds do not 
 bear some trace of it, even though they may know nothing 
 of Pestalozzi's labours. 
 
 The fact is, that the large numbers of men who in some 
 way or another came into contact with his work , all carried 
 away something valuable with them, many perhaps without 
 knowing it. And then afterwards, these same men, scattered 
 over many countries as teachers, writers, or even as private 
 individuals, diffused around them, as it were, some portion 
 of the master's spirit, even when criticizing and condemning 
 his method as they had seen it practised. 
 
 And so we are struck to-day by the fact that in hardly 
 any country is anything written upon education, or any edu- 
 cational institution founded or reformed, without principles 
 being invoked which we owe in a great measure to Pestalozzi. 
 They are, indeed, rarely attributed to the Swiss philosopher, 
 but generally to Rabelais, Montaigne, Charron, the Port 
 Royalists, or Rousseau, to mention French writers only. 
 
 It is indeed true that Pestalozzi's philosophy contains 
 many truths which had been discovered and proclaimed to 
 the world long before him, but before him these truths had 
 not been seen to depend upon a common central principle, 
 
PESTALOZZPS PHILOSOPHY. 411 
 
 they had not been applied to a rational system of teaching, 
 they had not been built np into a system of elementary 
 education suited to the wants of the people. Further, these 
 truths had not been proclaimed without a great admixture 
 of error, so that they had been of little practical value for 
 education. 
 
 But when the influence of Pestalozzi's work, an influence 
 indeed often unsuspected, began to make itself felt by open- 
 ing men's minds to a conception of rational education, the 
 true principles to be found in the older writers excited more 
 attention and were better understood, and society was 
 seized with a desire to apply them to the reform of a system 
 of education, the defects and vices of which it was no longer 
 possible to ignore. 
 
 The time has come, then, when it is of the t highest im- 
 portance to obtain an exact and complete knowledge of Pes- 
 talozzi's work, that we may confer upon nations the benefits 
 of a rational education, and thus ensure the future of 
 civilization. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 PESTALOZZl'S ELEMENTARY METHOD. 
 
 General statement. Distinction between this method and the 
 different ways in which attempts have been made to apply 
 it. Regarded by its author as an indispensable means for 
 raising the people, and establishing order and harmony in 
 society. Still the chief remedy for many social evils. 
 
 From his childhood Pestalozzi had been profoundly touched 
 by the poverty and sufferings of a great number of his 
 fellow-countrymen, and especially by their state of moral 
 and intellectual destitution ; he had longed to rescue them, 
 and make " men " of them, and had worked for this noble 
 end with all the power of his ardent, loving soul. It was in 
 concentrating his desires and actions on this single object 
 that he arrived at the philosophical conclusions which in- 
 spired his whole after life. 
 
 It was to elementary education that he first applied his 
 principles ; and his marvellous success proved the truth of 
 his views. We will not here enter into all the details of 
 his methods, but merely call attention in a few words to the 
 many improvements which are owing to him, and which, 
 adopted by most of our schools, are to-day rendering impor- 
 tant and incontestable services. 
 
 Pestalozzi's philosophical doctrine has certain immediate 
 and obvious consequences which regulate the elementary 
 method of teaching. 
 
 To learn, the child must be always active. He learns only 
 by his own impressions, and not from words, which must 
 accompany his ideas to fix them, but are impotent to produce 
 them. 
 
 Words apart from the ideas they represent have no value, 
 and, inasmuch as it is possible for the child to connect them 
 with ideas to which they do not belong, are even sometimes 
 
PESTALOZZPS ELEMENTARY METHOD. 413 
 
 dangerous. The child must, as it were, be provided with 
 fruitful and salutary impressions, following each other in a 
 natural and carefully graduated order. He must then be 
 required to express clearly in speech all the ideas these 
 impressions suggest ; and, lastly, he must be made to obtain 
 a thorough mastery of each idea before being introduced to 
 a new one. 
 
 These principles had been recognized by Pestalozzi as 
 early as 1774, at the time that he was endeavouring to bring 
 up his child, then between three and four years of age, in 
 accordance with the ideas of Rousseau. He had seen in 
 them a means for regenerating society by the reform of 
 elementary education ; and without considering his strength, 
 he conceived an irresistible desire to put his hand to the 
 work. This is the explanation of those successive enter- 
 prises in which, so firm was his faith in these principles 
 that, despite failure and ruin, he steadily persevered in his 
 endeavour to give a practical proof of their truth. 
 
 In reviewing the different means for elementary teaching 
 that we owe to Pestalozzi, we shall follow the order of their 
 use in the course of the child's development. 
 
 The exercises of sense-impression and language^ after- 
 wards called object-lessons, are intended to teach the child to 
 observe and to talk — to recount, that is, all the impressions he 
 receives from the objects which surround him, and to which 
 the master calls his attention. In this way the child's words 
 and sentences, which may be corrected, if necessary, are really 
 his own work, and express his own thoughts. 
 
 Sense-impression was also applied to arithmetic, the child 
 learning numbers and their relations by the sight of objects 
 that he could count. Pestalozzi employed for this purpose his 
 table of units and table of fractions. The series of these 
 exercises being rather long, people tried to shorten it, and 
 Pestalozzi's tables have been replaced by other similar inven- 
 tions. These changes, however, have brought more loss than 
 gain, for the best pupils of the schools of to-day are very far 
 behind Pestalozzi's in mental arithmetic. 
 
 The graphic exercises without rule or compass served 
 equally well as a preparation for linear drawing, elementary 
 geometry, or writing. For these exercises Pestalozzi used 
 slates, which, from the ease with which they can be cleaned, 
 have been of immense service in primary schools. 
 
4M PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 In drawing the children were taught to judge of the length 
 of lines and size of angles by the eye, and to work out a 
 certain number of combinations on a given plan. They were 
 not limited to copying models, but had to design symmetrical 
 and graceful figures ; and thus they were exercising at the 
 same time, not only their eye and hand, but their taste and 
 inventive faculties. 
 
 Pestalozzi called relation of forms or sense-impression of 
 forms those graphic exercises which served as an introduction 
 to geometry. The child had first to distinguish between 
 vertical, horizontal, oblique, and parallel lines ; right, acute, 
 and obtuse angles ; different kinds of triangles, quadrilaterals, 
 etc. Then he had to find out at how many points a given 
 number of straight lines could be made to cut one another ; 
 or how many angles, triangles, or quadrilaterals could be 
 formed from them. These exercises gradually led the child 
 to the first problems of theoretical geometry, which he at- 
 tempted with all the more pleasure that he was able to find 
 most of the demonstrations for himself. 
 
 Writing gives little difficulty to children whose hand and 
 eye have been already well trained. Pestalozzi taught it 
 side by side with reading, but he did not begin these exer- 
 cises till after those we have already mentioned. Before he 
 taught at Burgdorf, he had already drawn up a manual for 
 teaching to read, in which he had first suggested the use of 
 movable letters. His method, which has to-day been gener- 
 ally adopted, was to teach from a series of groups of letters, 
 arranged in order of difficulty. 
 
 Pestalozzi's method of teaching geography has completely 
 revolutionized the teaching of that science. The child is first 
 taught to observe the country about his home, not on the 
 map but on the land itself ; it is the child himself who draws 
 the map, correcting the mistakes in his first attempt after 
 another visit to the spot. Having thus learned to understand 
 and read maps, he continues his study by the help of large 
 blank maps hung on the wall. 
 
 From the very first day geography is connected with other 
 sciences, such as natural history, agriculture, local geology, 
 etc., which make it very attractive even for children. 
 
 Pestalozzi taught the elements of natural history by his 
 exercises of sense-impression and language ; that is to say, 
 the master brought different objects under the children's 
 
PESTALOZZPS ELEMENTARY METHOD. 415 
 
 direct observation, and by judicious suggestions encouraged 
 them to talk about them. Preference was given to those 
 objects that the children brought home from their walks, but 
 these were supplemented by collections of minerals, plants, 
 stuffed animals, etc. 
 
 In the exercises that we have described, Pestalozzi's chief 
 means for maintaining the attention and activity of the whole 
 class, and for fixing names in the memory of the children, was 
 to make them repeat each correct statement several times in 
 chorus. 
 
 When this is done in strict time, the result is a sort of 
 chant which is not particularly agreeable to listen to, but 
 which has no serious disadvantages. The children must 
 be taught not to shout, and care must be taken that each 
 one takes part in the exercise, any who seem inattentive 
 being questioned separately. But Pestalozzi's mind was so 
 often full of other thoughts, and he so often allowed his zeal 
 to carry him away, that these precautions were often entirely 
 neglected, the result being a noise and confusion which not 
 only spoilt everything, but led many who had no other data 
 to guide them to utterly condemn the method. And yet the 
 plan in itself was excellent ; nor has anything yet been found 
 to replace it. [It had too a hygienic advantage, inasmuch as 
 it strengthened the children's chests by constantly exercis- 
 ing the organs of speech. , But it has had bad imitators, who 
 have copied the form without catching the spirit, making 
 children repeat statements which they had not themselves 
 formulated, which w T ere not the expression of their own 
 observation, and which sometimes even had not been ex- 
 plained to them. This practice, diametrically opposed as it 
 was to the method of the man whose name it bore, must have 
 been the cause of many an unsound judgment upon the 
 master's doctrine. 
 
 Singing played an important part in all Pestalozzi's estab- 
 lishments. The youngest children first learned to sing as 
 they had learned to talk — by imitation. In this way they 
 formed their voice, ear, and taste, before knowing their 
 notes. "When they came to theory and notation, time was 
 taken first, sound being left till afterwards. The reason of 
 this was, that time being, as it were^ a mathematical part 
 of music, the children easily grasped it, having been well 
 prepaid for it by their previous training in counting. 
 
4i6 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 Every lesson in theory ended with a few songs by way of 
 recreation. 
 
 The admission of gymnastics into the programme of a 
 school was another innovation due to Pestalozzi. He attached 
 quite as much importance to this exercise as to any of the 
 other lessons. It was in gymnastics too that the value of 
 gradation, that favourite principle of his, was brought out 
 most clearly. 
 
 We cannot here speak of the other branches of instruction, 
 because the works in which he sought to apply his method 
 to them were never finished. We will merely add a few 
 words on the subject of the study of language, on account of 
 its great importance. 
 
 Pestalozzi's pupils learned to use their mother-tongue by 
 constant and varied practice. In his first undertakings the 
 language learned in this way was German, but at Yverdun 
 French was added, and after that time the children were 
 exercised in both languages. But it was also necessary to 
 teach them grammar, and as Pestalozzi had not applied his 
 method to that particular branch of study, the masters had 
 to be satisfied with the books already in use. Pestalozzi 
 seems to have sought in vain for a method of teaching gram- 
 mar in accordance with his principles ;* however, with a zeal 
 and perseverance that nothing could daunt, he continued his 
 attempt to find some simple and rational method of teaching 
 foreign and dead languages to the end of his life. 
 
 We have only been able to give here a general idea of 
 Pestalozzi's application of his method to the different 
 branches of elementary education. The complete series of 
 these exercises will be found in our Philosophy and Practice 
 of Education. 
 
 But we cannot repeat too often that Pestalozzi's method is 
 spirit and life, and that before it can bear fruit this spirit 
 must have sunk deep into the master's mind and heart. A 
 man will understand that he is faithful to this method when 
 his children, freed from all artificial stimulus, and eager 
 merely for truth, knowledge, and increased powers, bring a 
 joyful diligence to all his lessons. 
 
 1 We think Pestalozzi would in a great measure have found what he 
 wanted in Becker's Organism of Language, a book which was not pub- 
 lished till long after his death. 
 
PESTALOZZPS ELEMENTARY METHOD. 417 
 
 It is true that this happy result is sometimes obtained 
 by men who are far from thinking themselves followers of 
 Pestalozzi, whose name, perhaps, they have never even 
 heard. But this is because the master's philosophy, spreading 
 slowly and silently, has influenced their thought without 
 their knowledge. 
 
 Would that its influence had reached everywhere, for then 
 we should not so often see the natural law of human develop- 
 ment violated in the home and the school, where it sometimes 
 seems as though the object were rather to hinder its action 
 than to help it on. 
 
 Publications intended for children are, however, improv- 
 ing ; indeed, for some years now, marvellous, insipid stories 
 and other artificial puerilities have been more or less given 
 up, and a serious attempt made to interest children while 
 giving them solid instruction. This is a great step forward, 
 but it is not all. A large number of children's books, espe- 
 cially in Prance, may still be reproached with making an 
 abuse of fiction by multiplying dramatic and romantic situa- 
 tions, and by interesting the reader less by the instruction 
 they give than by the adventures and incidents which are 
 its framework. And thus children grow weary of these 
 things, their taste is spoiled, and it becomes difficult for them 
 to take pleasure in true history or real travels, and often 
 indeed in any serious and sustained intellectual work. 
 
 We have now given a general sketch of Pestalozzi's ele- 
 mentary method in its application to teaching, properly so 
 called. But the instruction of children was not the only, nor 
 even the chief aim to which this extraordinary man devoted 
 the ardent activity of his life ; he was anxious above all else 
 to reform their moral and religious education, and develop 
 their hearts, and so form pious, moral men, devoted to their 
 duty, their neighbour, and their country. 
 
 We must first remark that this moral development already 
 resulted to a certain extent from the means employed for 
 teaching ; indeed, voluntary, varied, and steady activity and 
 the quest of truth for its own sake, and not for reasons of 
 pride or interest, were eminently calculated to awaken the 
 noblest sentiments of the soul, and establish the supremacy of 
 the spirit over the flesh. But Pestalozzi's method can also 
 be applied in a more direct manner to the development of the 
 child's heart, for since it always makes the child's best feel- 
 
4 i8 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 ings the spring of action, these feelings are constantly gain- 
 ing in strength. It is thus that for the moral training of 
 children, Pestalozzi relies much less upon discourses and 
 exhortations than upon the practice of the Christian virtues 
 — faith, love, patience, pardon, etc., a practice to which he 
 wishes the child to be accustomed from the very cradle, such 
 small things being utilized at first as may perhaps seem 
 trifles to us, but which are nevertheless the foundations of all 
 piety, morality, and wisdom. 
 
 The influence of Pestalozzi's method upon the child's moral 
 and religious development has been somewhat underrated, 
 especially by certain pious men who feel the need of the 
 Gospel for the sanctification of souls, but who, a prey to a 
 fatal illusion, think that the explanation of dogma alone 
 can sow the seeds of Christian sentiments in a young heart, 
 and that this will always be enough. Pestalozzi said: "Ele- 
 mentary education alone can regenerate and save society." 
 "No," say the} 7- , " the Gospel alone can perform this miracle." 
 But there is no real contradiction between these two state- 
 ments. 
 
 Society can only be raised by the raising of the individual. 
 Now, if the Gospel is to raise men, it must not only sink deep 
 into their minds, but become as it were a part of their being, 
 forming their conscience, and supplying the principle upon 
 which their feelings, aspirations, and will must depend. 
 
 The preaching of the Gospel, however, does not always 
 suffice for this; even when souls have been really touched, 
 the effects are too often transitory, disappearing with the 
 generation that experiences them. A period of faith is often 
 succeeded by a period of incredulity, and it is by no means 
 an unusual thing to see the children of fervent Christians 
 Christian in nothing but the name. And so it comes to pass 
 that, even in countries where it has been preached for cen- 
 turies, the Gospel is still a stranger to the hearts of the 
 majority of men. 
 
 Christian truth does sometimes take possession of a man 
 in a moment, and such absolute possession that it never 
 again forsakes him ; but such cases are rare. As a general 
 rule, a thorough education is needed, not the outward and 
 superficial memory-education of the time before Pestalozzi, 
 but elementary education, as he calls it, an education, that 
 is, which sets the feelings and faculties in motion, gives them 
 
PESTALOZZrS ELEMENTARY METHOD. 419 
 
 a direction, and, by thus making him really assimilate 
 morality and knowledge, renders the child the chief agent 
 in his own development. 
 
 The philosophy of the eighteenth century declared man to 
 be originally good, but spoiled by society. This was equiva- 
 lent to saying that society, in spite of being the work of man 
 who is good, is in itself bad. 
 
 In fighting against this deplorable error, men unfortunately 
 fell into the opposite mistake, not only declaring man to be 
 originally bad, but denying that he bore within him a single 
 germ of good. And thus, by a very natural consequence, 
 Pestalozzi was condemned because he looked upon education 
 as a development. And yet it is absolutely certain that if 
 there were no trace of good feelings in the child's soul, good 
 feelings could exercise no influence over him, and that if 
 there were no seeds of good in his heart, all men's efforts for 
 his moral education would be worse than useless. 
 
 As we have seen, Pestalozzi undoubtedly recognized the 
 original existence of evil in the heart of man, though in 
 stating his views he too often left this important truth in the 
 background, partly perhaps because he was chiefly struck 
 by the innumerable germs of goodness, dormant it is true, 
 but yet alive, in even the most degraded souls, partly because, 
 his aim being to interest his contemporaries in the work by 
 which he hoped to regenerate and save the suffering people, 
 he felt bound before everything else to prove that such a 
 regeneration was possible. 
 
 Whatever may be the aim of education, success is not 
 possible without method ; some procedure, that is, in con- 
 formity with the natural law of man's development. And 
 thus, in whatever religious or philosophical doctrine we may 
 wish to train children, we must always take for a starting- 
 point their thoughts and feelings as they are, according to the 
 axiom which says that before you can take a man anywhere, 
 you must first go where he is ; their powers, too, must be 
 developed by exercise, and they must be taught to apply their 
 strength to raising themselves slowly to the knowledge of 
 truth and the practice of duty. 
 
 Now, this is just what Pestalozzi proposed to do. Con- 
 sidered in itself, his method is independent of all dogmatic 
 opinions, and it is for this reason that it will never grow 
 old, but at all times and in all countries be capable of appli- 
 
420 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 cation, not only to the powers of the body and mind, but also to 
 the divine element within the soul. 
 
 In consecrating his life to a reform of elementary educa- 
 tion, Pestalozzi not only sought to stop the sources of indi- 
 vidual poverty and suffering, but also to root out vices which 
 were undermining the whole of European society, and pre- 
 paring a fatal catastrophe for civilization. This idea comes- 
 out in most of his works. We need only remind our readers 
 of the almost prophetic words he addressed to Mrs. Niederer 
 when entrusting her with his manuscript on the causes of the 
 Trench Revolution. 
 
 What Pestalozzi considered the real cause of the evil was 
 not so much the absence of instruction for the people as a 
 vicious method of teaching, which paralyzed the faculties it 
 should have developed, and blunted the sympathies it should 
 have quickened. And yet. as a general rule, it is this old 
 method which has continued to prevail in the remarkable 
 extension that has nearly everywhere been given to popular 
 instruction in the course of this century. And thus it happens 
 that this grand diffusion of enlightenment, as it is called, has 
 often but aggravated the very evil it was intended to cure. 
 
 As Pestalozzi considered his elementary education to bo 
 the chief means for preserving our civilization from the 
 terrible dangers he foresaw, we must endeavour to show how 
 such an education, if generally applied, might contribute to 
 bring about a change in existing conditions, and correct 
 many of the vices which are to-day troubling society and 
 threatening its future. 
 
 In the first place, it would give true liberty of heart and 
 mind, without which no other liberty can be enjoyed ; it 
 would tend to re-establish in every citizen that independence 
 of development and character which teaches a man to observe 
 and judge for himself, without allowing himself to be absorbed 
 by party or sect, and made a mere puppet in the hands of 
 others. We should then no longer see the great majority of 
 men with no other beliefs, judgments, or feelings than the 
 beliefs, judgments, and feelings of the mass, blindly following 
 the lead of the most skilful and violent mob orator. 
 
 Moreover, this really educational instruction, by making 
 the child the agent of his own knowledge, gives hirn both 
 taste and facility for learning by himself. ' Formed thus, the 
 young man takes pleasure in devoting his leisure to self- 
 
PESTALOZZPS ELEMENTARY METHOD. 421 
 
 instruction, and thus avoids temptations and the formation 
 of habits which are often no less deadly in their effect on 
 society than on his family and himself. 
 
 This instruction, too, that every one continues to acquire by 
 his own observations and his own judgment, shields men from 
 the tyranny of fashionable opinions, — opinions of the majority, 
 that is, — which at certain times are almost forced upon us, 
 however full of error they may be. And it is not alone in 
 economical science that men blindly accept false systems. 
 
 To-day the craze for natural science has replaced the 
 unintelligent contempt with which it was formerly regarded ; 
 it has even come to be spoken of as science, as though there 
 were no other ; and its authority, often invoked even outside 
 its domain, is almost the only authority still recognized. 
 And thus we hear people declaring that the progress of 
 natural science has put moral science to shame. May we 
 not believe that men would be less exposed to such a con- 
 fusion of ideas if their knowledge were the fruit of faculties 
 trained from infancy, and the conquest of their attention, 
 spirit of observation, and independent judgment ? 
 
 One of the greatest dangers in these democratic times is 
 the separation in the education of the different classes of 
 society. The rich have one education, the poor another ; 
 the two classes, each going its own way, get farther and 
 farther apart ; with different habits, tastes, ideas, and feel- 
 ings, nay, with a different language even, they end by no 
 longer understanding each other ; and so misunderstanding 
 breeds mistrust, and mistrust not infrequently hatred. It 
 is easy to see how much this evil would be lessened if all 
 children could remain together in the same schools up to the 
 age of thirteen or fourteen; for, by that time, they would 
 have a common stock of ideas, knowledge, and language, and 
 durable relations would be possible between them. Schools 
 in the spirit of Pestalozzi would render such an education 
 as this possible, without even the richest and most particular 
 parents having anything to fear for their children. We 
 should not only want teachers, however, animated by Pesta- 
 lozzi's spirit, but a considerable increase in the number of 
 primary classes. But this latter reform we shall certainly 
 have to wait for, although the need is very generally felt. 
 
 There is, however, a reform which might easily be realized 
 at once, and which, though less complete, would still do 
 
422 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 much to lessen the lamentable antagonism that so often 
 divides men engaged in different occupations. 
 
 It is now the custom for children intended for classical 
 studies to begin Latin at eight or nine years of age, from 
 which time they are, if not entirely separated, at any rate 
 distinguished from their comrades who are preparing for 
 industrial pursuits. Their work is quite different from the 
 work of the others, and they are more or less encouraged to 
 hold themselves aloof. 
 
 This state of things is not only bad for the harmony and 
 sympathy that it is so desirable to see existing between all 
 classes of society, but has besides the serious disadvantage 
 of compelling parents to decide upon a calling for their 
 children before they are in a position to judge of their 
 tastes and aptitudes, with the result that many boys are 
 launched into classical studies who will never succeed in 
 them, and many, who at fourteen are clever and eager to 
 learn, find themselves shut out from the liberal professions 
 because they did not make their choice before. This state of 
 things is also exceedingly bad for the studies themselves. 
 
 Pestalozzi was long ago struck by the painful waste of 
 time and labour involved in trying to teach children Latin 
 before they are acquainted with the principles of their own 
 language, that is to say, before they have any knowledge of 
 grammar, without which it is impossible for them to arrive 
 at any understanding of a dead language. He even insisted 
 that the study of a foreign modern language should precede 
 the study of Latin, that the child might be provided with a 
 first simple means of grammatical comparison. 
 
 This system has since been attempted a hundred times in 
 different countries, even in important public establishments 
 as at Berne, and has always met with complete success. 
 Pupils who have only commenced the study of dead languages 
 at the age of thirteen or fourteen, have invariably made such 
 rapid progress, that in a few years they have more than made 
 up for the time which they seemed to have lost, but which 
 in reality they had employed far more usefully. 
 
 And yet this reform has not yet been generally adopted, 
 for nothing is more difficult than to change a system of 
 studies which has slowly grown, as it were, into a national 
 custom, and which is intended to preserve a certain unity 
 between the schools of a country. Books and methods 
 
PESTALOZZPS ELEMENTARY METHOD. 423 
 
 adapted to children who as yet know nothing, would not of 
 course do for those whose minds were already well formed. 
 Besides, the reform would have to be carried out in all 
 schools simultaneously, so that pupils might pass from one to 
 another without detriment to their work. This reform, how- 
 ever, would be so advantageous in every respect, that it will 
 certainly some day be adopted. 
 
 One of the chief vices of modern society is pride, in all its 
 forms : vanity, ambition, the spirit of rivalry and domina- 
 tion, the desire to shine, to rise above others, to surpass them 
 in power and in wealth ; and this vicious tendency, into 
 which our nature so easily slips, is aggravated nearly every 
 day in class-rooms where the activity of the pupils is stimu- 
 lated by prizes and other unwise means. Instead of being 
 satisfied with the natural emulation which, in a properly 
 conducted school, results from the very nature of things, and 
 from the satisfaction of doing well and meeting with success, 
 teachers employ all sorts of artificial means to excite and 
 keep alive an unhealthy and un-Christian emulation, a desire 
 for distinctions and honours, and a spirit of rivalry, which is 
 not always unmixed with spite, envy, and hatred. 
 
 In his very earliest works, Pestalbzzi condemned and pro- 
 scribed these artificial means of exciting emulation ; and in 
 his after labours he did better still and rendered them super- 
 fluous. His elementary exercises, in fact, by reason of their 
 starting-point, gradation, and connection, are so thoroughly 
 adapted to the faculties, tastes, and needs of the child, that he 
 takes part in them with pleasure, the mere satisfaction of 
 feeling that he is learning and discovering, and that his 
 powers are increasing, being a sound and sufficient stimulus. 
 And so when we teach children by the rational elementary 
 method, we are no longer tempted to make their vanity the 
 stimulus to activity. 
 
 These are a few only of the points of view from which the 
 discovery of the great educational reformer appears to us to 
 be the chief factor in the solution of the social problem by 
 which we are confronted to-day. 
 
 To sum up, that part of Pestalozzi's work which will endure, 
 and that which constitutes him the benefactor of humanity, is 
 his application of his philosophy to an elementary method of 
 education. If we have succeeded in our attempt to explain 
 this method, it will be clear to everybody that it does not 
 
424 PESTALOZZI: HIS LIFE AND WORK. 
 
 consist in a certain set procedure, and that no perfect type 
 of it is to be looked for in what was done either at Burgdorf 
 or Yverdun. It will be clear, too, why Pestalozzi himself 
 was never entirely satisfied with what he had done, and why 
 he went on working and searching till his life's end. 
 
 He died at his work, this noble friend of the poor ; and, 
 dying, he addressed a supreme appeal to those who might 
 do more and better than he had done, and continue after him 
 the work that he had the sorrow of leaving unfinished. In 
 his humble modesty he seems to have forgotten that it was 
 he who had accomplished the hardest and most important 
 task, by laying bare the vices of his time, discovering the 
 principles of a salutary reform, and throwing a way open in 
 which we have now but to walk. 
 
 It is for the true and warm friends of humanity, those 
 who, understanding Pestalozzi, feel themselves at one with 
 him in spirit and heart, to answer his appeal, and follow him 
 in the difficult path made easier by his devotion. To-day, the 
 gate stands wide open, and the need is pressing. 
 
APPENDIX I. 
 
 NIEDERER'S LITERARY COLLABORATION, AND A FEW WRIT- 
 INGS OF PESTALOZZI'S FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1873. 
 
 Wishing, in our work on Pestalozzi, to study the evolution 
 of his thought throughout his long career of activity and 
 self-sacrifice, we endeavoured to consider it apart from the 
 foreign influences which occasionally modified its manifesta- 
 tions, and, for this reason, we abstained from mentioning 
 the works published by Pestalozzi between 1807 and 1811, 
 in the writing of which Niederer had a considerable share. 
 
 And yet these works deserve to be known ; for though 
 they are not always the pure and true expression of the 
 Blaster's ideas, they still give an interesting insight into his 
 opinions and the working of his mind at the time when the 
 institute of Yverdun was at the height of its fame. 
 
 Nor is that part of these works which is to be attributed 
 to Niederer without importance. Pestalozzi's biographers 
 have not forgiven this philosopher for having put something 
 of his own spirit and style into the spirit and style of his 
 master ; and this grievance has made them unfair to the 
 most enlightened of Pestalozzi's collaborators, and pre- 
 vented their recognizing his merit and the very real part he 
 took in the elaboration of the " method." It seems to us that 
 to rescue from oblivion a literary collaboration at which he 
 worked with the most complete self-forgetfulness, is the 
 least we owe to his memory. 
 
 This was also the opinion of Seyftarth, who, in 1873, 
 published, as an Appendix to his edition of Pestalozzi's 
 works, two volumes containing the writings of Niederer and 
 the master's other collaborators. 
 
 As we have seen, Pestalozzi first entrusted to Krusi and 
 Buss, and then to Schmidt, the writing of what he called his 
 29 
 
426 APPENDIX I. 
 
 Elementary Books ; that is, the Book for Mothers and the 
 Exercises on Number and Form. In these works the 
 authors did but follow to the letter the instructions of their 
 master, so that we can hardly hold them responsible for the 
 monotony and extreme prolixity which rendered these books 
 useless for schools, in spite of the excellence of the principle 
 of which they were such a clumsy application. This being 
 so, we need say no more about them. 
 
 With Niederer's collaboration, however, it is another 
 matter. "When quite a young man, he had enthusiastically 
 adopted Pestalozzi's ideas about education ; but his love of 
 generalization and philosophical formulas had led him to 
 elaborate them still further, and give them the form and 
 scientific expression they seemed to him to lack. 
 
 Pestalozzi, with his childlike trust and modest diffidence, 
 generally submitted his manuscripts to Niederer before 
 printing, though he was not always entirely satisfied with 
 his alterations. But it was not till afterwards, when en- 
 gaged, at Schmidt's suggestion, in preparing a new edition 
 of his works for Cotta, that he was tempted to repudiate a 
 part of what Niederer had made him say. His repudiation 
 is to be found in the notes he added to the new edition of 
 the writings we are now about to consider. 
 
 The first in the order of publication is entitled, On the 
 Principles and Plan of a Journal announced in 1807. It 
 tells us that already at Burgdorf Pestalozzi had undertaken a 
 Journal of Education, of which the first number only had 
 appeared ; explains the circumstances that interrupted the 
 publication, announces the re-issue of the journal, and de- 
 scribes its character. This journal is no doubt that which 
 was published at Yverdun from 1807 to 1811 with the title 
 of Weekly Journal for the Education of Humanity. 
 
 In this short work of twenty-two pages Pestalozzi is only 
 spoken of in the third person ; in other respects, the ideas 
 and style show clearly enough that it is Niederer's work. 
 To show the need for the forthcoming publication, he first 
 points out that Pestalozzi's doctrine is generally very im- 
 perfectly understood, and then gives the two chief reasons. 
 
 The first is the artificial system of teaching that has long 
 been in use, which makes it exceedingly difficult for men to 
 understand and approve of a course which is almost the 
 exact opposite of the course they have always pursued. 
 
NIEDERERS COLLABORAI ION. 427 
 
 Accustomed for a long time to aim at superficial rather than 
 solid knowledge, they still ask the same of the new method ; 
 but this the new method cannot give them. Sometimes even 
 they go so far as to praise the method for results which it 
 would be ashamed to own, and in general they admire 
 nothing but its defects. 
 
 The second reason which prevents the new doctrine from 
 being understood, is the way in which it has been formulated 
 and put into practice by the founder and his helpers. It 
 was not in accordance with Pestalozzi's tastes and habits, 
 nor even in his power, to draw up a general and logical 
 statement of his idea ; and he has ouly done so in a way 
 which was fragmentary and incomplete. As for the method 
 of applying it to teaching, it is still in a very backward 
 state, and demands much time and labour. Even the ele- 
 mentary books already published lack one of the essential 
 conditions of success ; for while they give certain series of 
 exercises, they do not explain the principles that are to 
 guide the teacher, or the position he is to occupy with re- 
 gard to his scholars. 
 
 These are clearly enough Niederer's own opinions, and the 
 criticism is a fair one. It is only surprising that Pestalozzi 
 should have published the work in his own name. 
 
 It is to fill these gaps, to help the world to a clearer and 
 more complete understanding of the new doctrine, that the 
 author of the pamphlet thinks the publication of a journal to 
 be indispensable. He ends with a few words as to the sub- 
 jects to be treated in the journal, and asks all friends of 
 educational progress to contribute to its pages. 
 
 A second publication of 1807 bears the title, A Glance at 
 my Views and Essays in Education. This was first printed 
 in the Journal of Education, and then, without any material 
 alteration, in Cotta's edition. In character it is quite different 
 from the first, and is obviously Pestalozzi's own work, 
 Niederer's hand being scarcely perceived. 
 
 The work fulfils the promise of its title, being a shortened 
 account, first of that idea of Pestalozzi's which, resulting 
 originally from his commiseration for the poor, ended in his 
 plans for educational reform, and then of the different 
 attempts he had made to carry these plans out. Pestalozzi 
 here shows clearly and forcibly that the chief cause of the 
 evils and dangers of society is the moral and intellectual 
 
428 APPENDIX I. 
 
 poverty of the mass of men, and that the only means of 
 safety for modern civilization is the realization of his idea 
 of elementary education. 
 
 In speaking of the period of splendour of the Yverdun 
 institute, Pestalozzi recognizes and deplores its utter in- 
 sufficiency as a practical demonstration of the truth of his 
 doctrine. His great desire is to have a school for quite 
 young poor children, nor does he despair of being able to 
 found one in connection with the institute. 
 
 There then follow some quotations from a work with 
 which Pestalozzi was then (1807) occupied, but which was 
 never published. It was intended to replace or supplement 
 the books written at Burgdorf, especially How Gertrude 
 Teaches her Children, with some account of their author's 
 subsequent experiences and the progress of his practical 
 work. The book was in the form of letters to a friend, and 
 Pestalozzi gives extracts from several of the letters. Judging 
 from these extracts, the manuscript was already in a very 
 advanced stage and very interesting. We regret that we 
 cannot here give a more complete account of it, but we 
 would particularly recommend the extracts from the seventh 
 and eighth letters to all who can read German. 
 
 The book which contains these extracts, and which con- 
 sists of sixty-four pages, is not entirely free from tedious 
 repetitions ; and yet it is well worth reading, if only for the 
 true and fairly complete idea it gives of the views and work 
 of the author. 
 
 A third publication of the same period is entitled, Report 
 to Parents and the Public on the State and Organization 
 of PestalozzVs Institute in the Year 1807, and contains, in 
 forty-nine pages, an account of the establishment, which, 
 though not fully detailed, is complete in all essential points. 
 The main lines of the sketch are perfectly true, though in 
 parts it is a little over-coloured ; sometimes, too, it describes 
 what has been attempted rather than what has been really 
 done. The consequence was, that many of the statements it 
 contained were refuted by the adversaries of the new method, 
 who took a somewhat unfair advantage of the weapons with 
 which it furnished them. This was the first cause of that 
 long battle of words which proved so fatal to the institute. 
 
 It is well known that the man who always took the 
 most favourable view of things at the institute, and always 
 
NIEDERERS COLLABORATION. 429 
 
 endeavoured to reassure Pestalozzi when the old man was 
 dissatisfied with his work, was Niederer ; and the illusions 
 which run through the Report to Parents are undoubtedly 
 his. Pestalozzi himself recognized them as illusions after- 
 wards, as we see in the notes he added to the second edition 
 in 1823, two of which run thus : 
 
 On page 4 : " What is said here is, speaking generally, 
 merely the effect of the great illusions we entertained at 
 that time, and which, kept up by favourable external cir- 
 cumstances, made us see things as we should have liked 
 them to be, and as, considering our principles, our wishes, 
 and our efforts, we thought they ought to be." 
 
 On page 24 : "In this passage, as in many others, I am not 
 so much giving expression to my own simple and primitive 
 views on education as to certain philosophical ideas which 
 were not my own, which had not ripened in my mind, and 
 which I did not perfectly understand. In spite of all our 
 good intentions, these ideas had disturbed not only myself 
 but several of my colleagues ; I may even go so far as to 
 say that it was they that led me astray and were the secret 
 cause of the misfortunes that finally overtook my establish- 
 ment." 
 
 The three short works we have just described were pub- 
 lished by Pestalozzi in the eleventh volume of Cotta's edi- 
 tion, under the general title of, Vieivs and Experiences in 
 Connection ivith the Idea of Elementary Education, togethed 
 with Notices and Fragments concerning the Course an.i 
 History of the Enterprises of my Life. The whole was 
 preceded by a preface from which we quote the following 
 passage, referring to the Principles and Plan of a Journal, 
 published in 1807. 
 
 " This writing must not be looked upon as giving my own 
 personal view, but rather as expressing the views of the 
 friends I then had about me. The presumption and incom- 
 prehensible blindness that made us so miscalculate our 
 strength and means at that time, should be the more interest- 
 ing to the public that these fantastic dreams were the first 
 and chief cause of all the misfortune, humiliation, and sorrow 
 that have since fallen upon me and mine, and brought my 
 work within an ace of destruction." 
 
 The discourse delivered by Pestalozzi at the meeting of 
 the Society of Friends of Education at Lenzburg in 1809, 
 
430 APPENDIX 1. 
 
 was printed shortly afterwards in the Weekly Journal, but 
 not before it had been revised and expanded by Niederer. In 
 1821 it appeared, with a preface, in Cotta's eighth volume, 
 where, although it had been considerably reduced for the 
 purpose by Pestalozzi, it runs to a hundred and eighty-seven 
 pages. The preface begins thus : 
 
 " This discourse, which differs materially from the one I 
 really pronounced in Lenzburg, and bears the plainest marks 
 of the foreign influence I was then under, shows clearly 
 enough the spirit that prevailed amongst us at that time. 
 We were carried away by a premature desire to explain our 
 whole doctrine and system by basing it upon a philosophical 
 principle which should embrace it in all its parts and all its 
 developments, and we entirely lost sight of the fact that our 
 practical work was still most defective and incomplete." 
 
 In the face of this statement, we cannot consider the 
 Lenzburg discourse, as we possess it to-day, to be the pure 
 expression of Pestalozzi's thought ; it is much rather the ex- 
 pression of Niederer's conception of it. This, however, does 
 not make it any the less interesting or less worth consider- 
 ing. 
 
 After referring to the many erroneous opinions that have 
 been formed of the method and the institute, and to the 
 official examination that he has just felt compelled to ask 
 of the Swiss Diet, Pestalozzi invites all friends of education 
 to come and judge for themselves. But as it is impossible 
 to thoroughly understand what is being done at Yverdun 
 without being acquainted with the fundamental principle of 
 the method and its various applications, he is anxious that 
 everybody should have as clear and complete a general no- 
 tion of his system as possible. He therefore proceeds to 
 draw up a statement of his method, characterizing it as ele- 
 mentary, organic, and genetic, and developing each of these 
 three points of view at considerable length. 
 
 A complete analysis of this work would take us too far, 
 besides obliging us to repeat much that we have said else- 
 where. 
 
 The eighteenth and last volume of Se3 T fParth's collection 
 contains some extracts from the Weekly Journal ; Niederer's 
 work entitled : Pestalozzi' 's Enterprise in its Relation with 
 
NIEDERERS COLLABORATION. 431 
 
 the Education of our Time ; and the main points of the long, 
 sad quarrel that followed the official inspection of the insti- 
 tute in 1809. Sundry smaller works of Pestalozzi's,. the 
 manuscripts of which he had entrusted to Nieclerer, are also 
 here published for the first time. These are : 
 
 1. Pestalozzi Sketched by Himself. 
 
 This is the letter Pestalozzi addressed to Ith, when the 
 latter was appointed to inspect the institute of Burgdorf. 
 
 2. Epochs. 
 
 This is a historical sketch from a social and political point 
 of view, and is connected with An Inquiry into the Course 
 of Nature in the Development of the Human Race. 
 
 3. Religious Education: a Glance at Christ and His 
 Doctrine. 
 
 Pestalozzi here establishes the agreement between his 
 views and the Saviour's teaching. 
 
 4. The Method. 
 
 This is the report presented by Pestalozzi to the Society 
 of the Friends of Education in 1800, and referred to by us in 
 its proper place. 
 
 5. Pestalozzi's New Year's Day Discourse for 1816. 
 
 In this discourse the old man's heart is seen to be divided 
 between grief for the loss of the wife who had always been 
 his good angel, and joy at seeing his work in safety. The 
 latter sentiment, however, was but the result of an illusion ; 
 for there is no doubt that he exaggerated the value and 
 bearing of the reforms carried out by Schmidt since his re- 
 turn. In this same discourse the thought that death is 
 drawing near stimulates his religious feelings, and he ex- 
 claims: — 
 
 " Brothers and friends ! I hear God's voice saying : Your 
 grave is being prepared ; you are about to go down into it ; 
 your friends w T ill place you there as they have lately placed 
 the companion of your life ; you are soon to enter into 
 eternal rest in the sight of your whole house, in the sight of 
 the men and children who are yours, and whom you will 
 leave behind. I see myself lying in my grave ; I see myself 
 entering into eternity, contemplating God, and praying to 
 Him in truth and holiness. But I awake. I have seen my 
 destiny. It is not in the transitory work of this earthly life; 
 it is purity and innocence ; it is the power of devotion of a 
 faithful life to the service of God and humanity ; it is the 
 
432 APPENDIX I. 
 
 imitation of Jesus Christ, through faith in Him crucified, 
 and for the glory of God the Father." 
 
 6. PestalozzVs New Yearns Day Discourse for 1817. 
 
 Here the old man examines his past. He has undertaken 
 work out of all proportion to his strength, and would have 
 failed but for God's assistance. As it is, his work remains 
 defective and incomplète because some have not done what 
 they could to bring God'3 blessing upon it. Pestalozzi him- 
 self is one of these, and this is the reason that his seventy- 
 one years have not been sufficient. There is now no longer 
 a moment to lose ; the new }^ear must not be like so many 
 past years ; it must not find the former man, but a new man, 
 stripped of his errors, his weaknesses, and his negligences, 
 and regenerated by the love of God and faith in Jesus 
 Christ. He concludes thus : — 
 
 " What must I do to become such a new man ? How am 
 I to complete, establish, and sanctify the work of my short 
 life on earth ? 
 
 " Seeking to understand the real aim of my life, the real 
 motive of that work which took such entire possession of me 
 that I found no rest in anything else, I seem to hear an in- 
 ternal voice saying that it was the need to free man from the 
 sensual domination of his animal nature, and raise him above 
 the view of this world to a clear and divine view of the 
 spiritual essence of his being. . . . But what am I, that I 
 should dare to lay my hand to this sublime task ? Am I not 
 like a child who, admiring the heavens, should deem it pos- 
 sible to place the sun upon his head, take the moon into his 
 hands, and make a crown for his forehead of the stars ? . . . 
 
 " That which I long for and seek after, that which is holy, 
 unchanging, and eternal in the aim of my life, is in no way 
 mine ; it is humanity's and God's. "What am I, what are we 
 all, in such work as this ? A nothing that passes with the 
 moment, like the insect of a day. 
 
 " But though the outward structure of our work should 
 crumble, it is not humanity's, not God's work that disappears. 
 It is merely the hammer, a stone, a grain of sand falling from 
 God's building, where we have foolishly and ignorantly striven 
 to fix it." 
 
APPENDIX IL 
 
 A LIST OF PESTALOZZl'S WORKS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER. 1 
 
 1765. Agis. 
 
 1776. An appeal to the friends and benefactors of humanity to support an 
 institution intended to provide education and work for poor country 
 children. 
 
 1777. Three letters on the education of poor children. — A few words on 
 the most degraded portion of humanity. An appeal to the charitable 
 to come to its assistance. 
 
 1778. An account of the educational establishment for poor children at 
 Neuhof. 
 
 1780. The Evening Hour of a Hermit. 
 
 178 L. Leonard and Gertrude (vol. i.). — Note on the sumptuary laws. 
 
 1782. Christopher and Eliza — The Swiss News, a weekly newspaper (2 vols.) 
 — * The Education of Children in the Home. Incomplete, never pub- 
 lished by Pestalozzi, and only to be found in Niederer's Notes on 
 Pestalozzi, published at Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1828 and 1829. 
 
 1783. Leonard and Gertrude (vol. ii.). On Legislation and Infanticide. 
 1785. Leonard and Gertrude (vol. hi.). 
 
 1787. Leonard and Gertrude (vol. iv.). 
 
 1792. On the Causes of the French Eevolution. Never published by 
 Pestalozzi. 
 
 1797. Fables (2 vols.). — An Inquiry into the Course of Nature in the 
 Development of the Human Eace. 
 
 1798. Political Pamphlets on the Swiss Eevolution : A Word to the Legis- 
 lative Councils of Helvetia; On Tithes; Awake, People of Helvetia; 
 To my Country; To the People of Helvetia; Appeal to the Inhabi- 
 tants of the old Democratic Cantons ; On the Present and Future of 
 Humanity. 
 
 1799. Letter to Gessner on the work at Stanz. 
 
 1800. Memoir presented to the Society of Friends of Education. Never 
 published by Pestalozzi, and only to be found in Niederer's Notes on 
 Pestalozzi, and in the eighteenth and last volume of Seyffarth's 
 edition. 
 
 1801. How to Teach Spelling and Eeading. — How Gertrude Teaches her 
 Children. — Epochs; a historical sketch, from a social and political 
 point of view. In Seyffarth's last volume. — Eeligious Education; a 
 Glance at Christ and His Doctrine. In Seyffarth's last volume. 
 
 Those marked with an asterisk are not included in Seyffarth's edition. 
 
434 APPENDIX II. 
 
 1802. Views on certain points to which the legislators of Switzerland 
 should particularly direct their attention. — Pestalozzi sketched by 
 himself; a note addressed to Ith. In Seyffarth's last volume. 
 
 1803. * The Book for Mothers. Written in great part by Krusi.— * Sense- 
 impressing Exercises on Number. Compiled by Krusi and Buss. — 
 * Sense-impressing Exercises on Size and Form. Compiled by Krusi 
 and Buss. — The Natural Schoolmaster. Never published by Pes- 
 talozzi. 
 
 1807. On the Principles and Plan of a Journal announced in 1807. 
 Bevised and in part written by Niederer. — A Glance at my Views and 
 Essays in Education. Bevised by Niederer. — Beport to parents and 
 the public on the educational institute of Yverdun. Bevised and in 
 part written by Niederer. 
 
 1807 to 1811. Weekly Journal of Education (3 vols.) ; written in great 
 part by Niederer and others. 
 
 1808 to 1818. Discourses to my Establishment. 
 
 1809. Discourse pronounced before the Society of Friends of Education, 
 at Lenzburg. Bevised and added to by Nieden r. 
 
 1813. Letter to Mr. Delbruck, Privy Councillor at Berlin. 
 
 1815. To the Innocent, Serious, and Noble-minded ones of my Country. 
 
 1820. A Word on my Pedagogical Labours, and the Organization of my 
 Institute in 1820. — Practical Elementary Exercises on Number. Com- 
 piled by Schmidt. — Elementary Exercises on Size and Form. Com- 
 piled by Schmidt. 
 
 1820 to 1826. Cotta's edition of Pestalozzi's works (15 vols.), published at 
 Stuttgart. 
 
 1822. Views on Industry, Education, and Politics, in connection with the 
 State of our Country before and after the Bevolution. 
 
 1826. The Song of the Swan. — My Experiences in my Educational Estab- 
 lishments of Burgdorf and Yverdun. Discourse pronounced as Presi- 
 dent of the Helvetian Society, the 26th of April, 1826. 
 
APPENDIX III. 
 
 BOOKS TO CONSULT ON PESTALOZZI. 
 
 1801. Der deutsche Merkur. (Articles by Wieland.) 
 
 1802. Amtlicher Bericht iiber die Pestalozzische Anstalt in Burgdorf, von J. 
 Ith, etc. Bern. 
 
 1803. Pestalozzi, seine Lehrart und seine Anstalt, von A. Soyaux. Berlin. — 
 PestalozzVs Méthode und ihre Anivendung in der Volksschule, von F. 
 H. E. Schwartz. Bremen. — Ueber PestalozzVs Lehrart, Akademie der 
 Wissensehaften, von Fischer. Berlin. — Bemerkungen g^gen PestalozzVs 
 Unterrichtsmethode, von J. N. Steinmiiller. Zurich. 
 
 1804. PestalozzVs Idee eines ABC der Avschauung, untersucht und ivissen- 
 schaftlich ausgefiihrt, von J. F. Herbart. Gôttingen. — Briefe aus Burg- 
 dorf iiber Pestalozzi, von A. Griiner. Hamburg. — Darstellung und 
 Priifung der Pestalozzischen Méthode in Burgdorf, von Passavant. 
 Lemgo. — Historische Denkwiirdigkeiten der helvetischen Staatsumtvalz- 
 ung, von Zschokke. — Kritik der Pestalozzischen Méthode, von Johan- 
 sen. Jena und Leipzig. — Beleuchtung der Pestalozzischen Groszsprecher- 
 eien. Erfurt. 
 
 -1805. Expose de la méthode élémentaire de Pestalozzi, par D. Alex. Cha- 
 vannes. Vevey. — Bericht an S r Maj. den Konig von Preussen iiber das 
 Pestalozzische Institut in Burgdorf, von C. Witte. Leipzig. — Geist der 
 Pestalozzischen Méthode, von Ewald. Bremen. — Einige Grundregeln der 
 Erziehungskunst nach Pestalozzi, von Plamann. Halle. 
 
 1806. Briefe aus Miinchenbuchsee iiber Pestalozzi und seine Elementarbild- 
 ungsmethode, von Tiirck. (2 vol.) Leipzig. — Aufsàtze fiir und gegen die 
 Pestalozzische Unterrichtsmethode. 
 
 1807. Reise nach der Schiveiz. Torlitz, Copenhagen und Leipzig. 
 
 1809. Padagogische Mittheilungen, von Kimly. Berlin. — Ueber die Pesta- 
 lozzische Lehrmethode, von Sxisskind. Stuttgard. 
 
 1810. Rapport sur Vinstitut de M. Pestalozzi à Yverdon, par le père Girard. 
 Fribourg. — Erfahrungen und Ansichten, von Jos. Schmidt. Heidelberg. 
 — Priifung des Werthes der Pestalozzischen Méthode, von d'Autel. Stutt- 
 gard. — Ueber das Wesentliche der von Pestalozzi, etc., von Hagen. 
 Erlangen. — Pestalozzi, Hauptmomente seiner Méthode, von Lehmann. 
 Kônigsberg. — Geist und Vorschritte der Pestalozzischen Bildnngsmethode, 
 von Ewald. Mannheim. — Briefe aus einer Reise durch Suddeutschland, 
 die Schiveiz, etc., von Kessler. Leipzig. — Ueber PestalozzVs Grundsdtze 
 und Methoden, von Aug. Herm. Niemeyer. — Kurze und fassliche Dar- 
 stellung der Pestalozzischen Méthode. Stuttgard. 
 
 1811. Das Pestalozzische Institut an das Publikum. (Niederer's work, with 
 preface by Pestalozzi.) Yverdun. — Ueber die Verbesserung des Ele- 
 metitarschulwesens in Preussen, von Neumann. Potsdam. 
 
436 APPENDIX 111. 
 
 1812. Précis sur V institut d'Yverdon, par M.-A. Jullieu. (Pamph.) Milan. — 
 Esprit de la méthode Pestalozzi, par M.-A. Jullien. (2 vol.) Milan. — 
 Versurh einer Metakritik der Weltoerbesserung,oder ein Wort iiber Pesta- 
 lozzi und Pestalozzismus. Ulm. — Ueber de Schrift PestalozzVs : Unter- 
 nehmungen, etc., von J. H. Bremi. Zurich. 
 
 1812-1813. PestalozzVs Unternehmungen im Verhàltniss zur Zeitkultur, von 
 J. Niederer. (2 vol.) Stuttgard. 
 
 1813. Ueber PestalozzVs Grundidee der Erziehung und Méthode, von La- 
 domus. Heidelberg. — De V Allemagne, par M me de Staël. — Selbstschau, 
 von H. Zschokke. 
 
 1814. Mittheilungen iiber PestalozzVs Eigenthûmlichkeit, Leben und Erzie- 
 hung sanstalten, von Henning (in Harnisch Schulrath). 
 
 1815. Plan d'organisation pour les écoles primaires, par F. Cuvier. Paris. 
 1818. Der Kunstgeist, etc., oder Pestalozzi und seine H idersaclur, von 
 
 Kniewel. Berlin. 
 1822. Wahrheit und Irrthum, von Jos. Schmidt. — Wie Herr Jos. Schmidt die 
 Pestalozzische Anstalt leitet, von Jer. Meyer. Stuttgard. 
 
 1826. Beitrag zur Biographie Heinrich PestalozzVs und zur Beleuchtung seiner 
 neuesten Schrift: Meine Lebenssclticksale, von Ed. Biber. St. Gallen. 
 
 1827. Fellenberg' s Klage iiber Pestalozzi. Karlsruhe. — Notice sur Pestalozzi, 
 par M me Adèle du Thon. Genève. — Notice sur Pestalozzi, par Ch. Mon- 
 nard, dans la Revue encyclopédique de Paris. 
 
 1828-1829. Histoire de la Stiisse, continuation de Millier, par Gh. Monnard. 
 — Erinnerungen an Vater Pestalozzi, von E. Frohlich. Brugg. — Pesta- 
 lozzische Blatter, von J. Niederer. (2 vol.) Aix-la-Chapelle. 
 
 1829. Vaterlehren, ein Vermdchtniss von Pestalozzi an seine Zoglinge, von. 
 H. Krùsi. Trogen. 
 
 1830. Padagogische Rede iiber Pestalozzi, etc., von Nageli. Zurich. 
 
 1833. Der dreimonatliche Bildungskurs, von E. Fellenberg. Bern. 
 
 1834. PestalozzVs inedirte Briefe und letzte Schicksale, von Fellenberg. Berg. 
 
 1837. Kurze Skizze meines pâdagogischen Lebens, von. J. Barnsauer. Olden- 
 burg. 
 
 1838. PestalozzVs Leistungen im Erziehungs fâche , von Heussler. Basel. 
 
 1840. Erinnerungen aus meinem pâdagogischen Leben und H irken, von H. 
 Kriisi. Stuttgard. 
 
 1841. Geschichte der Pddagogik, von D r K. Schmid. — Denkschrift auf G. 
 H. L. Nicolovius. Bonn. 
 
 1843. Pestalozzi, von D r Bandlin. Schaffhausen. — Notice sur la vie de 
 Pestalozzi, par B. de Guvmps, dans le Journal d'Yverdon. 
 
 1845. Diesterweg, Kalisch, Massmann, Die Feier des hundertjahrigen Geburts 
 tags PestalozzVs. Berlin. — Heinrich Pestalozzi, von Diesterweg. Berlin 
 — Niederer's Briefe an Tobler, 1797-1803. Genf. — PestalozzVs Idée 
 der Menschenbildung. Niïrnberg. — PestalozzVs Anstrengungen, von Abs 
 Kalberstadt. — PestalozzVs Leben, Wollen und Wirken, von Appel 
 Frankfurt. 
 
 1846. Pestalozzische Blatter, von Kamsauer und Zahn. Elberfeld und Moers 
 — Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben bei Pestalozzi, von Ackernumn 
 Frankfurt. — Heinrich Pestalozzi, etc., von K. J. Blochmann. Leipzig. — 
 Die wichtigeren Grundsàtze von Pestalozzi, von Probst. Liestal. — Pesta 
 lozziana, aus dem Januarbeft : La Minerva. — Erinnerungen an H 
 Pestalozzi, von Elditt. Kônigsheig. — Vortrdge an der Pestalozzischen 
 
APPENDIX III. 437 
 
 Feier, von Heussler, Lehmann, etc. Basel. — Der Geist von Vater Pesta- 
 lozzi, von D r Bandlin. Zurich. — SchiVchronik, von Zahn. N° 1. — 
 Pestalozzi, der Revolutionndr, von Bauer, sein Zôgling. Charlottenburg. 
 —Heinrich Pestalozzi, von Burgwardt. Altona. — PestalozzVs Leben und 
 Ansichten, von Christoffel. Zurich. — Ein Wort zur Erinnerung an den 
 hundertjahrigen Geburtstag PestalozzVs, von Collmann. Kassel. — Riick- 
 blick auf Pestalozzi, etc., von Kortum. Heidelberg. — Ein Wort uber 
 Pestalozzi und seine unsterblichen Verdienste, von Diesterweg. Berlin. — 
 Mitthe Hung en ûber Pestalozzi, von Kroger. Hamburg. — Heinrich Pesta- 
 lozzi, von Lueger. Hamburg. — Pestalozzi. Rede zur Festfeier, von Bosen- 
 kranz. Kônigsberg. — PestalozzVs Verhàltniss zum modernen Leben, von 
 Scheuenstuhl. Ansbach. — Rede bei der Sâkularfeier PestalozzVs, von 
 Thaulow. Kiel. — Vorschlag zu einem Denkmal PestalozzVs, von Weiss. 
 Merseburg. — Pestalozzi, sein Leben und Wirken, von der Schulsynode. 
 Zurich. ■ — PestalozzVs Idee der Wohnstube, Vortrag zu Winterthur. 
 Zurich. — Die Feier des Pestalozzi tag es vor deutschen Frauen. Berlin. — 
 Rede bei der Gedcichtnissfeier PestalozzVs, von Hottinger. Zurich. — Rede 
 bei der Pestalozzifeier, von Heer. Zurich. — Pestalozzifeier in Dresden. 
 Leipzig. — Pestalozzifeier in Hamburg. Hamburg. — Pestalozzifeier in 
 Plauen. Plauen. — Pestalozzifeier in Bernburg. Bernburg. 
 1847. Pestalozzi und sein Neuhof, von Jos. Schmidt. — Pestalozzi, von Bagge. 
 Frankfurt. 
 
 1850. Etudes sur la vie et les travaux de Pestalozzi, ouvrage couronné par 
 l'institut de France, par Th. Pompée. Paris. 
 
 1851. Pestalozzi und Rowseau, von Zoller. Frankfurt. 
 
 1853. Biographie de H. Pestalozzi, par M lle Cbavannes. Lausanne. 
 
 1854. Franke, Rousseau und Pestalozzi, von Kramer. Berlin. 
 
 1855. Dinter und Pestalozzi. Schulblatt Brandenburg, von Palmer. Bran- 
 denburg. — Erinnerungen aus meinem Schulleben, von Lange. Potsdam. 
 
 1857. Geschichte der Pàdagogik, von Baumer. Stuttgard. — Pestalozzi, sa vie, 
 
 sa méthode et ses principes, par J. Paroz. Berne. 
 1859. Heinrich Pestalozzi tend Anna Schulthess, von Môrikofer. Zùrcher 
 
 Taschenbuch. Zurich. 
 1861. Heinrich Pestalozzi, von Boack. Leipzig. — Die Schioeizerische Littera- 
 
 tur des 18. Jahrhunderts, von Môrikofer. Leipzig. 
 
 1863. J. H. Pestalozzi, von Schenkel. Heidelberg. 
 
 1864. Karl Ritter, ein Lebensbild, etc., von Kramer. Halle. 
 
 1865. Mein Leb*nsmorgen, von Harnisch. Berlin. 
 
 1868. Zur Biographie Heinrich PestalozzVs, von ait Seminardirektor Morf, 
 Waisenvater in Winterthur (I. Band). Winterthur. — Histoire universelle 
 de la pédagogie, par J. Paroz. Paris. — Pestalozzi und der Pestalozzi- 
 Ver ein, von Aurich. 
 
 1869. Pestalozzi, von Harweck. Halle. — Heinrich Pestalozzi, ein Lebensbild, 
 von Alberti. Berlin. 
 
 1870. Das Wesen der Pestalnzzischen Méthode als Grundlage einer christlichen 
 Erziehung, von Heer. Zurich. — Pestalozzi in Leipzig, Festrede. In den 
 Leipziger Blâttern fur Pàdagogik. 3 Heft. Leipzig. — Heinrich Pesta- 
 lozzi, von Ferd. Schmidt. Berlin H. Kastner. 
 
 1871. Der Pâdogog H. Pestalozzi, von G. v. Zeschwitz, Eiiang^n. 
 1871-1872. Pàdagogische Reisebriefe, von Seyffarth. (Preussisches Scbul- 
 
 blatt. Berlin. 
 
438 APPENDIX III. 
 
 1872. J. H. Pestalozzi, von Seyffarth. Berlin. — Souvenirs de L. Vulliemin. 
 Lausanne. — Pestalozzih sâmmtliclie Werke gesichtct, vervoUstdndigt und 
 mit erlàuternden Einleitungen versehen, von Seyffarth. (16 vol.) Bran- 
 denburg. 
 
 1873. Pestalozzi, par F. Bordier, ancien pasteur. Neuchâtel. — PestalozzVs 
 sammtliche Werke, Nachtrage von L.W. Seyffarth. Brandenburg, 2 vol. 
 — Rousseau und Pestalozzi, Zwei Vortràge von Karl Schneider. Broin- 
 berg. — PestalozzVs Antheil an der Erneuerung des deutschen Vulkes, 
 Vortrag von J. Wiesinger, Pfarrer. Kissingen. 
 
 1875. Pestalozzi. Idee und Macht der menschlichen Enticickelung, von 
 Josephine Zehnder-Stadlin. Gotha.— Pestalozzi, the influence of his 
 principles and practice on elementary education, by Jos. Payne. London. 
 
 1876. Johannes von Murait, von Hermann Dalton. Wiesbaden. — Pestalozzi. 
 Notizie della sua vita e delle sue opere, di G. Curti. Bellinzona. 
 
 1877. Comenius und Pestalozzi als Begriinder der Volksschule, von H. Hoff- 
 meister. Berlin. — The School. (A series of articles.) 
 
 1878. Pestalozzi und seine Aussaat, von G. Heer. Glarus. — Heinrich Pesta- 
 lozzi. Ein Lebensbild, von Ferd. Schmidt. Berlin. 
 
 1879. Die sozial-politischen Grundlagen der Pâdagogik Pestalozzis. Beilage 
 zum Jahresbericht iiber die Bealschule in Strassburg, von G. Kôbler — 
 Das Wesen der pestalozzischen Méthode, von J. Justus Heer. Zurich. — 
 Pestalozzi und Fellenberg, von 0. Hunziker. Langensalza. 
 
 1880. Pestalozzi, par l'abbé Crampon. (Extrait du Contemporain.) Paris. — 
 Pestalozzi, schweizerische Jugendfreund und V<dksbildner, von K. Both. 
 Leipzig. — Pestalozziblaiter. Herausgegeben von der Kommission des 
 Pestalozzistùbchen in Zurich. (Still appearing.) — J Bamsauer, Kurze 
 Skizze meines pâdagogischen Lebens. Mit Vorwort von Zezschwitz. 
 Oldenburg. — Das Christenthum Pestalozzis, von H. Debes. Gotha. 
 
 1881. Die Grundgedanken von Pestalozzi und Froebel, von F. Beust. Zurich. 
 —Erinnerungen an Vater Pestalozzi, von Em. Frohlich. (Pâdagogische 
 Blatter von Kehr, N° 3.) — Briefwechsel zwischen Pestalozzi und dem 
 Minister Zinzendorf, 1783-1790. (Pâdagogium von Dittes, 3 e année.) 
 
 1882. Die Pâdagogik Joh. H. Pestalozzis in ivortgetreuen Ausziigen aus seinen 
 Werken, von A. Vogel. Bernburg. — Ein Erziehungs-Haus im Geiste 
 Pestalozzis und Froebels, von Bertha Meyer. Zurich. — Lienhard und 
 Gertrud. Neue Volks- und Jubilaumsausgabe. Zurich. — Pestalozzi, par 
 Guillaume. (In Buisson's Pedagogical Dictionary). Paris. 
 
 1883. Erziehungs- und Unterrichtsplan der ersten Lehranstalt im Schlosse zu 
 Munchenbuchsee, von H. Morf. Winterthur. 
 
 1884. Jakob Heussi, Erinnerungen aus dessen Leben, von A. Diihr. Leipzig. 
 
 1885. Joh. H. Pestalozzi. Ein padagogisches Volksbuch, von Ed. Wiessner. 
 Bernburg. — Rousseau und Pestalozzi, von 0. Hunziker. Basel.— Zur 
 Biographie Pestalozzis, von H. Morf. II. and III. Band. Winterthur. 
 
 1886. Pestalozzi, élève de J.-J. Rousseau, par F. Hérisson. Paris. — System- 
 atische Dar*tellung der Pâdagogik Pestalozzis, von A. Vogel. Potsdam. 
 
 1887. Einige Blatter aus Pestalozzis Lebens- und Leidemgeschichte, von H. 
 Morf. Langensalza. — Das Leben des Pàdagngen Heinrich Pestalozzi, 
 von H. P. H. Griinfeld. Schleswig.— Joseph Schmidt, von. H. Morf. 
 Winterthur. — Biographie Pestalozzis, von F. Man. (In den ausgewàhlten 
 Schriften Pestalozzis ) Langensalza. 
 
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