Class _Lj _ Book *-Q Copyright N°___ COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. PESTALOZZI PESTALOZZI PIONEERS IN EDUCATION PESTALOZZI AND ELEMENTARY EDUCATION BY GABRIEL COMPAYRE CORRESPONDENT OP THE INSTITUTE ; DIRECTOR OP THE ACADEMY OP LYONS; AUTHOR OF "PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO EDUCATION," "LECTURES ON PEDAGOGY," " A HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY," ETC. TRANSLATED BY R. P. JAGO NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. PUBLISHERS LiohAflY of CONGRESS l*b Copies Received 0C1 1 1907 CoDynftrt Entiy COPY &. rr i COPYKIGHT, 1907, By THOMAS T. CEO WELL & COMPANY. Published, September, 1907. CONTENTS AND SUMMARY Preface vu I. Pestalozzi and Herbart. — How Pestalozzi deserves to be studied in himself. — His great fame. — A militant teacher. — He can be denned as a philanthropist of education. — Recrudescence of his renown in Switzer- land, during these last years 3 II. Zurich at the period when Pestalozzi was studying there (1764). — A hot-bed of literary studies. — Centre of a political and social movement. — Influence of Rous- seau's writings. — Pestalozzi a youthful revolutionary. — His belief in democracy. — Home training. — Pesta- lozzi the pupil of his mother.— Precocious experience of the miseries of the people. — His marriage. — His wife's character. — How Pestalozzi became an educator.*^- Education of his son his first pedagogical experience. — The Journal d'un pere. — Hesitations between the prin- ciple of authority and the principle of liberty. — "I wish only to be a schoolmaster." 9 III. Neuhof (1768-1780). — Agricultural and industrial at- tempts. — Why Pestalozzi went to the country people. — Financial ruin. — Establishment of the refuge for poor children. — Association of manual labour and ele-V" mentary instruction. — A school of abnormal children. — Heroic efforts. — Definite check to the enterprise (1780) 19 IV. Stans. — Eighteen years of discouragement, from 1780 to 1798. — Pestalozzi the writer. — List of his iv CONTENTS AND SUMMARY PAGE works. — The Helvetic Revolution. — The orphanage at Stans (1798). — Peculiar difficulties of the work: a heretic, a revolutionary, is sent to a Catholic and reactionary people. — Wretched introduction. — Pesta- lozzi's moral action. — His enthusiasm for France. — Methods pursued and results obtained. — Wonderful activity. — Pestalozzi exhausted by his efforts. — Closing of the orphanage (1799). — A visit to Stans in 1901 28 V. Burgdorf and Yverdon (1800-1825). — Pestalozzi, at fifty-two, assistant teacher in a school for children. — He receives promotion. — He becomes superintendent of the "Burgdorf Educational Institute." — His first collaborators : Krusi, Buss, and Tobler. — Other collab- orators. — Special branches of teaching. — The Burg- dorf Institute transferred to Munchenbuchsee (1804), / then to Yverdon (1805). — Everything taught. — ^ Pestalozzi does not, however, give up the achievement of his "Method" of elementary instruction. — Bril- liant success of the Yverdon Institute. — Influx of visiting strangers. — Pestalozzi seeks the support of the chiefs of state. — His visits to the emperor of Rus- sia and to the king of Prussia. — A school day at Yver-*' don. — A cosmopolitan college. — Interior troubles. — Internal dissensions. — Rivalry of Schmid and Nie- derer. — Attacks from without. — Pestalozzi's religion. — His philosophic deism. — Pestalozzi and Rousseau compared. — Closing of the Institute (1825). — Last days at Neuhof. — Death of Pestalozzi (February 17, 1827) 41 VI. The method and the practice. — Pestalozzi's uncer- tainties. — His commentators. — Intuition the starting-"*/ point of all knowledge and of all instruction. — Intuition of the senses and moral intuition. — The "art of intui- CONTENTS AND SUMMARY tion." — The principle of gradation and of concentration. — Study of the human body, first exercise of intuition and of language. — Intensive development of the fac- s ulties of more importance than the extension of positive knowledge. — The faculties grow with exercise*^ In- terest in the study a necessary condition to intellectual progress. — Conversation with Bell. — Simplifying of the Method. — The Method-machine. — Pestalozzi's practice often at variance with his principles. — Abuse of the device of object lessons. — The bees and the flowers. — Criticism of the theory "of the number, the shape, and the word." — The Burgdorf tapestry and language exercises. — Fresh form of verbiage. — ■ Drawing studied geometrically. — Ravaisson's opinion. — Intuition in the study of geography. — Mental calcula- tion. — Many educators of the present day are Pestaloz- v ^-"" zians without knowing it. — Reading made subordinate to oral exercises. — The movable letters. — Drawing before writing. — Arithmetic and geometry taught experimentally. — The technical ABC. — Moral edu- cation based on intuition and experience. — Develop- ment of the sentiments in the child. — Education should be continued kindness. — The leading role of the mother. **— Religious education. — Pestalozzi's work limited to elementary education 63 VII. Pestalozzi's influence. — Diesterweg and the celebra- tion of the anniversary of his birth (January 12, 1846). — Immediate propagation of his doctrines. — A gather- ing at Mme. de Stael's. — His influence in Germany. — Fichte and Froebel. — Pestalozzian schools in Berlin, Frankfort, etc. — Pestalozzianism in Spain. — Come- nius and Pestalozzi. — Importation of his methods into Denmark and England. — The Lettres h Greaves sur V edu- cation elementaire. — Pestalozzian experiments in Amer- vi CONTENTS AND SUMMARY PAGE ica and France. — How Pestalozzi has been compared *t to nearly all the educational theorists. — Application of his methods by practical workers . . . . 100 VIII. The author and the man. — Defects and qualities of his writings. — His defectiveness in the presentation of abstract truths. — His talent as a narrator. — Leonard et Gertrude and the popular novel. — The ironical note. — View of social policy. — The right of property. — Utopias. — His estimation of printing and of the Protes- tant Reformation. — Burning eloquence. — The virtues of the man. — His courage. — His disinterestedness. — His sufferings. — Mme. Pestalozzi. — Hours of happi- ness. — He dreamed more than he accomplished. — Schools in Pestalozzi's time. — A Swiss educator in 1795. — The lay school. — Pestalozzi's moral great- ness 118 Bibliography 137 PREFACE In placing the name of Pestalozzi after those of Eousseau and Spencer, in the list of great educators, we render rightful tribute to a man of heart, a man of action, praiseworthy in both, who is not well enough known in France, where he is by turns cried down, neglected, or unduly exalted, but who, impartially judged, merits one of the chief places in the golden book of the history of education. Was it not of him that the English Andrew Bell — who, however, did not appreciate his methods of instruction — said: "He is a man of experience, enthusiasm, and genius " ? Was it not him that the German Diesterweg hailed as the "Father of the public school"? Pestalozzi has been the direct descendant of Rousseau. J.-P. Richter, in his Levana, wrote in 1806: "And still Pestalozzi continues among the people the work of Rousseau." But although the author of Emile has had only one descendant, even an imaginary one, Pestalozzi has brought up millions of children ; and he has trained the masters no less viii PREFACE than he has instructed the pupils. He has had an extraordinary influence upon the education of his day, which has continued throughout the years of the past century. In 1861 the Society of Teachers of Berlin did not hesitate to make this declaration : " We are convinced that the happy results of the present time in our schools, obtained despite the official red tape," — the famous Code of 1853, — " are due in large measure to the corps of teachers who have been grounded in the principles of Pestalozzi. ,, Pestalozzi is undoubtedly the creator of the idea, as well as the fact, of the new school, the promoter of modern pedagogy. He has dreamed, he has de- sired, the school universal, the school free alike to rich and poor, just as the Church or Temple is open to people of every condition. And in order to bring about the accomplishment of his dream, he has de- voted, sacrificed his life. He has laboured only for others. He has spent his days, to the weakening, despoiling, and ruining of both body and mind, in the service of humanity, of humanity down- trodden and oppressed. It is to the lowly and the little ones especially that he has dedicated the sen- timents of his heart and the fruits of his strength, burning for the rights and liberty of the people, and for their honour and happiness. PREFACE ix In choosing the sub-title for this study, we might therefore have well written, " Pestalozzi, and Popu- lar Education." But it was not to the people alone that he addressed himself ; and in his teaching he has not been concerned merely with the simple edu- cation of children, sons of the common people, of workmen, or of peasants. Similarly, if we con- sidered one of the essential principles of his method, it would not be incorrect to say, " Pesta- lozzi, and Intuitive Education," since he is the real initiator of the Lemons de Choses. On the other hand, if we had preferred to define the character of his work as that of intuition, to which he attached some importance, it is after all not the point of departure for his system of teach- ing. We think that we have responded better to his ideas, and have at the same time conformed to his exact terms, when we assign as his especial domain, " Elementary Education," that which fixes the first instruction of the child in letters and morals. " Elementary Education " — that is in- deed the constant goal of the indefatigable activity of Pestalozzi. He has not laboured when he felt moved only by his inspiration, and when the circum- stances have imposed upon him a role to his liking ; he has laboured only for childhood. He has excelled in the art of training the child in the life intel- x PREFACE lectual and moral. " That which takes chief place in my aspirations is the first impulse of my youth for the people and for childhood/' he asserted. In his last work, The Swan Song, he devotes two hun- dred pages to analyzing the development of the idea of Elementarbildung . In the discourse which he prepared, some time before his death, for the Societe Helvetique, which had proclaimed him its president, it is with insistence that he reverts again to the fixed idea of " Elementary Education." His real glory has been not merely in the inspir- ing of one class of the world's employees, the school- master ; it is in the school itself, in the elementary school, that he would have liked to spend all his life. It is by the side of the schoolhouse that he desired to sleep his last sleep. "I desire that they lay me down beneath the eaves of the school ; that they write merely my name on the stone which receives my ashes ; and when the raindrops have partly effaced the letters, mankind will deal more justly with me, perhaps, than they have during my life." The appeal which Pestalozzi, out of his sorrows and misfortunes, addressed to future generations, to repair the injustice of certain of his contempo- raries, has been heard. If his life was one of hard- ship, posterity has dealt kindly with him ; and it PREFACE xi is in order to contribute in our turn to the grate- ful homage and admiration due him, that we have written the following pages which, though brief, yet present the most complete picture of the dra- matic episodes of his career, of his heroic life, and of his immortal work. PESTALOZZI "It is in Herbart that Pestalozzi must be studied," said Doctor Mager, a German author ; doubtless in the way that Socrates is studied in Plato. If, indeed, we wish to follow up some of Pestalozzi's concep- tions in their philosophic development, it is perhaps to Herbart that we should address ourselves. He had visited Pestalozzi, in 1799, at his Burgdorf school ; he had seen him at work ; and it cannot be denied that he drew inspiration, on certain points, from the principles of the Pestalozzian method, of which he spoke favourably in three small works, published in 1802 and 1804. 1 The desire to establish between them the relation of master to disciple, and the claim to connect closely two minds which hardly resemble one another, a deep, subtle theorist and a sentimental, enthusiastic educator, would be unwarranted. If Pestalozzi, before he died, had 1 The most important of these three monographs is entitled : Pestalozzis Idee eines ABC des Anschauungsunterrichts und toissenschaftlich ausgefiihrt. Gottingen, 1802. 3 4 PESTALOZZI had time to read Herbart's works, — but he himself tells us that he did not open a book in the last fifty years of his life, — if he had become acquainted with Pedagogic generate, which dates from 1806, it is probable that he would have exclaimed, some- what like Socrates concerning Plato: "What fine things this young man imagines that I never thought of! . . ." It is in himself — in his character, his life, and his actions — that Pestalozzi deserves to be studied. If to Rousseau he owes a part of his inspiration, none the less for that is the great Swiss teacher an ini- tiator, an innovator; and if, moreover, his doctrine remained incomplete and confused, it has its par- ticular value all the same. Let us add that by anno- tations and attempts at its interpretation, it has often been disfigured. In a sense, also, it is per- missible to invert the aphorism which we have quoted and to say: "In order to understand Her- bart and the other educational philosophers, it is as well to have a preliminary knowledge of Pesta- lozzi." Michelet, in Nos Fits, hails him as one of the evan- gelists of modern pedagogics. R. H. Quick, in his Educational Reformers, declares him to have been "the most celebrated of educational reformers." Karl Schmidt, in his Geschichte der Erziehung, calls him PESTALOZZI 5 "the king of pedagogics, the prophet of the new education." I do not think that the history of edu- cation can show us another figure of such original- ity, such a touching physiognomy, such an example of impassioned devotion to the education of the peo- ple. His long life of fourscore years was dominated by a single thought, the regeneration of humanity by education. "All my life I have desired," he wrote in 1801, "and to-day I still desire one thing alone: the welfare of my beloved people whose wretchedness I feel as it is felt by few." He was himself wretched. And his heroic life of suffering, humiliation, and sacrifice surpasses in its sad reality everything that the novelists of the school have been able to imagine in our times, when recounting the misfortunes of Jean Coste or those of the Insti- tutrice de village. He was not merely a theoretical pedagogue, calmly drawing up on paper projects of reform, with- out taking the trouble to apply them. He was not satisfied, like Rousseau, with a platonic philan- thropy, manifested only by fine words. He was above all a man of action, a militant teacher; and it is not his fault that he was not a simple school- master all his life. It was not alone the progress of instruction for its own sake that concerned him. He worked, acted, and suffered for the happiness 6 PESTALOZZI of mankind. He wished to prepare a better-edu- cated humanity, so that it might be happier and more virtuous. If it were said that he was a philan- thropist of pedagogics, and, as it were, the Saint Vincent de Paul of education, the description would be very accurate. For an immediate realization of the work carried on by a pedagogue, of whom the English professor, Joseph Payne, could say that "of all educators, he is the one whose influence has been the deepest and the most penetrating," it is sufficient to scan the enormous list of works written by biographers or close critics on his life and work. With Pesta- lozzian books alone a rich library could be formed. Germany has devoted hundreds of volumes to him. In France, it is true, his name has been pronounced more often than his ideas have been studied. It must not be forgotten, however, that whilst he was still alive, when Fichte, in his famous Discours a la nation allemande, declared that he expected the salvation and regeneration of his country from the application of Pestalozzian methods, French voices also were raised in Pestalozzi's honour. In 1810, Madame de Stael wrote in her book, De VAllemagne, that " Pestalozzi's school was one of the best insti- tutions of the century;" and some years earlier, in 1807, Maine de Biran, then sub-prefect of Bergerac, PESTALOZZI 7 endeavoured to introduce and acclimatize the new method, which he esteemed most highly, in the schools of Dordogne. A hundred years old, Pestalozzi's renown has not faded. His glory shines especially in his native land, where he is the object of a kind of cult. It even seems that these last years have seen, as it were, a recrudescence and a resurrection of the homage ren- dered to him. It was on the 12th of January, 1846, the anniversary of his birthday, that his compa- triots raised to him at Birr, in Aargau, the first monument of their gratitude. In the last twenty years, however, proofs of admiration have been multiplied; in Zurich and Yverdon statues have been erected to him; in Burgdorf a medallion and a commemorative tablet have been dedicated to his memory ; in Zurich, again, it was under the pat- ronage of his name that, about 1875, the academic museum, the Pestalozzianum, was instituted. And to these monuments perpetuating his memory are added very significant trifles, bearing witness that the affection of the people is ever his. In Zurich, I went into a bookseller's ; there I found postcards adorned with his portrait. I sat down at a restau- rant table ; the menu presented some of the scenes of his scholastic life. ... In the Pestalozzianum, beside his manuscripts and books, I was shown some 8 PESTALOZZI of his relics, collected by pious hands, — his stick, his snuff-box, a lock of his hair, his diploma as Doctor of Breslau University, conferred on him in 1817. . . . What, however, is worth more than all these material monuments, is that the operation of his thought is still alive and circulates from school to school. What, moreover, has contributed, in recent times, to revive his popularity, is the fine work of Mr. L.-W. Seyffarth, who, after publishing, from 1869 to 1872, a complete edition of Pesta- lozzi's works, is occupied in preparing a fresh one, in which he has brought together a certain number of important writings hitherto unpublished. II Zurich, at the period when Pestalozzi was going through his studies there, was a hot-bed of intellec- tual life. Never had "the Athens of the Limmat," as it is sometimes called, better justified this some- what ambitious title. It was the time when Zurich was competing with Leipzig, and Bodmer with Gottsched, when Zurich's writers were making their names known in ever wider circles. In 1756, Gess- ner published his Idylles; in 1767, Lavater, who was Pestalozzi's friend, composed his Chants suisses, an attempt at popular lyric poetry. Again, it was the time when Zurich was becoming the meeting-place of the German poets. Wieland accepted Bodmer's hospitality there in 1753 ; and before him, in 1750, Klopstock had there obtained a triumphant recep- tion; surrounded by nine youths and nine damsels, — so many Muses, — he made sentimental excur- sions, in a boat bedecked with flowers, on an en- trancing lake, reading unpublished fragments of his Messie to his enraptured admirers. But especially it was the time when a breath of liberty was disturbing men's minds. Contrat social 9 10 PESTALOZZI and Emile were read with passion. Pestalozzi was quite enraptured by them; and even in his old age he remained faithful to this youthful passion, since he wrote in 1826 : " With Herculean might Rousseau rent asunder the heavy chains which bound the human mind; he restored the child to itself and education to nature." When Geneva, imitating the intolerance of the Parliament at Paris, in its turn condemned and expelled Rousseau, Zurich sided against Geneva. Encouraged by its profess- ors themselves, the university youth grouped itself into societies for study and for political or social reforms. Anonymous pamphlets appeared, ener- getically attacking the sheriffs, the bailiffs, and even certain ministers of religion. Pestalozzi grew up in this inflamed environment. Some years later, he made a wicked bailiff the villain, in his romance of Leonard et Gertrude. From his twentieth year, however, he was already committed to the new ideas. He was looked upon as a revolutionary. With a few friends, the " patriots," as they were called, with Lavater, among others, he caused himself to be prosecuted for complicity in a pretended conspiracy against the safety of the State. Whilst the govern- ment of Zurich banished one of these innocent con- spirators, guilty only of denouncing the embezzle- ments of Bailiff Grebel and Sheriff Brunner, and the PESTALOZZI 11 evil conduct of Pastor Hottinger, others, and Pesta- lozzi himself, were imprisoned, tried, and fined. From these passionate struggles of his youth, Pestalozzi imbibed, and even whilst imbibing dis- played, the democratic faith which animated him throughout his life and made of him the indefatiga- ble supporter of the poor and suffering against the abuses of the great. Other influences, however, helped in the formation of his noble character. Home surroundings, still more than social environ- ment, acted on his affections. At the age of six he lost his father, a medical practitioner in Zurich. He is peculiarly his mother's son. Rousseau was badly brought up by a fantastic, careless father; Pestalozzi was well brought up by a good, intelli- gent mother. This is partly responsible for the diversity of their characters and destinies. Left destitute with a daughter and two sons, the poor widow devoted herself entirely to her children's education. She was assisted by a wonderfully devoted servant, faithful Babeli, who had promised the dying father — and she kept her word — never to forsake the family as long as she lived. In this humble home, under this watchful, tender care, the child learned early the virtues of simplicity and frugality, which the conditions of an arduous life imposed as a rigorous obligation on the man. There 12 PESTALOZZI also he acquired an unalterable purity of sentiment. Thence, moreover, with all these qualities, were per- chance derived some of the defects of his incom- plete mind, sensitive rather than meditative. He often lacked practical sense. In 1765, his friend Bluntschli, who died at the age of twenty-five, said to him: "Never engage in an enterprise without having at your side a man whose experience and cool reason will guarantee you against the dangers to which your goodness and trusting confidence will expose you." Niederer, who was one of the collabo- rators of his old age, says that in him were to be found the persevering will of a man and the courage of a hero, united with the sensibility and delicacy of a woman and the confiding simplicity of a child. Pestalozzi's studies were of the most serious kind. He quickly renounced theology and the ecclesias- tical calling which had at first attracted him. The cause of his retirement was doubtless the spirit of liberty obtained from reading Rousseau, rather than the alleged misadventure of an unsuccessful sermon ; it is indeed narrated that he stopped short after the first words of his discourse. He turned to legal studies, in order to acquire the knowledge neces- sary for a politician and social reformer, as he wished to become. He read the ancient authors lovingly, PESTALOZZI 13 and in his twentieth year produced a little work in which he dealt with the legislation of Sparta. It was not, however, classical reading or theoretical revery alone which prepared him to become the free citizen, the friend of humanity. The circum- stances of his life procured for him a premature ex- perience of social realities. He spent his holidays in the country, either at Hongg, with his paternal grandfather, Pastor Pestalozzi, or with his mother's brother, Doctor Hotze, at Richtersweil. With them, he visited the poor and the sick. He was brought into contact with the sufferings of the people. He heard the lamentations of the peasants. Pity en- tered his young heart and dwelt there ever after. Since it is true that human personality is largely the reflection of the surroundings in which it develops, it must be taken into consideration that Pestalozzi spent his youth amongst good people, that he grew up in an atmosphere of uprightness; and he was influenced by it during the whole of his life. One day, whilst quite a youngster, having a little pocket-money, he went into the shop of a neighbor, a confectioner of Zurich, to buy some dainties. The young lady who was serving, the shopkeeper's own daughter, Anna Schulthess, whom Pestalozzi was to marry some years later, understanding her business interests none too well, as it would seem, 14 PESTALOZZI dissuaded the child from satisfying his gluttony and advised him to save his money for a more useful purpose. One of the first lessons of wisdom by which he profited was thus received from the person who was for forty-six years, from 1769 till 1815, to share his hopes and disappointments, to partake of his too rare joys and the long succession of his sorrows. Anna Schulthess herself, however, was not without defects : she was somewhat coquettish ; and Pesta- lozzi was perhaps present at the conversation which she once had with Bluntschli, their mutual friend. She asked him for his opinion on an elegant assort- ment of ribbons, with which she wished to adorn herself. But Bluntschli answered her severely: " Whilst your poor neighbour is in greater need of a thaler to buy food than you are of this bauble, you have a better use for your money." The gentle, salutary influences of family life were continued for Pestalozzi in the conjugal dwelling. Pestalozzi's wife was worthy of him, and their marriage was a union of souls. The letters which they exchanged have been preserved, and never did betrothed lovers correspond in such terms. Far from displaying himself to the greatest advan- tage, Pestalozzi complacently detailed all his defects, his absent-mindedness, his neglect of dress, his unattractive exterior. His love declarations seem PESTALOZZI 15 like a confession of his sins. He exhorted Anna to reflect well before coming to a decision. He told her that he lacked foresight greatly, that he had no presence of mind, and felt others' misfortunes to the extent of being unhappy himself and losing all peace of mind ; he warned her that he would be first a citizen, then a husband; that she would have to suffer, that it would be necessary to know how to sacrifice family and interests, both personal and selfish, to the superior interests of humanity. In short, he traced out his life's pro- gramme. But Anna also had a noble heart. She attached no importance to a badly tied cravat, and although she let Pestalozzi under- stand that she was well aware that he was not exactly beautiful, that nature would have been harsh to him "if she had not given him large, dark eyes in which she portrayed the goodness of his strong, serious mind," she did not hesitate: she plighted her troth, in spite of her parents' opposition, in spite of the tears of her mother, who said to her, — and she was not mistaken: "You must resign yourself to privations; you must be satisfied with bread and water ! . . ." Married at the age of twenty-three, in 1769, Pestalozzi was a father a year later; and if the educator had been awakened by philanthropic ideas, his paternal love finally determined his voca- 16 PESTALOZZI tion. If he became a teacher, it is because humanity was dear to him, and also because he tenderly cher- ished his only child. His first dream, which lasted till his death, was to comfort and regenerate man- kind, especially the poor, by instruction and educa- tion. In his twentieth year, a journalist of original- ity, he wrote down in the foremost rank, amongst the prayers which he formulated for the improve- ment of the people's condition, "that some one might be willing to draw up in simple form some educational principles within the reach of all." The father it was who responded to this appeal, or at least, attempted to do so, by jotting down, in the private Journal which he wrote out in 1774, the results of his son Jaqueli's education. This education was his first experi- ment in pedagogics. He brought to it no precon- ceived notions. Indeed, all his life he was nothing but an experimentalist, seeking the truth in action, in teaching, without a systematic mind or a plan drawn up beforehand. With Jaqueli, he observed, hesitated, groped: he never ceased to grope. He hesitated between the principles of authority and of liberty. In this first attempt, however, were present the germs of most of the ideas which dominated all his pedagogics : to be in no hurry, to make clear but to the sight and to the understanding, to develop the senses, to PESTALOZZI 17 take nature as guide, to attach more importance to things than to words, to respect the child's dawning liberty. . . . " To know words which do not respond to precise ideas is an immense barrier to the truth." — " All instruction would not be worth a farthing if it necessitated the loss of a child's courage and gayety." He wrote later: " Laughter is a gift of God; let children laugh ; encourage merriment in them." Imitation of Rousseau is apparent: at the age of eleven, Jaqueli, like Emile, could hardly read and write. 1 He exercised his senses more than his memory and judgment. His education was chiefly negative, obeying nature's necessities, and not man's will. Pestalozzi's good sense, however, showed him what was chimerical in Rousseau's Utopias. Experience taught him that it is at times necessary to oppose nature. He prescribed hours of regular work for Jaqueli. He shut him up, when four years old, to force him to study. He found reasons for liberty and invoked other reasons for obedience. In the same way, false to Rousseau's principles in this also, he did not allow the child's 1 Jaqueli was sent to college, at Basle, in 1784. He did not fulfil his father's hopes. Very sickly from childhood, he died young, in 1800, leaving a son, Gottlieb, the consolation of his grandfather's old age. Gottlieb, at first apprenticed as tanner's workman, returned to Yverdon in 1817. There he married one of Schmid's sisters. 18 PESTALOZZI affectionate feelings to remain dormant, and he strove to develop affection in Jaqueli before all else. "I wish only to be a schoolmaster/ ' replied Pesta- lozzi, twenty years later, to those of his friends who had been brought into power by the Swiss Revolu- tion of 1798, when they offered him administrative posts and lucrative appointments. His true voca- tion was that of schoolmaster, and all his life he longed to teach, but very little of his time was so employed. Circumstances and events, which so often disturbed the long career in which we are about to follow him, prevented him from fulfilling his wish. He could not continue even the education of his son, which he had begun with such delight, at least not under the same conditions, in the isolation and privacy of family life. In 1775, the school for in- digent children at Neuhof was opened; and Pesta- lozzi, who was going to give his entire affections to the little unfortunates whom he had collected there, did still more: he gave them for a comrade his well-beloved son, Jaqueli, as though to show clearly that he was a father to them all. Ill Neuhof, Stans, Burgdorf, Yverdon, are the four stages of Pestalozzi/s pedagogical apostolate, we may almost say the four stations of his Calvary; for, in the dreary shadow of his existence, darkened by so many clouds, the days of joy and peace were but passing gleams of light. At Neuhof his mis- fortunes began. Pestalozzi had left Zurich, in 1768, to settle in the canton of Aargau, in the open country; he was impelled by various reasons. In the first place, the love of the country called to him. Like Rousseau, he had become disgusted with towns, and he would willingly have indorsed the saying, omne malum ex urbe. In addition to this, he had to seek a profes- sion which would provide him with a livelihood. He naively believed that he was destined to become a farmer, and as a farmer he settled near Birr. After a makeshift establishment, he built an unassuming house, which he named Neuhof, "the new farm." He established himself there, first with his mother, then with his young wife. He arrived rich in hope 19 20 PESTALOZZI and in illusion. He reckoned on making a fortune by cultivating land which till then had been barren. He had gone through a rapid technical apprentice- ship with Tschiffeli, an agriculturist in Berne can- ton. He had returned with the horny hands of a field labourer and with a small stock of agronomic ideas. Furnished with this newly acquired knowl- edge, he flattered himself that he would profitably work his rural domain and gain his independence: "I shall become independent of the whole world." By new methods of cultivation, by planting madder and starting gardening operations, he hoped to fer- tilize the few acres of poor ground which he had bought at a cheap rate; just as he dreamed later of transforming difficult child natures by applying his personal methods of instruction. It was not, however, care for his material interests alone which sent Pestalozzi to live in the country. The young patriot of Zurich had not bidden farewell to his aspirations to become a reformer. If he went to the country people, it was out of sympathy for the wretchedness of the toilers of the fields. When quite little, he had said, "When I am big, I shall support the peasants." He wished now to keep his word, to seek the means of curing poverty and lightening the ignorance of the country people. This secret thought of becoming an educator in the PESTALOZZI 21 village is shown clearly by what he wrote to his betrothed in 1768, to persuade her to follow him and to leave Zurich. "We must," said he, "set up our cottage home far from that centre of vice. . . . When I am in the country, if I see a child with prom- ise of a beautiful mind, and in need of bread, I shall take it by the hand and make a good citizen of it." As Anna Schulthess, and especially her parents, became uneasy concerning the fortune that such an adventurous enterprise had in store for him, he invoked the high moral incentives of the services to be rendered to the poor and to humanity: "In order to be of service to our fellow-citizens, should we not restrict our personal needs? . . . To give poor children the milk which I like I shall joyfully content myself with drinking cold water. ..." That is, moreover, what happened. Neuhof was not for long a simple agricultural undertaking. In spite of unremitting labour and prodigies of economy, the defeat was complete at the end of a few years. Bankruptcy was imminent. In vain generous friends, who tired eventually, had advanced funds to Pestalozzi. In vain his wife had made over the greater part of her patrimony. He struggled; he worked with his own hands; but all in vain. In 1775, the ruin was complete. The fields on which 22 PESTALOZZI he had built up illusory hopes, from which he expected extraordinary returns and profits, had to be sold. The ownership of the house and a few plots of land alone remained to him. And for the first time the ill-starred great man had to cry out: "The dream of my life has faded away! . . ." If, however, the agricultural enterprise of Neuhof ended in financial disaster, it was the occasion of a moral triumph. Ruined, having lost almost his all, what did Pestalozzi do? He opened a refuge for poor children. He himself was poor, to almost the same degree as the unfortunate children whom he harboured, fed, and clothed, and whom he was at the same time trying to instruct and educate. With them he shared what little bread he had. Never was the spirit of sacrifice carried so far. It is in memory of this charitable effort that Pestalozzi was able to say, "I myself have lived like a beggar, that I might teach beggars to live like men.' 7 Success seemed at first to attend this bold stroke. The refuge opened with a score of children. The number increased as time went on, but never ex- ceeded a hundred. They were for the most part little vagrants, whom "the angel of beneficence/' as Madame de Krudner called him, picked up at random PESTALOZZI 23 and without selection, on the highways. Did they not need his help and care so much the more as they were more vicious and wretched? Boys or girls, they varied in age from ten to twenty. Some were natural children, without family. There were con- victs' sons among the number. They came to him covered with rags and vermin. Never was less promising matter offered to the efforts of an edu- cator. "They were," said he himself, " specimens of the lowest stage of humanity." Pestalozzi divided the time of these singular pupils between manual labor and a few intellectual exer- cises, language lessons, moral and religious explana- tions: "They were not allowed to forget God, their Father and Saviour;" and this was almost their entire mental training. During the greater part of the day, the children were busy in the garden or fields, or occupied in industrial work. For Pesta- lozzi, fertile in expedients, had joined to his farm a cheese dairy and also spinning works. In the fine season, work was done in the open air ; on bad days and in winter, cotton was spun. Pestalozzi had en- listed the services of a certain number of workmen, weavers or others. It was the application of one of the main ideas of his pedagogics : the association of handicraft with elementary education. A school without a workshop, a school which is not at the same 24 PESTALOZZI time an apprenticeship to a livelihood, seemed an absurdity to him. 1 Undoubtedly it is not to be supposed that dis- tinguished men could issue from the school at Neu- hof, recruited as it was from such abnormal material. One, however, is mentioned, the painter Gottfried, celebrated under his cognomen of the "cat Raphael." What could be done with pupils of whom Pestalozzi, in an account published in 1778, gives us particulars such as the following? " Barbara Brunner is seven- teen years old ; she came to us in a state of complete ignorance and extreme wildness. . . ." Another lass showed all the signs of an " unimaginable brut- ishness." The boys were no better. Pestalozzi por- trays them for us, sly, distrustful, heedless, enfeebled by privation, accustomed to idling. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the beneficent action of an ardent and enthusiastic educator had an influence for good on the character of some of these poor crea- tures, whom he strove to deliver from the evil instincts of their nature and the depraved habits of their childhood. Very careful not to train them in ad- vance of their future condition, he thought less about their instruction than about their moral regeneration. 1 This is the idea which he set forth, at this period, in his Lettres sur V education de la jeunesse pauvre des campagnes. Seyffarth's edition, Vol. VIII. PESTALOZZI 25 At the end of a few months, some, at least, of these fallen beings were quite transformed. They entered the refuge in an abject condition; they left it, if not cured of all their moral blemishes, at least perceptibly improved and capable of earning an honest living. The pedagogic trial of Neuhof was, however, to fail, as the agricultural undertaking had done. The estab- lishment passed through crises, followed by some re- turns of hope. In 1778, Pestalozzi wrote: " After a time of privation surpassing anything that could be imagined, my establishment is saved." Generous benefactors, indeed, had come to his assistance. From the beginning, in 1776, the philanthropist, Iselin, a native of Bale, who was " a veritable father" to him, had recommended this interesting attempt at regen- erating the masses ' ' to the friends of humanity." Some subscriptions delayed the final ruin. Moreover, a large- hearted woman, a humble servant, Elisabeth Naf, 1 1 Elisabeth Naf married, in 1802, Mathias Krusi, the brother of Pestalozzi's first collaborator. She it was who served for the pattern of the ideal woman personified in Gertrude, of whom Pesta- lozzi said, likening her somewhat pompously to the sun : " Reader, I should like to find you a perceptible representation of this woman, so that her silent activity may be understood and admired. What I am about to say is tremendous, but I venture to say it: thus does God's sun journey from morn till eventide; . . . when it sinks to rest, you know that it will rise once more on the morrow, to reanimate the earth. . . . This great sun which is earth's life-giver is the image of Gertrude and of every woman who makes the family chamber into God's sanctuary. ..." 26 PESTALOZZI had come to offer her services to Pestalozzi, and to bring back a little order into a house left somewhat neglected from sickness or the absences of Madame Pestalozzi. Elisabeth Naf, like Babeli, was the type of those daughters of the people who, by an admirable instinct of devotion, are attached for life to an unfortunate family. It is of Elisabeth that Pestalozzi said: "I should turn and be uneasy in my tomb, nor should I be happy even in heaven, if I did not know that after my death she will be more honoured than myself. . . . Without her, I should long have ceased to exist. " But money difficulties multiplied. Always sub- ject to illusions, Pestalozzi had hoped that the pupils' work would produce enough to cover the expenses of their maintenance. He himself attended the mar- kets and fairs to sell his cotton stuffs and thread; but the receipts were wholly insufficient. His pupils' lack of discipline also caused him bitter disappoint- ment. Those who had relatives, worked upon by covetous families, no sooner received their new clothes from the generosity of the poorest of men, than they ran away and appeared no more. Those who were orphans were at times preferable. In the school itself, Pestalozzi could not make himself respected. The moment his back was turned, the rascals made fun of him. His crops were ravaged PESTALOZZI 27 by hail. Epidemic diseases, measles and scab, raged amongst the children. Doctors were needed; but how were they to be paid? Courage cannot meet all needs. Never did Pestalozzi better appre- ciate the disproportion between what he desired and what he could do. They suffered from cold, and at times from hunger. In 1780, Pestalozzi had to give up the impossible struggle, in which he had ex- hausted all his strength and all his resources. IV Eighteen years passed by — years of material poverty and moral discouragement for Pestalozzi, from the day on which the last beggar child left the refuge at Neuhof to that on which the first orphan entered the refuge at Stans. A period of waiting and inaction, during which "he ate away his heart/' as he said, " swallowed up in the mire of his wretchedness/ 7 living the life "of a plant trampled at the roadside." Pestalozzi spent these sad years at Neuhof, in the humble dwelling which he had retained. Neuhof, moreover, was always his chosen abode. There his son had been born ; there he had reared him; thither he returned when his term of life was coming to an end, weary and ill, to write Destinees de ma vie, the Chant du Cygne, a kind of autobiography, and then to die. From 1780 to 1798, he often knew dire privation. But he suffered still more from the feeling of his powerlessness, from the downfall of his hopes, and from the interruption to his career of activity. He had not even the con- solation of his neighbours' sympathy. The peasants, 28 PESTALOZZI 29 who have no great liking for unsuccessful enter- prises, looked on him as a poor madman. At any rate, whilst waiting for the means of re- commencing his life of action, he worked with his mind; he meditated and wrote. These eighteen years were not lost. It was at this time that he composed most of his works. In 1780, he published the Soiree oVun ermite, a series of reflections pre- sented in the form of short aphorisms, having for their main object the raising of the people by edu- cation ; in 1781 appeared the first volume of Leonard et Gertrude, the celebrated popular novel, which had a brilliant success and which made him famous in a day; the three last parts were issued in 1783, 1785, and 1787 ; * but the public welcome was colder for these. In 1782, Pestalozzi published Christophe et Else, another novel, "the second book for the people," which passed unnoticed, and which he had designed as an educational manual for the use of the actual school (Realschule), and of the universal school. Lastly, in 1797, appeared the Fables, which he had begun to write about 1782, and which, whilst possessing a certain literary value, are especially social in character ; and a work which he considered 1 Among Pestalozzi's unpublished manuscripts have been found two other supplementary parts of Leonard et Gertrude: the fifth, in which he dealt with government, and the sixth, which is purely pedagogical. 30 PESTALOZZI the most important of his writings, the Recherches sur la mar die de la nature dans le developpement de Vesprit humain. This was an essay on general phi- losophy, in which, in spite of painstaking effort, the inadequacy and weakness of his abstract thought are left too much in evidence by the author. Beyond all doubt, Pestalozzi had literary talent ; and Leonard et Gertrude, besides the Fables, proves that by his simple conceptions, his penetrating, intimate ob- servations, and, above all, by his feeling, he was capable of distinguishing himself in works of popular literature. But he was by no means equipped for a work of philosophic generalization. The Recherches, though they obtained Fichte's attention, were not at all successful and scarcely deserved to be. Pesta- lozzi might have had more success if he had tried dramatic literature, as at one time he thought of doing : he might have inaugurated, a hundred years in advance, the " Popular Plays." Pestalozzi had become an author from necessity still more than from liking. "I would have made wigs/' said he, mournfully, "to give bread to my wife and child." But his writings, if they were his livelihood, earned him besides a beginning of repu- tation and glory. The hermit of Neuhof, scoffed at and ridiculed by his near neighbours, became a personage afar off. The legislative Assembly con- PESTALOZZI 31 ferred on him the title of French citizen by the de- cree of the 26th August, 1792, in which it was stated that "men who, by their writings and their courage, had served the cause of liberty and freedom of mind could not be looked upon as foreigners in France." Pestalozzi's name was there written down in good company, beside glorious names, such as Washing- ton, Kosciusko, Schiller, Klopstock, and a few others. From Germany also came to him precious testi- mony of interest and sympathy. In the same year which saw him proclaimed a French citizen, he was favourably received, on making a journey to Leipzig, by Goethe, Wieland, Klopstock, and Herder. In the following year, he entered into relations with Fichte, who was to remain his friend forever, and who said of him: "He is ugly, he is dressed like a peasant, but he is so full of feeling that few men can compare with him." The author's success did not make Pestalozzi forget the fundamental aspiration of his life. He still wished to be a teacher, but there was to be a revolution ere he could resume the role, and then only for a very short time, in the improvised or- phanage, which the new government of the Swiss Confederation organized at Stans, in 1798. In Pestalozzi's academic life, the Stans experi- ment appears to us to have been the heroic moment, 32 PESTALOZZI the moment when he was most truly himself, and when he showed most clearly all the treasures of devotion and tenderness which his heart contained. He was fifty-two years old. Already, as his friend Stapfer, minister of arts and sciences, said, "he was fighting against the approach of old age." And at an age when some of our teachers already think of taking their pension, he undertook the direction of a school of children, aged from six to ten, under most unfavourable conditions. There was, indeed, nothing tempting in the task. It has been said, and not without reason, that in choosing Pestalozzi, the Swiss Directorate made a blunder. The up- bringing of orphans in a devastated country, laid waste by the civil war, was to be undertaken, and it was a representative of the victorious party, it was a democrat and heretic, who was sent to the vanquished people in their exasperation. Pesta- lozzi came to preach peace and humanity in a region, the Nildwalden, where, on the very eve of his arrival, the French army, joined to the Swiss army, had waged a cruel war. Nearly four hundred men, women, and children had been killed ; as many houses had been burned; priests had been massacred at the altars; Stans had been half destroyed by fire. Moreover, it was a Protestant who was sent as educator to a devout Catholic population, made PESTALOZZI 33 fanatical by the preaching of the Capuchins, to make trial of lay education in a transformed convent. Pestalozzi knew what obstacles he would encoun- ter. Anybody else would have been afraid, but he had no hesitation. He had so long been pining away u in rage and despair " at his inaction. He issued from a species of moral death throe. The mission offered him at Stans was for him a resurrec- tion. He was at last to be able to apply the ideas which he had set forth in Leonard et Gertrude. "I am effacing the shame of my life," said he, in a triumphant shout. ... "I feel myself become a man again." He perceived no better possible em- ployment for his activity than to struggle against stupidity, coarseness, ignorance, and vice. The gov- ernment had thought of intrusting him with the control of a normal school. He preferred to go to the infants, feeling strongly that elementary education was his true vocation. "To realize my life's dream I would have agreed to go and make my attempt on the highest summits of the Alps, without fire or water. . . ." There have been Swiss historians who have blamed Pestalozzi for taking part in the work of the Swiss Revolution, and treating with the French army which fought for it. We know of nothing, on the contrary, which does more honour to Pestalozzi 34 PESTALOZZI than his having resolutely joined with those of his compatriots who were friends of progress, and conse- quently having sided with France and the Revolu- tion. At this period he was at heart a Frenchman. It was not without a measure of patriotic pride that we saw, in the Pestalozzianum at Zurich, one of his manuscripts, an Appel aux habitants des bords du Lac, signed: "Pestalozzi, citizen of Zurich and citizen of France." So long as the Revolution aimed only at serving the cause of emancipation of the peo- ple, Pestalozzi remained faithful to it. In the Helvetisches Volkblatt, a newspaper in which he wrote before settling at Stans, he addressed eloquent discourses to his fellow-citizens, at the time when France asked Switzerland to furnish her with a contingent of eighteen thousand armed auxiliaries: "O my native land, rejoice! France, the great na- tion, takes thee by the hand in a passion of brotherly love. ... It is no small honour to go and learn the profession of arms beside the legions of Bonaparte, Jourdan, and Moreau, and to train yourselves for the service of your fatherland in the heroic army of the French. . . ." It was not till later that Pestalozzi's affections turned from France when he saw its generous aspirations followed by the bloody dashes across Europe and the ambitious follies of Napoleon's despotism. PESTALOZZI 35 The material settlement at Stans was of the most miserable kind. Pestalozzi was assisted only by a charwoman: "I myself was governor, accountant, man-servant, and almost maid-servant, in a wreck of a house." The workmen were engaged in putting the refuge to rights, with the orphans already in possession. Pestalozzi had to attend to a thousand material cares, to busy himself with the food and clothing of all this little company of eighty children, of whom the majority were confined in the school. He slept in their midst; he cared for and nursed them with a mother's tenderness. He surrounded them with his love : "It was necessary," said he, that from morn till night, these poor forsaken ones should feel that my heart was with them, and that their happiness was mine." By the constant influence of his presence and the radiance of his sympathy he took possession of these little souls. "I laughed and cried with them. . . ." With them he was ill, in a refuge which was less a school than a children's hospital: "We all coughed," said he, "within the damp walls of a newly reconstructed house, and in a particularly severe winter." In a long, affecting letter addressed to his Zurich friend, the bookseller Gessner, son of the author of Idylles, Pestalozzi recounted the means which he employed to begin the intellectual and moral edu- 36 PESTALOZZI cation of his pupils at Stans. One word sums them up : action. He acted unceasingly. He spoke ; he taxed himself unreservedly. In class, he went from pupil to pupil, encouraging the hard-working and rebuking the idle. An extraordinary animation, a sustained attention on the part of the pupils, re- warded the master's efforts. "They had the desire, they found the power," said he; "they persevered; they were joyous. They felt dormant and unknown forces awakening within them." The tedium which too often accompanies study had disappeared like a shadow from the school. Those who visited Pestalozzi at Stans bear most favourable testimony to the progress which had been accomplished in a few weeks: "One cannot believe one's eyes," wrote Vicar Businger. "When I entered the class room," said Zschokke, the publicist, in his turn, "the chil- dren were so engrossed in their work that they hardly lifted their heads." Some were learning letters and figures ; some were calculating, others were drawing. The only master for rather a large number of pupils, Pestalozzi called on the more advanced to guide the weaker ones. They were, added Zschokke, grouped in threes ; the eldest, placed in the middle, put his arms around his little comrades' necks, the better to conduct their work. It was a beginning of mutual instruction. Intellectual exercises, as at PESTALOZZI 37 Neuhof, alternated with manual labour. In short, the results came up to Pestalozzi's expectations. "I was convinced/' said he, "that my heart would correct and change the character of my children by the time the spring sun came and revived the earth benumbed by winter. And, indeed, before the spring had melted the snow on our mountains, my pupils were no longer recognizable. In their angels 7 eyes and their transparent glances, I saw the progress of their souls. . . ." What Pestalozzi said of the Pere Girard can be applied to himself: "The Pere Girard works miracles; with mud he makes gold." The course of events abruptly interrupted Pesta- lozzi's courageous trial. The exigencies of the war, which had begun again, required that the orphans' refuge should become a military hospital. The little mountain dwellers had to make room for sick and wounded soldiers. The experiment had lasted less than six months, from the 14th of January, 1799, to the 8th of June in the same year. Assuredly one could not think of suggesting it as a model for imitation, any more than it would be possible to make general the ideal education invented by Rous- seau for his Emile. The " Stans folly," as it has been called, though it was a reality, should only be con- sidered as a hazardous enterprise upon which none 38 PESTALOZZI but an exceptional man may venture. Where find another Peotalozzi, animated with the same fer- vour? He himself could not have long continued such an effort. Whilst the little flock prospered, the shepherd, indeed, was becoming exhausted. He had reached the end of his strength and was spitting blood. He left for the mountains, for the heights of Gurnigel, grieved to see his work interrupted, determined to take it up again, when he was able, on the first opportunity, but under the necessity of restoring his strength and health, in the complete repose and salubrious air of the high mountains. It was from the height of Gurnigel that he said, whilst contemplating the vast perspectives and beautiful scenery of the valleys of Switzerland, stretching away into the distance in front of him: "I admire the beauty of the landscape, but I think chiefly of the poor people who dwell in these pictu- resque valleys, of those who suffer there from bad instruction, ignorance, and misery!" Roger de Guimps, who was one of the best stu- dents and most observant biographers of Pestalozzi, wrote, after he had journeyed, about 1870, through the Aargau countryside, and had made a pilgrimage to Neuhof: "We saw no poverty-stricken people; everywhere a hard-working and prosperous popula- tion, well-cultivated lands, and good schools. . . . PESTALOZZI 39 If Pestalozzi did not succeed in his practical attempts at improving the people of these parts, the prin- ciples which inspired his enterprise have ended by- bearing their fruit/' The same reflections came to us when, a few months ago, we were about to visit Stans for the purpose of there evoking the memory of Pestalozzi's passage. In this retired corner of Switzerland, where, a hundred years ago, he found the ruins of the civil war and awakened hatreds, where he was ill-received by a hostile populace, — he who, as does happen, brought liberty in the guise of oppression, — he is to-day forgotten. But all is gay and smiling in the pretty little town of Stans, situated a few miles from the beautiful Lake Lucerne. The inhabitants seem happy, cured of all hatred, and quieted in republican liberty. All around the little town stretch cultivated fields and rich pas- tures, strewn with enormous apple trees and vener- able pear trees, which perchance Pestalozzi saw planted, and which are loaded with abundant fruit each year. From the height of the terrace of the Stanserhorn, which, from its altitude of 6300 feet, dominates the plain of Stans lying at its feet, whilst looking at this pretty white village in its setting of verdure, I said to myself that, despite appearances, men such as Pestalozzi do not pass useless through the world ; that human thought also bears its fruit, 40 PESTALOZZI since, by the continuation of its effort and with the help of time, it succeeds in bringing about the reign of peace, comfort, and happiness, where before was only fanaticism, war, and misery ; and that if Pesta- lozzi is forgotten at Stans, at least the dreams which he conceived for the happiness of humanity are in part realized in this corner of the universe as else- where. It was at Burgdorf, the second town in the can- ton of Berne, that teacher Pestalozzi was called again to active service, some months after the closing of the orphanage at Stans. And to speak the truth, this was the only time that he was truly a teacher in the proper sense of the word, in a regular school, and had a class : a small class, however, of children of both sexes not yet able to read. He found that he was at the same time, as he said, "the most subor- dinate of masters, and the reformer of education." And for a year he occupied himself, a humble assist- ant master, "in pushing the modest wheelbarrow of the A B C." I do not know whether the assistant teacher of the infants' class at Burgdorf, if visited by a present- day inspector, would have obtained from him a good "Inspection report." I fear that he would have been unfavourably commented on in more than one respect : thus he liberally bestowed boxes on the ear, in his movements of impatience ; he spoke very quickly and shouted at the top of his voice; he gave 41 42 . PESTALOZZI scarcely any explanations to his pupils, and con- fined himself to making them mechanically repeat letters, then syllables and words. He did not fol- low a regular time-table. But, on the other hand, how can we refrain from admiring the devotion and zeal of the " celebrated old man," as the official reports styled him already, who, still young under his gray hair, strove to teach the alphabet to chil- dren of from five to eight years old ? The inspectors of that time, the members of the Berne scholastic commission, who visited the school in July, 1800, after only eight months' work, had nothing but praise for him: "Your pupils," they said, "have made astonishing progress ; the cleverest are already distinguishing themselves in penmanship, drawing, and calculation. . . . You have shown what powers are present in the youngest children, and the means by which these powers can and should be developed." After such a favourable inspection, Pestalozzi really deserved promotion, and he obtained it. From the infants' class, in which he was only as- sistant, he went as superintendent to the "second boys' school" ; the first was in the hands of a teacher who at the same time carried on the trade of shoe- maker, and had not been willing to authorize Pesta- lozzi to conduct his experiments with him. Burg- dorf castle was assigned to the new establishment. PESTALOZZI 43 Almost at once, however, the primary school was transformed into the "Burgdorf Educational In- stitute," a composite, mixed establishment, half school, half college, of which Pestalozzi took con- trol, obtaining the cooperation of his first collabo- rators, Krusi, Buss, and Tobler. 1 Hardly had it begun, when the longed-for teacher's career was already ended for Pestalozzi. Hence- forth he was something quite different from what he wished to be : he was the head of an institution, the superintendent of a great establishment for 1 Hermann Krusi, born in 1775, at Gais, in the canton of Appenzell, was twenty-five years of age when he came to Burg- dorf with a certain number of Appenzell children, and opened a school there. Pestalozzi obtained his cooperation in 1800, and thenceforward Krusi continued his collaboration. We tell else- where how he became a teacher. He left the Yverdon institute some time before that establishment was closed; and, after Pesta- lozzi's death, he became superintendent, first of a cantonal school at Trogen, and later of a normal school at Gais. At Burgdorf and Yverdon he was principally intrusted with the language exercises and with natural history. Roger de Guimps pays tribute to his moral qualities. He died in 1844. — Buss was a native of Wiirttemberg. It was Tobler who brought him to Pestalozzi, as a specialist in drawing and singing. — Tobler went to Burgdorf some months later than Buss. He was born in Appenzell in 1769. He died in 1843. He was directing a poor children's school at Bale, when his friend Krusi sent there for him in 1800 and per- suaded him to rejoin Pestalozzi. He taught geography chiefly. He left Yverdon long before the dissolution of the college, and, in 1810, he had already founded an industrial school at Mulhouse. He afterwards directed other establishments. 44 PESTALOZZI secondary education, or at the very least for higher elementary education; he had a boarding-school to govern, big boys to instruct, and quite a body of professors to direct. What cares and difficulties awaited him in functions for which he knew quite well that he was unsuited ! More than once he thought of resigning, of becoming a teacher once again, and of leaving what he called his " galley- slave's bench." In spite of all, for twenty-five years he devoted himself obstinately to his task, with varying fortunes, and valiantly bore "a burden which overwhelmed him." He resided at Burgdorf until the 1st of July, 1804 ; in 1804, for a few months at Munchenbuchsee, in the neighbourhood of Hofwyl, where Fellenberg, 1 his intermittent friend, continued his philanthropic attempts; lastly, at Yverdon, in the canton of Vaud, from the 1st of July, 1805, till 1825. "What a pity," wrote the Pere Girard in his celebrated Rapport on the institution at Yver- don, "that Pestalozzi has been taken away from 1 Fellenberg (Emmanuel de), born in 1771, died in 1844, played a great part in the history of Swiss education. He is the pedagogue venerated in Berne, as is the Pere Girard in Fribourg, and Pesta- lozzi in Zurich and the whole of Switzerland. His aim was analo- gous to that of Pestalozzi, whose methods he rated highly in spite of the very lively disagreements which he had with him. Like Pestalozzi, in his Institut agricole, in his Institut des pauvres, etc., he wished to base the people's education on the combination of manual labour with instruction. PESTALOZZI 45 the career which he chose with such affection. The primary school, the model of all the others, was then nothing but a vision in his restless and labori- ous life ! . . ." This was just what Pestalozzi himself felt : " What I desired was not the possession of an establishment, it was the consummation of my method." And, in fact, as far as his administrative cares permitted, he did not cease to pursue in his institutions this intangible " Method" which he had outlined in his books and made trial of in the refuges, the orphanages and the schools, without having as yet succeeded in defining it. At times he fancied that it should not be restricted to childhood, that it could be extended and applied to the more advanced studies of his new pupils. He intrusted to his collaborators the care of its elucidation, by preparing practical books, in conformity with its principles. In 1803, Krusi and Buss drew up Exercices intuitifs sur les nombres and Exercices intuitifs sur les formes et les grandeurs. On his part Pestalozzi had written, as early as 1801, an Instruction pour apprendre a lire et a epeler, and par- ticularly the most important of his pedagogic works, Comment Gertrude instruit ses enfants. The success of the institution at Burgdorf added to the reputation which Pestalozzi had already made. This educational establishment, we read in 46 PESTALOZZI an official document, was the object of an extraor- dinary infatuation. It was eulogized by legions of people. The number of pupils did not, however, exceed a hundred. Amongst them was Ramsauer, of Appenzell, who recounted humorously, and not without malice, his old school-boy memories. 1 About the year 1803, fresh collaborators gathered round the master : the Alsatian Neef ; 2 Barraud from Vaud, whom, some years later, Pestalozzi had to send to France, at the request of Maine de Biran; Pfeiffer the musician ; Muralt the theologian, 3 who just missed being the teacher of Madame de StaeFs children; Pastor Niederer, 4 a lettered theologian, 1 See Ramsauer's work: Kurze Skisse meines pcidagogischen Lebens. 1838. 2 Neef was chiefly occupied with the education of the deaf and dumb. He went to Paris in 1803, and taught there for a time; then he went to the United States and settled there. 3 Muralt, born at Zurich in 1780, was Pestalozzi's collaborator from 1803 until 1810. 4 Niederer, like Krusi a native of Appenzell, had from afar conceived an. admiration for Pestalozzi. He went to Burgdorf, in 1803, to superintend the religious instruction there. In 1814, he married Rosette Kasthofer, the teacher, who, since 1808, had been superintending the girls' institution attached to the boys' institution. Pestalozzi called him "the first of his sons," but he had great cause to complain of him, and finished by giving the preference to Schmid. In the last years of Pestalozzi's life, Niederer, having become estranged from him, founded at Yver- don an institution for girls, which prospered and which he trans- ferred to Geneva in 1837. He died in 1843. PESTALOZZI 47 who scarcely left Pestalozzi again, and lastly Schmid, first and foremost a mathematician. 1 The scope of the teaching was enlarged, thanks to these numerous special collaborations. All subjects were studied: chemistry, algebra, and also the dead languages. Pestalozzi himself tried to draw up Latin exercises. But the pupils became noted principally for their dexterity in drawing and in mental arithmetic; and in this the influence of the " Method" declared itself. The discipline, moreover, was liberal and gentle: "It is not a school but a great family that I see," exclaimed a visitor. — "Of all petty tyrants," said Pestalozzi, "the worst are school tyrants;" and he wanted no tyrants, either small or great. It was not of his own free will that Pestalozzi, in 1804, gave up his first institution, in the full tide of prosperity. Political happenings, however, dis- possessed him of Burgdorf castle, which once more became what it was before, the seat of the public authorities for the district. This is still its function at the present day. We recently visited Pesta- lozzi's old residence. It is reached by a difficult 1 Joseph Schmid, the chosen of Pestalozzi, was born in 1786 in the Tyrol. Having entered Burgdorf as a pupil in 1801, at six- teen years of age, he made such rapid progress that, two years later, he was capable of teaching arithmetic. "I had," said he, "found in Pestalozzi a second father." After the master's death, he settled in Paris, where he died in 1851. Schmid was a Catholic. 48 PESTALOZZI path which follows steep slopes, and it is situated at the highest-lying part of the pretty industrial town, which is proud of its Technikum, a school for engineers, electricians, and architects. One cannot help thinking, whilst ascending the hard-paved road, of all the people of inquiring mind who were attracted to it a century ago by Pestalozzi's grow- ing fame. Herbart, the favourite at the present day of Swiss, German, and American pedagogues, visited it; and after him a large number of German and Danish educators, who came to make themselves familiar with the processes of the Pestalozzian method, the majority returning captivated and convinced, to spread it in their respective countries. Those times are distant. I entered the inner courtyard of the castle, lonely and silent. On a wall a medallion of Pestalozzi may be seen, and beside it there is an inscription in German to inform us that this is a token of gratitude, dedicated to his memory, in 1888, by the town of Burgdorf . Another inscription calls to mind that Pestalozzi uttered " these divine words": "Love your brothers, be not in love with yourself," and that they are taken from the book which he composed in this very place, Comment Gertrude, etc. This is all that remains of Pestalozzi in Burgdorf. From the inner courtyard of the castle a superb panorama is visible: the green, industrial PESTALOZZI 49 valley of the Emmenthal; nearer at hand, thick forests, escarpments, and rocks; nearer still, the lower town, in which Pestalozzi was a teacher. The castle itself gives an impression of profound melan- choly. I look closely, and see barred windows: I even seem to hear smothered groans. This is because the old castle is a prison. By a curious irony of fate, the school from which in former times came words of confidence in human dignity, eloquent ap- peals for nobility of conscience and for liberty of existence, is now a place of detention for wrong-doers. At the precise moment that I cross the threshold on leaving, I pass a constable who is escorting a prisoner, a vagabond of twenty years of age. The unhappy man is going to be isolated in a cell. Pes- talozzi, in the simplicity of his candid soul, would have received him very differently, with words of encouragement ; he would doubtless have wished to attempt to regenerate him also by instruction. . . . Indeed, was it not thus, or nearly so, that one day he addressed a criminal who was about to be con- fined in a prison cell? In a friendly way he took his hand, slipped a coin into it, and said to him: "If you had received a good education, you would now be an honest man and a useful citizen. It would not be necessary to chain you up like a dog. . . ." 50 PESTALOZZI It was at Yverdon, even more than at Burgdorf, that Pestalozzi knew the delights of glory. There he had moments of real celebrity. Pupils flocked from all countries, from England, Italy, Spain, and France as much as from Switzerland and Germany. Some were refused from lack of space. Yverdon became a cosmopolitan college, and the times were heavy with ambition. "We were told that the eyes of the world were fixed on us," narrates a pupil. Visitors were so numerous as to interfere with the order and the regularity of study. In the eyes of foreigners Yverdon Institute was, as it were, one of the curiosities of Switzerland. People visited Pestalozzi as they made an excursion to a noted peak or a glacier, or as they go at the present day to Interlaken or Zermatt to admire the forces of nature. Pestalozzi lent himself complaisantly to these exhibitions, in which he saw a means of propa- gating his theories. When a visitor of note was announced, he at once sent for one of his best collab- orators: "Take your best pupils," said he to him, "and show what they know best." They applied themselves to displaying the institute in the most favourable light. The most sincere of men succumb at times to the temptation of a certain charlatanism. Their excuse is that they are seeking the triumph of their ideas. "A prince is coming to see us," PESTALOZZI 51 said Pestalozzi; "he is the master of a great number of serfs ; when we have convinced him he will have them educated." But Pestalozzi did not content himself with the propaganda carried on for him by his visitors: Madame de Stael, Froebel, Maine de Biran, the queen of Wiirttemberg, to mention only the most illustrious. He did not shrink from any exertion to evangelize the world. Thus, in 1802, with an official mission, moreover, as a member of the Consulta helvetique, he journeyed to Paris, nursing the secret hope of gaining Bonaparte himself to his cause. " Switzer- land is too small," said he, "for what I would wish to be. My ideas are cosmopolitan." But his recep- tion at Paris was not of a nature to encourage him. "I have no time to occupy myself with questions of A B C," declared the First Consul, plainly. And Talleyrand, who a little later was present at a prac- tical exhibition of the Pestalozzian method, in the class held by Neef, decided disdainfully: "It is too much for the people !" Monge also, the founder of the Polytechnic School, had said, "It is too much for us !" Do not let us be astonished, after this, at the severity of the opinion which Pestalozzi pro- nounced concerning France : "French children could be made into the finest men in the world, if they were brought up by German hands. French women 52 PESTALOZZI are good, but the men are worth nothing! . . ." Let us find consolation in thinking that Pestalozzi had judged us somewhat hastily, as he only stayed a few weeks in Paris. Pestalozzi always looked for powerful protectors. He was well aware that the individual action of a few enthusiastic dreamers, such as himself, is far from being sufficient to secure the success of the most necessary reforms, that the support of govern- ments and the cooperation of legislators is essential. "I am looking for a minister who is a man," he exclaimed. He thought that he had found him, in 1808, when his friend Nicolovius, having become a State Councillor and one of the directors of public education in Prussia, informed him of the schemes for reform which the king befriended : "My dream," cried he, "shows me in Frederick- William the hero of love as opposed to the heroes of war I" He hung on, if I may use the expression, to all the sovereigns who passed near him. In 1814, when Czar Alex- ander the First came to Bale, Pestalozzi hastened to visit him. Without hesitation, he asked of him the emancipation of the serfs and the reform of the schools in Russia. What he obtained from him was a cross, the Saint- Vladimir decoration of the fourth class. In the same year, Frederick- William the First, king of Prussia, passed through Neuchatel. PESTALOZZI 53 Pestalozzi, though sick and feeble, asked audience of him. To his friends who wished to dissuade him, he replied: "I must see him, though it kill me! Should my visit result only in obtaining a better education for a single child, I shall be amply rewarded for my trouble. . . ." But it was especially in the organization of the studies in a college of which he was the soul, that Pestalozzi displayed all the efforts of his activity. The programme of a school day at Yverdon was nearly as follows: The pupils left their beds at six o'clock. Pestalozzi, however, was awake before them, and he was known to summon the masters to his bedside as early as two o'clock in the morning, to give them his instructions. Having got up, the collegians went into the courtyard, and there, in the open air, washed in cold water spurting out of a long pipe, pierced with holes, which brought the water from a neighbouring well. Pestalozzi began the day with a religious or moral lecture, in presence of the professors and the assembled pupils: it was the happy custom which in our times Felix Pecant has so brilliantly reestablished in the Normal School at Fontenay-aux-Roses. None of the lessons lasted longer than an hour. They were varied by recrea- tion and walks on the neighbouring mountains. 54 PESTALOZZI Manual labour, working in pasteboard and garden- ing, alternated with study. Each pupil had a small plot of ground to cultivate. Physical training, of which Pestalozzi hardly ever speaks, was not neg- lected. 1 Some exercises in gymnastics were gone through. In the evening, from seven o'clock till eight, was the time for free intellectual work: the pupils worked for themselves, wrote letters, or practised drawing. Singing played an important part : they sang all the time and everywhere, in the intervals between lessons, at play, and out walking. The masters mixed with the pupils during their games, and played with them. There were neither punishments nor rewards. Pestalozzi did not wish for either rivalry or fear. The professors went to report three times a week. Pestalozzi frequently received the children in groups of five or six. At times he stopped them in the corridors, and said to them, "And you, too, don't you want to be good and well-behaved?" He admitted no discipline other than that of duty, or rather of affection and love. He was not a master to his pupils: he was "Father Pestalozzi/ 7 and they all were his children. 1 See the twentieth letter to Greaves, in which Pestalozzi recom- mends gymnastics, especially from the point of view of their moral utility. PESTALOZZI 55 Such a regimen very nearly approximated to that which the reformers of our time are endeavouring to introduce into some new foundations, such as the "College of Normandy/' or the "Des Roches School." It was at that time a great novelty, and there is no occasion for surprise at the success with which it met. Side by side with brilliant pages, however, the story of Yverdon contains many painful recitals. There Pestalozzi was in turn the most celebrated and acclaimed of educators, and the most decried and vilified of men. A series of intrigues were carried on around him. Wretched quarrels divided the collaborators, whose cooperation he had been obliged to obtain for special subjects, owing to the mediocrity of his own learning. Undoubtedly he had had the good fortune, thanks to the attraction which he exercised over the minds of men, to obtain the help of a great number of active, intelligent young men. But unfortunately nearly all the most distinguished and learned of these professors had very bad dispositions: egotistical and absolute in their opinions, if they possessed the knowledge which Pes- talozzi lacked, they were wanting in kindliness, which constituted his power. How was it possible to suc- ceed in conciliating and keeping united masters who, to begin with, differed in nationality and in racial characteristics, — there were, at Yverdon, Germans, 56 PESTALOZZI Frenchmen, and Italians, — and who also differed in their aims? How was it possible, for example, to make the idealistic theologian Niederer work in harmony with the realistic mathematician Schmid? To succeed in this would have required the energetic control of an administrator like Fellenberg, whom Pestalozzi called "the man of iron," a tact and skill which, being entirely without it, he did not employ. Hence a series of internal dissensions, quarrels followed by reconciliations, departures and returns. There was a perpetual coming and going of profess- ors who could not manage to agree, and who, after abusing each other, abused the master himself. The conflict was incessant. Pestalozzi was con- tinually obliged to intervene in order to restore peace, a precarious and temporary peace at that. He addressed pathetic speeches, interrupted by sobs, to his collaborators. He asked pity for himself: "I entreat Mr. and Mrs. Niederer," wrote he, "to spare me the martyrdom which I have suffered for six years." At times, worn out, his patience at an end, he escaped from this "hell," and took refuge alone in the mountains, at Bullet, where he composed verses of melancholy resignation: "In days of tempest, God strengthened me, . . . etc." PESTALOZZI 57 He was, in addition, attacked from without. 1 In every time and country, fanatics have been found to decry innovators. He was accused of counte- nancing anti-Christian doctrines. Did he not dare to write that "man can do all things, that his will is enough, and that he should rely on himself alone " ? Those of his colleagues who had remained ortho- dox Protestants were the first to cast stones at him. 2 Yet he was religious; he had a pious mind: "I recognize the hand of God," he said, whenever any- thing auspicious happened to him. But he was not forgiven for contenting himself with natural religion, with a philosophic deism such as Rousseau professed, and with a rational Christianity. "The mystery 1 Among his most violent detractors must be mentioned an Englishman, Biber, who had been employed for some time in the institute. He published, in 1827, a veritable pamphlet against Pestalozzi, an " impious book," said M. Guillaume, in which Pes- talozzi was described as a " charlatan" and a "hypocrite": Beitrag zur Biographie Pestalozzis. In addition to this German work, Biber published, in 1831, a book entitled : H. Pestalozzi and his plan of Education, which we would not have mentioned, if we had not recently learned from Mr. Herbert Spencer himself , — who nevertheless most accurately appreciated the strength and the weakness of the Pestalozzian method, — that it was through this book alone that he knew Pestalozzi. 2 Several books have been written in Germany on Pestalozzi's religious ideas. See Burkart, H. Pestalozzi etait-il un incredule ? Leipzic, 1841 ; — Heer, Sur la methode de Pestalozzi consideree comme lefordement d'une education chretienne. Zurich, 1870. 58 PESTALOZZI of the Trinity/ ' he said, "is not in the Bible, — Jesus is simply the greatest of men." Pestalozzi's sensitive soul suffered cruelly from all these troubles. In vain did he cry out: "I am master in my own house." The poor man, in propor- tion as he aged, grew weaker and more irritable, and became more and more the plaything and dupe of his associates. In 1820, he could still delude himself ; he exclaimed: "I feel happy now. . . . Praise be to God ! All goes well. The evening of my life is peaceful and serene. . . ." This did not last. The decay of the institution began about 1824, and became ever more rapid. The pupils lessened in number. His most faithful friends deserted him. Jealous of Schmid, who, from 1815, reigned as master, Niederer and Krusi established, in Yverdon itself, rival schools in which they claimed to inherit the Pestalozzian spirit, which, according to them, was with Pestalozzi no longer. In addition to this the State Council of the canton of Vaud demanded the dismissal of Schmid, from whom Pestalozzi did not wish to be separated. At last, wearied and discouraged, the good old man resigned himself to a fresh renunciation, and left Yverdon for good on the 2d of March, 1826. "It was," said he, "as though I were putting an end to my life, so much did this separation pain me!" PESTALOZZI 59 He had lived there for twenty years. x\nd, whatever he himself may have thought, it was there that he reached the height of his glory. "My in- stitute, as born from the womb of chaos at Burgdorf, as it existed at Yverdon in a deformity for which no words serve, was not my life's ambition." He continued to dream of a humble village school, with the infants. 1 It is none the less true that the ad- ministration of the college at Yverdon remains, in the eyes of an equitable posterity, one of the chief claims which Pestalozzi's pedagogic activity has to distinction. It was at Yverdon that Switzerland raised, in 1888, the finest of the monuments which she has dedicated to him. We recently made our reverence to this statue, which is the ornament of Pestalozzi Place, quite near to the old castle where he used up his declining years in the service of education. He is represented standing, energetic and gentle, with a well-tied cravat, such as he never wore : for, as is known, nothing was more neglected than his dress. 1 The best proof that can be given of the interest which Pesta- lozzi did not cease to take in primary education is the creation of the normal school, organized by him, in 1818, at Clindy, a suburb of Yverdon. This institution, which was to be paid for from the Cotta subscription money, took in twelve poor children, boys and girls, who were prepared there for the profession of teaching; it is deserving of a special study. 60 PESTALOZZI Near him, two children, a girl and a boy, are listen- ing to him. He is pointing out to them the way to the school, Yverdon castle, which remains the seat of the primary schools of the town, with their twenty-two classes and their thousand pupils. The secondary education is conducted on other premises, in a college which is a veritable palace and bears on its facade, written in large letters, the names of Pestalozzi and some of his pupils, Roger de Guimps, Vuillemin, etc. Rousseau's name might also have been written there. We like to couple Pestalozzi with Rousseau, for we see in them two heroes of modern education. Brothers in origin, the citizen of Geneva and the citizen of Zurich are also brothers in feeling and in their aspirations towards better education. But at Yverdon the comparison is singularly striking. It was in fact to Yverdon, in that delightful country whose beauty he has so highly praised, that Rous- seau, in 1762, forty years before Pestalozzi arrived there, sadly came to live through the first days of his exile, after the condemnation of Emile by the Parliament of Paris. It was of Yverdon that he wrote: "I am going to wander among these moun- tains, until I find a refuge wild enough for me to spend there in peace the remainder of my wretched days." It was from Yverdon, where he had thought PESTALOZZI 61 to set foot in "a, land of justice and liberty/ ' that he was expelled, some weeks later, by the retrograde government of Berne, and was compelled to go for hospitality to the king of Prussia. And it was to Yverdon that the government, transformed by the revolution of 1798, summoned Pestalozzi to continue, in practical form, Rousseau's theoretical work. So that, in the space of half a century, the same town sheltered them both ; it witnessed the passage of the unhappy outlaw, embittered and irritated by per- secution, and then it welcomed Rousseau's disciple, full of ardour and courage, who also was working for the education of humanity. Sad and poor, Pestalozzi, in his turn, left Yver- don and retrod the road to Neuhof. Schmid, his inseparable, his alter ego, having at least the merit of fidelity, accompanied him in his retirement. With pleasure he saw once more his chosen place of abode, where he had cherished his first schemes for the intellectual emancipation of the poor. Incor- rigible in his hopes, he still had thoughts of founding a boys' school there. But death was drawing nigh. . . . "Soon shall I see the celestial light," said he. A few tokens of public recognition softened the melancholy of his last days. Life dealt harshly with him, but posterity is kind, and its kindness seems to have begun for him before he closed his eyes forever. 62 PESTALOZZI In 1825, he was enthusiastically welcomed by the annual assembly of the Swiss Society, of which for twenty-nine years he had been a member: he was acclaimed president for the following year. In 1826, he visited an orphanage, where the children presented him with a wreath of oak. To the very end, however, vexations were not spared him. On his death-bed he had to endure the insults of Fellenberg, who dared to reproach this most disinterested of men with having appropriated the funds from the sub- scriptions received for the first complete edition of his works, Cotta's edition ; and also the odious abuse of Biber's pamphlet, which appeared in 1827: "I must live for six weeks longer/ 7 exclaimed the dying man, "that I may answer these base calumnies!" But his strength forsook him. He had overtaxed his robust constitution, which he delighted to char- acterize in these words: "I have the health of a bear;" and on the 17th of February, 1827, he ex- pired peacefully, saying: "I die without regret. I forgive my enemies and bless my friends. . . ." At Birr, thirty men and thirty women, no more, followed the funeral procession of one of Switzer- land's most illustrious children. VI The story of Pestalozzi's life, as has just been seen, is interwoven with his practical education work. It reveals to us in all their splendour the high moral qualities with which he was endowed. It shows, throughout the vicissitudes of a long, wandering, agitated existence, a perpetual striving towards the final establishment of a method of instruction and education for the people. What was this method ? There is, let us confess, considerable difficulty in defining it. Some critics have got over this difficulty, somewhat lightly, by saying that Pestalozzi had none. The fact is that he himself did not succeed in expressing it by settled formulas. It remained vague and uncertain in a brain which, in its state of ferment, was fitter for passionate conception than for the arrangement of abstract thought. Destutt de Tracy wrote, in 1807, to Maine de Biran, that he suspected that "the method of which there was so much talk was not yet properly unravelled in the mind of its author." This was perfectly true. Pestalozzi made deep re- 63 64 PESTALOZZI search but arrived at no conclusion. He conceived great things and started off to accomplish them; he strove hard and overtaxed himself to carry them into execution, but he did not succeed. The truth is that his work was left unfinished. "His theories/' said Steinmuller, in 1803, ' ' followed his experiments ; " and as he experimented throughout his life, his theories varied. In 1817, in a letter to Niederer, he spoke of the " elaboration of his method": this was an admission that at this date it was not yet settled. In 1820, he rejected as immature the ideas which he had set forth, in 1801, in his Lettres a Gessner. 1 The confusion is increased by the fact that his commentators, profiting from what inde- cision there is in his thought, have often interpreted it according to their own ideas : they have disfigured, distorted, and even obscured it. One recalls what an Yverdon scholar, the historian Vuillemin, said concerning it in his Souvenirs, written, however, fifty years later: "What went by the name of Pes- talozzi's l Method ' was an enigma to us. It was an enigma to our professors themselves. Like the disciples of Socrates, each understood the master's 1 We say Lettres a Gessner for brevity. The correct title of the work is Wie Gertrud ihre Kinder lehrt. Gertrude, the heroine of the novel Leonard, does not, however, appear in the book. She became the symbolic name which represents the perfect mother and ideal teacher as conceived by Pestalozzi. PESTALOZZI 65 doctrine in his own way ; and a day came when, after each had given himself out as the only one who had understood Pestalozzi, they all finished by declaring that Pestalozzi had not understood himself." It is not impossible, however, to distinguish, through the various and at times contradictory processes which he tried in turn, the essential char- acteristics of the method which he wished to insti- tute, and the dominant ideas which governed his teaching and composed the unity of his pedagogic life. Disciples have even been found intrepid enough to undertake the task of a systematic clas- sification of Pestalozzi's ideas, a labour hardly warranted by his impulsive and changing genius. Jullien, 1 in his Expose de la Methode, a crude and ponderous work, distinguishes in it as many as twelve fundamental principles, and also twelve essential characteristics, neither more nor less. The model is distorted and the original travestied by the claim, 1 Jullien (Marc-Antoine), called Jullien of Paris, son of the Member of the National Convention, Jullien of Drdme, went to Yverdon, in 1810, and stayed there for some months. He had played a part in military and political affairs under the orders of Bonaparte, from whom he seceded on the 18th Brumaire. At a later date he was again taken into favour and was intrusted with missions in Italy: it was during one of these missions that he visited Pestalozzi's institute. It was Jullien who founded, under the Restoration, le Constitutionel newspaper. He took a rather active part in the July revolution. 66 PESTALOZZI with this analytical excess and profusion of divisions, to imprison and catalogue in hard and fast formulas the varied inspirations of a mind which was always in motion and which could never come to a final de- cision. There is one ruling idea which must at the out- set be insisted upon: this is the idea of intuition (Anschauung), considered as the starting-point of all knowledge, and consequently as the basis of all instruction. We should approach the truth very nearly, if we defined Pestalozzi as "the pedagogue of intuition/' — "What have I done," said he, "that is my personal work? I laid down the higher principle ruling the science of education, on the day when I recognized in intuition the absolute prin- ciple of all knowledge. " It is true that Comenius and Basedow, before him, had perceived the same truth and attempted to apply it. What, then, is intuition ? It is not only the exter- nal perception of the senses. Intuition extends to the experiences of the inner consciousness, to senti- ment and emotion as much as to sensation. "In- tuition is the immediate impression which the physi- cal and moral worlds produce on our external and internal senses." Intuition is direct personal ex- perience; and if sensible perceptions should form the foundation of intellectual education, moral PESTALOZZI 67 perceptions, sentiments of love, confidence, and grati- tude, early developed in the child's conscience, will become the firm and sure support of his moral edu- cation. Let us clearly understand Pestalozzi's thought. Too often the common instruction presents to the child, at the very outset of his studies, abstract and general notions, which do not correspond to anything in his experience. He is told of rivers and oceans, without having seen even a pond or a brook; of mountains and river basins, without having climbed even a hillock. He is taught the great words duty and virtue, without first having the moral sentiments awakened in his heart. Thus is the edifice raised upon the sand. An unploughed field is sown ; or, indeed, scraps of knowledge which cannot lodge and take root in the mind are laid, as it were, on the surface of a fragile memory. They are like signboards which, lightly fastened to an insecure and badly made wall, are carried away by the first breath of wind. It was this superficial instruction of the old " Gothic and monastic" schools that Pestalozzi wished to sweep away. Close those schools in which the master alone, or indeed the book, acts, and open, instead, the school in which the child, invited to make use of his senses and exercise his conscious- 68 PESTALOZZI ness, finds in himself the principle of his activity, the support of his intellectual and moral develop- ment, and the seed from which, by a progressive evolution, the human personality issues, educated, enlightened, and virtuous, like a living organism, in the same way that the tree issues from the acorn. Intuition alone can plant this seed in the mind. And that is why Pestalozzi, discarding books and suppressing the abuse of didactic lessons, aspires to placing the child in the presence of the things. "Do not cast him into the labyrinth of words, before forming his mind by a knowledge of realities." — "The child requires no intermediary between nature and himself." He often repeated, "Nature does everything." Let it not be imagined, however, that Pestalozzi put his trust in the natural tuitions, as offered to us by our senses and our consciousness, in their com- plexity and crudity. They must come to maturity as the result of a slow analysis. A phrase which is constantly recurring, like a refrain, in the Lettres a Gessner is that it is a question of leading the child " from confused intuition to clear perception," that he must be raised "from vague intuition to precise idea." What does this mean, if not that nature's education is insufficient, that primitive intuition needs elucidation and analysis, in short that there PESTALOZZI 69 is an "art of intuition"? And this art consists in organizing a series of methodically arranged exer- cises, which are brought to the child's attention one after the other. How should these exercises be arranged ? Accord- ing to a principle clearly laid down by Pestalozzi and developed by Herbart, the principle of " gradation/ ' or, if you will, of " concentration." Let us distrust the parcelling out which is too much practised in ordinary studies and in lessons in which incoherent notions having no mutual connection are juxta- posed without any order, like ill-fitting pieces of a badly adjusted mosaic. Just as knowledge re- quires a fulcrum, which is supplied by intuition, so it needs connection and an order of development, and in this the method consists. The various no- tions which compose elementary education are offered to the child "in continuous, unbroken succession." To each intuition are joined, as to a parent idea, all the facts which belong to the same class of ideas. There is never any lack of continuity between the studies of one day and the next. Care is taken, however — and this is a point to which Pestalozzi insistently returns — to keep back the pupil on each exercise, with calculated deliberation, until he has thoroughly mastered it. He is only permitted to take a step forward, to advance a little farther, when 70 PESTALOZZI he has firmly assured his progress on the ground already traversed. Nothing is more at variance with a good educational method than too rapid a passage from one study to another, without being sure that the preceding knowledge is completely acquired, and that it makes the knowledge which follows both possible and easy. " Everything that is not perfect in the germ will be abortive in its growth.' ' Moreover, it is a great evil, in education, to be satisfied with less than "quite " ; and it is impor- tant to accustom a child to doing well whatever he does, so that he "may aim at perfection." Madame de Stael said, "There is no ' almost 7 in Pestalozzi's method." In the gradation and disposition of the exercises which he recommends for making first intuitions bear fruit, Pestalozzi claims, moreover, to follow nature's order. Now nature wills us to go, not from the simple to the compound, — which is an equivocal and highly debatable statement, — but from the nearer to the more remote, which is a much clearer recommendation. A child's observation should radiate from what he touches and sees around him, to what is situated in the neighbourhood, and gradually to more distant objects. "Knowledge begins around man, and thence extends in ever widening circles." PESTALOZZI 71 In order to give at once an example of the applica- tion of this principle, let us draw attention to the exercises on intuition and language, which, in the Manuel des Meres, 1 Pestalozzi — or rather his disciple, Krusi, who drew up three-quarters of this little volume — proposed for the pupils of the in- stitute at Burgdorf. There is nothing nearer us than our own body. A child must then, before all else, be trained to know, and to be able to name, all the parts of his body. Did not Jean Mace, when writing the Histoire d'une bouchee de pain, draw inspiration from Pestalozzi's idea ? The pupil must, as in a litany, mention in detail the lips, the bones of the lower lip, the bones of the upper lip, the mouth, the corners of the mouth, the right corner of the mouth, etc. Certainly these exercises in language ex- pose themselves to ridicule: they occupy more than fifty pages. The French critic, Dussaulx, said hu- morously, " Pestalozzi takes great pains to teach his pupils that their nose is in the middle of their face !" The idea, stripped of the grotesque childishness in which it pleased Krusi to envelop it, is, never- theless, not to be disdained in itself. Maine de Biran praised Pestalozzi for this very desire to begin the development of the child's intuitive and reason- 1 The Manuel des Meres, published in 1803, was translated into French in 1821. 72 PESTALOZZI ing faculties by a descriptive analysis of the object nearest to it, and most interesting for it to know; that is, the human body. And especially is it of importance to observe how, in the portions of the book which he wrote, Pestalozzi ingeniously unites with the enumeration of each of our organs the study of their functions; and how the analysis of these functions itself leads to a series of useful observa- tions concerning the objects with which our organs put us in communication, with men, animals, and plants, with everything that can be seen or heard. In a phrase which is, as it were, the rapid recapitu- lation of all his pedagogics, Pestalozzi wrote: "For each branch of knowledge there should be series of exercises having their starting-point within reach of all (intuition), and with a regular sequence (gra- dation), which would keep the child's faculties con- stantly at work, without exhausting or even tiring them, and would contribute to continuous, easy, and attractive progress." Everything essential in the Pestalozzian method is contained in these few lines: the principle of intuition, that of rigorous connection between successive teachings; and also two other principles of which we have yet to speak, which, moreover, depend on those already mentioned ; namely, that there is no other good method of education than that which trains the activity, and PESTALOZZI 73 that which, as a natural consequence, excites the interest. The extension of positive knowledge is of less importance than the intensive development of the faculties, strengthened and enlarged by exercise. Intellectual growth, indeed, depends on exercise and continued action. "Nature," said Pestalozzi, in the Soiree oVun ermite, as early as 1780, "nature develops all the forces of humanity by exercise, and their growth proceeds from their use." It is neces- sary for the child to act, for his eyes, his voice, and also his hands to be constantly occupied. No more sluggish reading then, or long, mechanical recitations. No more of those sleepy, half-dead classes, in which a routine-bound master dictates or expounds his knowledge to poor patients, who content themselves with submitting to monotonous lessons, with more or less wandering attention, but certainly with weariness. The true school is the one in which everybody acts, the pupils as well as the master. "The teacher speaks; he pronounces sentences and the pupils repeat them. The teacher asks questions : the pupils reflect and reply. Long expositions are tiring; questions excite and enliven. Action, the source of happiness in life, is also the condition of progress in school. Let us unceasingly enliven and awaken the intelligence. Let us make the active 74 PESTALOZZI faculties, attention and judgment, predominate over the passive faculties, such as memory, and for mechanical education let us substitute active in- struction which stimulates the attention, stirs the will, and sets in motion the inner forces of the mind." It will perhaps be objected that this appeal to activity does not seem to be in accordance with what is known of Pestalozzi's academic practice and with the unbounded ardour which he himself dis- played in his teaching. Did he, full of activity as he was, allow an opportunity for the pupils to make their initiative apparent? At Stans he is depicted for us as continually in motion, going from one end of the class room to the other, harassing the pupils and giving them not one moment's respite. At Burgdorf, "he bawled out the A B C from morn till night," in a stentorian voice, until he made himself hoarse; and he pretended that the children took an extreme pleasure in repeating for hours after him b a, ba. To which Ramsauer, one of his pupils, replied ironically, "It was enough rather to drive away their guardian angels! . . ." None the less is it true that the master's activity summons the activity of the pupil. Flaubert wrote somewhere : "Instruct yourselves, enlightened classes. Before sending the people to school, go there yourselves!" PESTALOZZI 75 In the same way, one can say to teachers: "You wish to interest the children ? Begin by interesting yourselves in your teaching. It is impossible to communicate an emotion not felt by one's self, or to make others share in a taste in which one does not participate. It is necessary to give before one can hope to receive." There is no doubt that, in practice, Pestalozzi often contradicted himself. In spite of his good intentions, he himself fell back into routine and mechanical teaching. As a general rule, however, Pestalozzi 's exuberant and boisterous activity formed no obstacle to the activity of his pupils, whilst, on the contrary, its aim and result was to provoke and sustain such activity. If he was restless, it was to encourage the hard-working in their ardour and to awaken the indolent from their torpor. If he acted, it was to make others act. He set the example of movement and effort, an example which was fol- lowed. Is not the true means of calling others to life to begin by being alive one's self? An active instruction, in which the master points out the way, but lets the child walk, in which he exerts himself principally in providing opportunities for observation and personal reflection, does not merely result in directly preparing education's work, that is to say, the formation of the human faculties. 76 PESTALOZZI It contributes indirectly to the same result, by exciting the interest and by profiting from the charm which well-directed studies inspire: not indeed the charm which dispenses with effort, and which tends to transform serious study into puerile amuse- ment, but, on the contrary, the charm which insures effort by assisting it. Pestalozzi, who owed some- thing to Basedow and the Philanthropiniste school, did not fall like them, however, into the puerilities of amusing instruction. Should not everything contribute to making instruction "attractive," — Pestalozzi used the word before Mr. Herbert Spencer, — in a system of education in which everything aspired to being brightness and light, in which truth, issuing from intuition, rendered useless those long verbose explanations, which are about as efficacious, for illumining the mind and dissipating error, as the ringing of bells is efficacious for driving away threatened storms; and in which, lastly, the most ingenious methods were contrived, so as to proceed by easy stages and impel the intelligence from easy things to those more difficult, and at last to procure for the pupil the great joy of activity? Such was, indeed, Pestalozzi's preoccupation. When, in 1816, he received a visit at Yverdon from Andre Bell, who was, with Lancaster, the propa- gator in England of mutual instruction, he oblig- PESTALOZZI 77 ingly expounded his method to him. Bell, in his turn, explained his. The two pedagogues came into touch, but their minds did not unite. Bell left without being touched by the Pestalozzian grace. He found, as it were, nothing deserving praise in the rules followed at Yverdon, although Pestalozzi had explained them to him at length. He had told him how, among all the possible motives for activity, — if he excluded amour propre as far as possible, if he reckoned on attachment to duty and on affec- tion for parents and masters, — he placed interest in study first and foremost, that interest which in- struction cannot fail to excite when it is simple, familiar, progressive, and exactly adjusted to the degree of intellectual development in each child. One last point to be noted in the general charac- teristics of Pestalozzi's method is the great care which he took in simplifying the processes of instruc- tion, in simplifying them to such a degree that their manipulation was made easy even for the unlearned. The intention was praiseworthy, but the inference was excessive and false. "You wish to make teach- ing mechanical," Pestalozzi was told one day; and Pestalozzi joyfully acquiesced in this unlooked- for definition of his method. He dreamed, in fact, of a harmony of processes simple and precise enough for the least-prepared teacher, the least-informed 78 PESTALOZZI mother, an elder sister, or even a devoted servant, to be able to apply it with good results. He cher- ished the chimera of a method which should owe its entire efficacy to the perfection of its arrangements and not to the ability of those who put it into prac- tice: like a machine so perfect in the precision of its component parts that the least skilled workman can work it. Simplification is the great art, said he, and, in the exaggeration of his thought, he went so far as to say that the normal schools and the scho- lastic libraries were quite unnecessary for the for- mation of the people's educators, that in the future it would be sufficient to put into the hands of any teacher that Livre des Meres, of which he spoke so much in his Lettres a Gessner, but which he never found time to write. In this he was false to him- self ; for never was there a teacher who spared him- self so little and put as much of his heart and soul into his practical work of education. But he sus- pected that it would be very difficult, if not impos- sible, when education should be generalized and made universal, to require from the innumerable teachers, scattered throughout the multitude of schools, the ardour and enthusiasm which he himself possessed. And this is why he considered the success of element- ary education, in the future of mankind, as insepa- rable from and conditional upon the invention of PESTALOZZI 79 an instrument, a pedagogic machine, whose perfec- tion should reduce the workmanship almost to noth- ing. Let us add, to say all, that this great friend of the school allowed himself at times to consider it as a kind of makeshift, a temporary expedient to which we are condemned for a time by the igno- rance of our parents and their disheartening lack of aptitude for educating their own children. It was not only with a view to the careful treatment of the frail intelligence of children that he projected his plan for simplifying methods. It was principally to make his supreme dream, the education of a child by its mother, capable of realization. He would willingly have consented to the disappearance of the elementary school and the institution in its stead of the " family room," in which an attentive, tender mother, workwoman, or peasant, as well as woman of the middle classes, armed with her Manuel, would herself instruct her sons and daughters. From these essential principles are derived the processes devised by Pestalozzi: inventions which, for the greater part, are ingenious rather than sound, and evidence more good will than skill and ability. Let us remark first — we have already given it to be understood — that Pestalozzi, in practice, was often untrue to his theoretical maxims. The apostle of intuition and nature's education did not 80 PESTALOZZI allow the natural laws sufficient freedom of action, and he subjected intuition to rules which were arti- ficial in the extreme. He claimed to educate the child in the liberty of its aspirations and the spon- taneity of its inclinations^ but round about it he wove a close, imprisoning network of minute method- ical exercises, in which its spontaneity ran great risk of disappearing, and its initiative is constrained and crushed. A story is told concerning a man who kept bees, and, being of a very inventive turn of mind, reflected one day that the bees really took too much trouble in flying here and there, going from garden to garden and from flower to flower, in order to gather their honey. He then conceived the idea of himself gathering them a heap of flowers of every species and carefully making them into bunches which he placed ready-made in front of the hives. . . . The story does not tell whether the bees gave up their free cross-country flight and chance harvest; nor whether those, if any there were, who satisfied themselves with the flowers whose spoil had been made ready for them, had better honey in their combs. ... Is not this almost the image of the attempt in which Pestalozzi went astray when he thought it necessary to sub- mit the child to the necessity of imprisoning its thought in rigid lists of objects, systematically PESTALOZZI 81 arranged, instead of allowing relative liberty to the course of its observations? It has been said, and not altogether wrongly, that the application of the Pestalozzian methods would be disastrous and fatal to the imagination. The flight of a child's intelligence must be guided but not restrained. It is no more appropriate to put a new-born babe under the yoke of a geometrical discipline, in order to accustom it to observe and reflect, than it would be to employ a sergeant-at-arms to teach it to walk. At the risk of a few stumbles let us let the child try to walk by itself. At the risk of coming to wrong conclusions in its researches and making more than one mistake, let us be willing for it to look to right and left, examining freely according to its fancy. On this condition alone will it learn to think for itself; whilst on the other hand an excessive sys- tem of rules would oppress and destroy that natural spontaneity which must be respected, if we wish to train flexible intelligences, rich in imagery and idea, and to form free minds. Nothing can better throw light upon what was artificial and false in Pestalozzi's methods, than the satirical, perhaps somewhat exaggerated, picture which Ramsauer drew of the exercises to which he was himself subjected during his stay in the institution at Burgdorf. "What we did best/' 82 PESTALOZZI said he, "were the language exercises, especially those having as their subject the old tapestry, all in holes, which Pestalozzi forced us to consider in all its details for hours at a time. — Children, what do you see ? — I see a hole in the tapestry. — Good ; repeat after me : I see a hole in the tapestry. . . . I see a long hole in the tapestry. . . . Behind the tapestry, I see the wall, etc. . . ." These somewhat grotesque exercises were, in truth, only a caricature of intuitive teaching. Instead of the torn and worn- out tapestry, which Pestalozzi made his pupils study because of the poverty of his scholastic ap- pliances, and of which the particularized analysis was scarcely able to excite the interest which he considered nevertheless to be the principle of prog- ress in study, why did he not show them natural objects, genuine material for lessons on well-under- stood things of which the examination would not have been merely an occasion for wearisome exercises in language, but which might have given rise to a series of interesting observations and have prepared for the acquisition of as many useful and practical pieces of information? And in the tapestry itself, however wretched that object of study may have been, should he not have called his pupils' atten- tion to something more than accidents of form and shape, or the length, breadth, and number of holes, PESTALOZZI 83 — have taught them, for example, of what textile substances it was made, what workmen had pro- duced it, and for what purposes it was intended ? . . . By a singular contradiction with his own prin- ciples, then, Pestalozzi forgot reality and nature, to linger over questions of vocabulary. In so doing, he claimed, however, that he was applying one of his favourite theories, to which he wrongly attached prime importance. I refer to the famous classi- fication which consisted in bringing all elementary knowledge under three heads, a kind of trilogy: number, shape, and word, or, in other terms, arith- metic, geometry, and language. In the simplicity of his somewhat narrow philosophy, Pestalozzi flattered himself that in this he had made a great discovery. He brought forward his theory as a sort of marvellous revelation, brought to him, as he said, by a Deus ex machina, to extricate him from difficulty, in the midst of his laborious researches, like a flash of light which all at once illuminated "his vague, irresolute reveries. " What captivated him was that he thought he had by this theory separated the essential part of things from what is accessory and the qualities common to all objects from those which are merely accidental. Every- thing that has a material existence, indeed, has a shape; all objects can be counted and added up; 84 PESTALOZZI lastly, they can all be expressed in words. But to begin with, why make a separate category for the "word," since the "word" is the expression of all thought, whatever its nature, and since unities can be counted and shapes defined only by means of words? Further, do not natural objects possess other qualities common to them all ? Should Pesta- lozzi, who often mentions the Appenzell women, on account of their habit of hanging paper birds of many colours on the cradles of new-born children, have forgotten that colour also is a universal quality of things ? And why should not the composition of bodies, their uses, causes, and effects, be given a place in elementary study? A child is not truly educated if it can only calculate, measure, and talk. If its knowledge goes no farther it will be deficient in all the useful knowledge which the natural and physical sciences contain. A calculator and geome- trician, it has grasped only the two abstractions of shape and number from amongst the complex reali- ties of the world and animated nature. It would be profitless to dwell on a narrow, paltry conception, which proves to what a degree those minds which have most thoroughly freed themselves from the old routines are themselves liable to create new ones. We will only retain one of its articles: the importance which Pestalozzi rightly accorded PESTALOZZI 85 to the study of words. Language, when it responds to clear intuitions, when it is the correct expression of precise, plain thought, is, indeed, as he considered it, the essential instrument for the liberation of the mind. And Pestalozzi cannot be too highly praised for having applied himself to the discovery of prac- tical means of establishing a strict adaptation of word to idea, in the consciousness and on the lips of the child. "If the peoples of Europe," said he, "have fallen so low, it is because, in the popular schools, such importance has been given to words devoid of meaning that not only attention to nat- ural impressions, but even the faculty of receiving such impressions, has been destroyed in the human mind. Children have not been taught to speak. . . ." Language should be learned by use, and, as has been said, Pestalozzi did away with grammar as though by magic. It is true that here again he did not proscribe artificial mechanism with sufficient severity. Thus, impatient and in haste to develop his pupils' vo- cabulary rapidly, he made them learn by heart long lists of words, which related to nothing within their experience. Thus, also, he wrongly extended the language exercises beyond the circle of intuitions al- ready acquired. In the same way, under the pretext that ability to describe must precede ability to define, he made them recite ready-made descriptions, — for 86 PESTALOZZI example, descriptions of walking or of being seated. The adversary of book education and school chatter came to grief himself over a fresh form of verbiage. "My system/' said he, "is a refinement of nature." He refined, indeed, and to excess. See, for example, how he understood the study of drawing. Nature, according to him, does not give lines to the child: it presents objects in the varied complexity of their forms. From which, it would seem, he should logi- cally have concluded that, in its first attempts at drawing, the child should be trained to represent things as it sees them. This is by no means his conclusion : he asked, on the contrary, that the child be made to trace lines, arcs, and angles. In this, he went against the primitive instinct of both human- ity and infancy. Are we not taught by travellers that, amongst African tribes, for example, the notion of the right angle is unknown, and that in Abyssinia as well as in the Congo, the houses and huts are usually round? Abstraction predominates in that peculiar A B C de V intuition, in which Pestalozzi claimed to reduce the diversity of natural shapes to geometrical forms. 1 One feels inclined to smile at 1 Let us take note, however, that M. Eugene Guillaume, an- other expert in these matters, agrees with Pestalozzi, and wishes the apprentice draughtsman to begin with the study of geometrical lines. This practice is the one which has prevailed. The Pesta- lozzian idea, as the inspiring principle, has entered all schools. PESTALOZZI 87 the declaration made in all seriousness, "If I have had a merit in my life, it is that I placed the square at the base of intuitive education. " Luckily, Pestalozzi had other merits ! Ravaisson, 1 an ex- pert in these matters, wrote: "They were greatly in error who wished to restore the art of drawing to a kind of science founded on geometry. This was an invention of Pestalozzi's, who thought that he had thus found a means of putting drawing within the reach of the middle classes." And Ra- vaisson concluded that "to simplify the contours of things, so complicated in animated nature, by bringing them back to straight lines and circles, was to distort and debase the forms after the manner of the materialists. . . ." Certainly there was no trace of materialism in Pestalozzi's conception: he simply gave way to the tendency of introducing a precision quite geometrical into elementary studies. The tendency became more pronounced at Yverdon, where, under Schmid's influence, mathematics be- came the principal preoccupation. The Pere Girard remarked on this in his Rapport offlciel for 1808, "I pointed out to my old friend Pestalozzi that he allowed mathematics an inordinate measure of dominion, and that I feared the results for educa- 1 Seethe article on Histoire de V enseignement dudessin, inM. P. Buisson's Dictionnaire de pedagogie. 88 PESTALOZZI tion. . . ." Pestalozzi did not deny this, and re- plied with his customary vivacity, "That is because I wish my children to believe nothing that cannot be demonstrated to them as clearly as that two and two make four." It is not without surprise that we find an apostle of nature, by an involuntary deviation from his principles, using artificial methods of constraint and regulation pushed to extremes. He said that it is not to the forest or the meadow that a child must be taken to teach it how to know trees and plants. And he gave as his reason that, in the forest and the meadow, trees and plants are mingled and the vegetable species are mixed. Let us con- clude that he went somewhat at haphazard, vacillat- ing from one method to another, capable rather of sudden inspiration than of sustained reflection. "Every day I feel how unknown to me are the re- sults of my method." He would have been no less at a loss to arrange its so often irreconcilable rules. In many matters he made happy innovations; he applied the principle of intuition. At Yverdon he taught geography by direct observation in the neighbouring valleys or on the Jura mountains. The pupils brought back from their excursions supplies of clay which they afterwards used to reproduce in relief the valley which they had studied on the PESTALOZZI 89 spot. It was only after several days' work, when the relief was finished, that they passed on to the study of maps. It is to Pestalozzi that Carl Ritter, the celebrated German geographer, ascribes the merit of the inspiration which had directed him in his work. " Pestalozzi," said he, "did not know as much geography as a child in our primary schools ; it was, however, whilst talking to him, during my repeated visits to Yverdon, that I felt the impulse towards natural methods awaken in me." How many processes, now familiar in the schools of every country in the world, were initiated by Pestalozzi ! How many teachers are Pestalozzians without knowing it ! He was perhaps the first to subordinate reading to oral exercises, which was a most important reform. For teaching how to speak he did not always rely on the old Burgdorf tapestry : he asked that the child be shown objects which please it and captivate its attention, and that it be made to touch and understand them. He put off reading as long as he could. The child should be able to talk before learning to read. For reading he used movable letters, each pasted on a card, so that, by bringing them together, all the syllabic combinations could be displayed. To strike the senses, he had multitudinous little inventions: thus, the vowels were coloured red. A proceeding to which he was 90 PESTALOZZI much attached was rhymed spelling: the pupils repeated in chorus the letter or syllable which they were deciphering. He placed writing after drawing : " Writing is a kind of special linear drawing which is merely play for a child once its eyes and hand have been suitably trained." For both writing and drawing he recommended slate and pencil, which should be preferred to pen and paper. He taught arithmetic experimentally and by concrete methods. Before conceiving numbers in abstracto, the pupil should have grasped their material value by adding up actual objects, cherries, nuts, etc. Before calculating with the symbols 10, 12, he must have counted the ten fingers of the hands and the twelve months of the year. The first calculations should be made in the head, mentally, without the help of paper. Pestalozzi was truly one of the promoters of mental calculation. His pupils at Burgdorf and Yverdon acquired, in a short time, surprising deftness in these exercises. In the same way, with geometry, mate- rial objects were first dealt with: "We invented geometry," said an Yverdon pupil. Elementary instruction, in Pestalozzi's scheme, aimed at reaching every faculty, "the hands as much as the head and heart," according to his own expres- sion. The educator's first duty is undoubtedly to form men: "Apply yourself to developing children, PESTALOZZI 91 not training them as dogs are trained." To this general culture, however, some elements of pro- fessional education must be joined at an early stage. Pestalozzi complained bitterly that the people had no technical teaching at their disposal "except such as concerns the art of killing men." He wished, in consequence, to introduce into the school, if not an apprenticeship to this or that given trade, at least a sort of general preparation for every trade. He dreamed of compiling a technical A B C,'m which he would set forth graduated exercises on the element- ary actions, — carrying, throwing, drawing, push- ing, brandishing, twisting. The child would thus learn from it to develop its physical aptitudes, and would acquire that suppleness of movement and skill in the use of the organs which the practice of every trade exacts. Exercise, experience, practice, — these, then, are the conditions of education in all its forms, the con- ditions of moral culture as well as intellectual evolu- tion. If it be true that a teacher can especially communicate to his pupils the qualities which he himself possesses, how can one doubt that Pesta- lozzi particularly excelled in moral education? Here, again, intuition is the principle. No pre- cepts, no lessons according to rule. I do not find that Pestalozzi ever thought of drawing up a code 92 PESTALOZZI of theoretical or practical morality. Had he done so, he would have nearly approached Kant's doc- trines, as, for example, this fine maxim would prove : "When I improve myself, I make of what I should the rule for what I would" No ; but in relying upon the child's good feelings, cleverly aroused, he claimed to establish a natural and organic development of practical morality : the free training of personality. As his pupil speaks before being able to read, as he sings, intuitively, because he has heard others singing, before knowing a single note of music, so he is to be virtuous, without virtue having been men- tioned to him. In his optimism, Pestalozzi thought it sufficient to awaken the latent forces of the con- science, in order to lead humanity to practise well- doing. "At Stans," said he, "I taught neither morality nor religion." But by developing in his eighty little orphans a brotherly love and, as it were, a family pride, he thought to direct them surely tow- ard sentiments of justice and honour. "I strove," said he, "to arouse the sentiment of each virtue before pronouncing its name." In other terms it was on the heart and on the sensibility that he wished to build up morality. It was by the heart that he influenced his pupils, not by the dry author- ity of abstract teaching. No master has succeeded in making himself loved as he was. "We loved PESTALOZZI 93 him," declared one of his pupils; "we all loved him, because we knew that he loved us all." Was it not he, moreover, who said, " Education should be benevolence and continued kindness"? He sought every possible opportunity of urging the children to display their generous instincts, and also of accustoming them to overcome their bad dis- positions. Often has this touching passage been quoted from that one of his letters to Gessner which he wrote in 1799, during the few weeks which he spent at Gurnigel: "When news of the burning of Altorf reached us at Stans, I gathered together my little orphans and said to them: ' Altorf is burned down; perhaps at this moment a hundred poor children are without shelter, bread, and clothes. Would you like us to ask our good government to send us twenty or thirty of them, that we may receive them in this house ? ' And with a unanimous voice, 'Yes! yes!' they answered. — 'But, chil- dren/ I added, ' our house is poor : reflect. If these poor children are given you for comrades you will have less to eat, you will have more work to do; perhaps you will be obliged to share your clothes with them.' After having spoken thus to them, with all the force of which I was capable, I made them repeat my words, in order to assure myself that they had properly understood me. Then I 94 PESTALOZZI again put the question, and they all replied: 'Yes! yes ! even should we have less food and more work, we should be pleased for them to come with us.' " It was not from the school that Pestalozzi expected the most efficacious influence in this stirring up of the generous emotions: he relied principally upon the family, and in the family, on the action of the mother. Sentiments of love and gratitude have their chief origin in the relations which exist between the mother and the little child. It is the mother who sows love in the heart of the babe at her breast. Pestalozzi placed the mother above all, the loving mother, careful for her duties. "The essential thing, young mother, is for your child to prefer you to all else, and for you, on your side, to prefer noth- ing to it." Nothing is so touching as the repeated appeals which he addressed to maternal love in his thirteenth Lettre a Gessner. Rousseau's invocations seem cold beside them. It was in vain that he was told: " Mothers, such as you wish for, you will not find ! To escape their duties they will pretext the necessities of their work and the obligations of the workshop." He replied with enthusiasm: "I wish to succeed in convincing even the pagan mothers of the most remote regions of the universe. And I trust in the mothers of my country, I trust in the hearts which God has placed in their breasts!" PESTALOZZI 95 If the mother is to reveal the moral emotions, she is also to initiate the child in religious sentiments. Pestalozzi's religion was a sincere religion, full of sentimental effusions, which were almost mystic and devout. At Neuhof he blamed himself when he missed saying his prayers, as though he had com- mitted a crime. It was with his heart that he believed in God. "The God of my brain is a chi- mera; I know no other God than the God of my heart; and it is only by my faith in the God of my heart that I feel myself a man. Mother, mother, by your commandments you showed God to me, and by my obedience I found Him. . . . Mother, mother, if I love you, I love God, and my duty is my supreme delight. . . ." The mother, then, is the intermediary between the child and God. It is filial love which leads to divine love. Pestalozzi rejected from his faith the dogmas of Christianity, but he retained its spirit. True religion, said he, is nothing else than morality. Very indulgent towards simple piety, — "I am not of those who turn to ridicule the rosary and prayer-book of poor people," — he was himself satisfied with adoring and invoking the infinite Bounty, the Love which permeates all things. And it was even in this form that he wished God to be presented to the child: " After teaching it on her bosom to lisp the name 96 PESTALOZZI of the Divinity, the mother will show it the universal Love, in the rising sun, the bubbling stream, the pearly dewdrops on the plants, and the bright colours of the flowers." 1 As a whole, and in all its applications, Pestalozzi's method — and this in no way lessens its merit — remains a method of elementary education. The gift which he received was for the education of the little ones. The purpose of his life was solely and exclusively the education of little children. He had no other aptitude than that, and he knew very well that infant instruction was all he had worked for, and that he could succeed in nothing else. "When setting my foot on the first step of Burg- dorf castle, I felt myself lost : for I was entering upon a career which could bring nothing but unhappiness 1 It has perhaps been noticed that Pestalozzi's writings no- where mention a special education for women. In truth, con- cerned, as he was principally, with elementary education, he did not distinguish girls from boys in the primary schools at Neuhof, Stans, and Burgdorf . He was in favour of the principle of coedu- cation in the case of infants. When he became director of the institute at Yverdon, he took care to organize, in 1806, a special institute for girls as an annex to the establishment. In 1807 he put this special institute under the direction of his son's widow, who had become Madame Custer. In 1808, the establishment was reorganized and placed under the direction of Mademoiselle Rosette Kasthofer, who married Niederer in 1814. It is none the less true that Pestalozzi had no special views on female edu- cation. PESTALOZZI 97 for me, having in no measure the powers and talents which the direction of a college exacts." This has been quite understood by the majority of his critics also. Destutt de Tracy wrote: "Pestalozzi's method will only yield its full promise when applied to the teaching of those whose instruc- tion should be very restricted." And this was Madame de StaeTs opinion also: "Pestalozzi's work must be considered as at present limited to infancy." I am well aware, and we have already mentioned it, that at times Pestalozzi pushed his designs far- ther. He was inspired with this ambition prin- cipally by his collaborators. Indeed, he wrote to Maine de Biran: " People are wrong if they think that my method should only expound the first elements of knowledge and education. Youth also must be governed in accordance with the same prin- ciples and spirit." In other words, he believed it possible to extend his method of elementary educa- tion to secondary studies. Assuredly, in all degrees of teaching, it is good for the master to be an ani- mater of minds, for him to interrogate, to set in ac- tion, to stir up initiative and personal research, and professors of every class have something to learn at Pestalozzi's school. Nevertheless, it is evident that a method which is above all intuitive, inductive, 98 PESTALOZZI and experimental, as was Pestalozzi's, exactly suits only the beginnings of instruction. Later, with minds already formed, the didactic, deductive, and expository method reclaims its rights; and in this field Pestalozzi was quite unable to succeed. Let him then be content with the glory which is his, and which is already fine enough, — the glory of having been one of the founders of the popu- lar school. This is his true domain, his kingdom, at once the honour and the limit of his power as an educator. For half a century he toiled, with incomparable ardour, at the simplification of ele- mentary education. In 1816, he wrote to Nicolo- vius: " If I do not succeed in preparing at least the application of elementary instruction in the schools for the poor, and in insuring its execution after me, the essential thing in which I can still serve humanity will be lost: I shall have laboured in vain." No, he did not labour in vain, for if he did not quite succeed in completing his work, yet will people not cease to seek inspirations from his writings and examples from his actions, to direct the child's first steps : at the age when, as Madame de Stael said, it seems "that the Creator still holds the creature by the hand in order to help it walk gently on the clouds of life;" an age at which it is, nevertheless, PESTALOZZI 99 necessary for man's hand to intervene, a firm and gentle hand, which guides without constraining, which facilitates effort and clears the path of knowl- edge from all difficulties against which the child's footsteps, still staggering and ill-assured, might strike. LOFC VII Pestalozzi's influence has been considerable. When, on the 12th of January, 1846/ twenty years after his death, the anniversary of his birth was celebrated in fifty-nine Swiss and German towns, it could be seen, from the numbers and the zeal of those who took part in the celebration, what a deep and lasting power he had exercised over people's minds, and to what a degree his ideas had spread and had borne fruit throughout central Europe. He was not mistaken when, in the preface to the Manuel des Meres, he said, "The form of my method will perish, but the life-giving spirit, the spirit of my method, will survive." Diesterweg, 2 the celebrated director of the Berlin Normal School, who was the principal organizer of this commemora- tive ceremony, paid him glorious homage, in a speech in which he drew a comparison between the schools 1 The anniversary was more particularly solemnized at Berlin and Copenhagen. 2 Diesterweg fell into disfavor a short time after, and was forced to retire in 1847. The zeal displayed by him in the service of Pestalozzi's liberal pedagogy was not foreign to his revocation. 100 PESTALOZZI 101 of former days and those of the mid-nineteenth century, and gave Pestalozzi credit for the changes which had been accomplished. "His work/ 7 said he, "has become the foundation of German public schools;" and he went through the long list of Ger- man educators who more or less have their origin in him. Further, effectively to honour the great teacher's memory, he projected the organization of an orphanage, to bear the name of Institut pes- talozzien. While yet alive, however, Pestalozzi had wit- nessed a triumphant propagation of his doctrine. It has been said that he understood better "how to raise ideas than men." How then account for this multitude of disciples, whose calling he determined, whom he inflamed with his enthusiasm, who went into every land sowing the Pestalozzian idea? Sometimes it only required an interview or a few hours' conversation to win over an indiffer- ent visitor, or to make a new apostle of a passer-by : as, for example, the young German baron, de Renne- camp, who was for a few days a guest at the Yverdon institution in 1808. He was received soon after at Coppet, in Madame de StaeTs drawing-rooms, and warmly praised Pestalozzi and his method. Whilst he was speaking, one of his listeners, Madame Recamier, said nothing, and busied herself arranging 102 PESTALOZZI a curl of her beautiful hair. But Benjamin Constant, who was also present at the gathering, whilst doubt- less looking at Madame Recamier, listened and asked for fuller details concerning the reformer. Madame de Stael also was attentive, and displayed a marked curiosity, which she was to satisfy some months later by visiting Yverdon. She applauded the young interpreter of the method, whilst he explained that the master of Yverdon, instead of making edu- cation's end the acquirement of knowledge, regarded that only as a means, the true object being the development of intelligence. And she prepared her interview with Pestalozzi by the most flattering compliments. She wrote to him, amongst other things, "I am convinced that your methods are able to compass the happiness of the majority of your fellow-men, and particularly of the most un- happy and abandoned of mankind. . . ." It was naturally in Germany that Pestalozzi's influence was especially noticeable. Saxony and Wurttemberg owe to him in part their scholastic progress. We have already stated the ties that bound him to both Herbart and Fichte. The phi- losopher of "ego" could not but be charmed with a pedagogue who, above all, aspired to form the human personality. In his public speeches, at the moment when, after the defeat of Jena, Prussia PESTALOZZI 103 was undertaking the reform of its schools, he hailed Pestalozzi as "the man of genius who had eman- cipated the art of education from routine and em- piricism, in order to base it on the philosophic laws." And in a private letter addressed to his wife, he recommended her in these terms to read the Lettres a Gessner: "I find in this system of education the true remedy for the sufferings of sick humanity," and also — a thing not likely to be displeasing to a somewhat obscure thinker — "the only means of fitting it for an understanding of my own phi- losophy." Froebel also should be counted among Pestalozzi's admirers. He went to Yverdon for the first time in 1805. He went back in 1808 and lived there for two years with three pupils, whom he accompanied to all the lessons at the institute. "It was a decisive time in my life," he wrote. The future creator of the "children's garden," and of the maternal school, could not but feel drawn by a secret sympathy towards the founder of the ele- mentary school which is its continuation. The impulse given by Pestalozzi did not have pedagogic theories and plans for school organization as its only result. It also produced actual estab- lishments, a multitude of schools, made in the like- ness of those in which he taught, and especially of that which was his dream. A volume would be 104 PESTALOZZI required for the enumeration of all the founda- tions which owed their existence to him : in Berlin, Plamann, who had been his auditor for some time, opened a school in 1805 which remained in exist- ence until 1830; at Frankfort, which became a centre of Pestalozzianism, there was Gruner's school, in which Froebel taught ; at Mayence, F.-J. Mtiller founded a school about 1804. It is not sufficiently well known in France to what a degree Pestalozzi moved and dominated the German imagination. 1 In 1808, one of the ministers of Wiirttemberg wrote, "Our king has become a Pestalozzian from head to foot." When, in 1809, Nicolovius, one of Pesta- lozzi's old friends, was appointed director of public instruction for the kingdom of Prussia, he asked for his cooperation. "Come and help us," he wrote to him; "what I dreamed with you at Neuhof is about to become a reality. The seed which you scatter here will germinate; it will become a tree, whose shade will shelter a whole people. . . ." The moment at which Pestalozzi heard that the Prussian government was preparing to reorganize the schools after his principles was one of great ex- pectation for him. He replied with childish joy: "I shall not die then before the harvest which I have sown approaches maturity. I have always 1 In 1870, Gutzkow, the novelist, published Fils de Pestalozzi. PESTALOZZI 105 lived awaiting the coming of a king to whom should be given the power necessary to benefit mankind. You have found this king; he is there! . . ." If the Germanic nations, as was natural, were more especially affected by the Pestalozzian influ- ence, there is scarcely a district of Europe, in the North as well as in the South, which has remained foreign to the movement. Curiously enough, Spain, which may still be fairly called one of the least advanced of European nations as regards education, was one of the first to attempt the introduction of Pestalozzianism within her borders. Various trials were made: firstly, in the school of a Tarragona regiment, commanded by Voitel, a Swiss captain in the Spanish service; again, in a normal school organized at Santander, for training teachers in the new method; and, lastly, in Madrid itself, in a special school bearing the name of Real Institute* Pestalozziano militar : — in justification of the last word let us recall that, at Burgdorf and Yverdon, Pestalozzi had his pupils put through some military exercises. The Madrid school was at first placed under Captain Voitel's direction, then under that of Amoros, who became known later in France as the propagator of gymnastic instruction. Pestalozzian- ism had its hour of ascendency. The infante, Don Francis of Paola, was brought up after its methods, 106 PESTALOZZI and the school for the poor became a school for princes. This was the realization of Pestalozzi's wish, that instruction should be the same for all. But political events abruptly suspended the experi- ment; the Madrid Institute was closed in 1808, and there was no more talk of Pestalozzi in Spain. I can scarcely think of anybody but Comenius, as whose successor Pestalozzi may be considered, who spread so far across Europe the propagation of his ideas. The Moravian pedagogue of the seven- teenth century has more than one point of resem- blance with the Swiss pedagogue of the eighteenth. He indeed preceded him with his pedagogic presenti- ments. Like him, and to a greater degree, he led a wandering, agitated life. This first evangelist of modern education went to England and Sweden to preach his faith in those countries. Pestalozzi cer- tainly did not make these long journeys; but his doctrine at least circulated there, thanks to emis- saries who came to study it on the spot and to gather it from his lips. Thus, in 1803, the Danish govern- ment sent to Burgdorf several teachers who, on their return, opened a Pestalozzian school in Copen- hagen. Bonaparte's royal creatures showed less dis- dain than he for the A B C : Murat, king of Naples, in 1872, and Louis Bonaparte, king of Holland, in 1807, tried to introduce Pestalozzi's methods into PESTALOZZI 107 the schools of these two countries. Success, how- ever, did not always attend these imitative attempts. Unskilled disciples grasped only the external form, the mere mechanism, of the method, without being able to borrow from the master the spirit which animated the system and made it productive. In England, the effort was often renewed and was prolonged. Pestalozzi had received a number of English visitors at Yverdon, among others Robert Owen, the famous philanthropist, and Henry Brougham, the champion of popular education, who said with some emphasis : "The time is coming when the teacher and not the cannon will be the arbiter of the world." But it was especially with James Greaves, a young thinker, rather obscure, moreover, that Pestalozzi contracted a friendship. Greaves stayed at Yverdon from 1817 till 1822 ; and, during these four or five years, he became intimate with Pestalozzi. He served him as an interpreter and cicerone for English visitors, and was intrusted with the teaching of English to the pupils of the normal school at Clindy. Pestalozzi valued him highly enough to say that "he of all men most completely understood the end which he had in view." Greaves' zeal was so ardent that he was not satisfied with passionately espousing Pestalozzi's ideas and projects : he cared for his person. It has been narrated that 108 PESTALOZZI he suffered extremely from the neglected dress of his master, who scarcely thought of making his toilet except on great occasions and when visiting sover- eigns. He was grieved at the unfavourable impres- sion produced on strangers by his worn and ragged clothes, "his old gray overcoat." What, then, did he do? He discreetly ordered from a tailor new suits, which were placed in the wardrobe, during the night, in the place of the old ones. . . . Pesta- lozzi made no comments, and, perhaps, in his absent- mindedness, scarcely noticed the substitution. . . . He returned Greaves 7 affection, and it was for him that, in 1818 and 1819, he wrote the Lettres sur I' education elementaire, which Greaves translated into English, and published in London in 1827. * This is perhaps the best exposition of his doctrine that Pestalozzi produced. In it he renewed his eloquent appeals to mothers, "to the mothers of Great Britain. " In it he insisted on the truism that a pupil should not be a passive instrument, that his education is not firmly based unless he himself be the "agent." On his return to England, Greaves founded a school at Ham, near Richmond, in which he attempted to apply the Yverdon methods. He had been preceded in Ireland by 1 We have a second edition of this work, published in 1850, under our eyes. PESTALOZZI 109 Synge, another great admirer of Pestalozzi, who, after staying some months in Switzerland, published in Dublin, between 1815 and 1817, several anony- mous works, in which he considered Pestalozzi's life and analyzed his writings. 1 He was followed by the Reverend Dr. Mayo, who, in 1819, had taken fifteen of his compatriots to Yverdon, and on his return to England applied himself to bringing the Pestalozzian methods within reach of all. Assisted by Reiner, an Yverdon pupil, and also by his sister, Miss Mayo, he organized a college and compiled a certain number of books, Object Lessons, Lessons on Number, Lessons on Form, liberally imbued with Pestalozzianism. From this movement came, in 1836, the scholastic society which, under the name of the Home and Colonial School Society, rendered real service to English popular education. A sig- nificant proof of its importance is that Reiner, one of its members, was chosen by Queen Victoria as tutor to her children. And that Pestalozzi has preserved some credit in England up to the present time is shown by his being the only foreign educator whom Mr. Herbert Spencer mentioned by name in 1 Sullivan, an inspector of Irish schools, wrote that the germ of all the ameliorations which he introduced into the primary instruction of his country is to be found in Pestalozzi's works (Papers on Popular Education, Dublin, 1863). 110 PESTALOZZI his book on Education; it is also shown by Pro- fessor Joseph Payne's devoting to him, in 1875, his fine lecture entitled, Pestalozzi, the Influence of his Principles and Practice on Elementary Education, one of the most instructive studies written on the subject. It would be impossible for us to follow Pes- talozzi's influence everywhere it has penetrated. His name, followed by his thought, has actually made the circuit of the globe. One of his assistants, Muralt, 1 under the patronage of Czar Alexander I, established an educational seminary for the higher classes of Russian society at St. Petersburg, about 1815. The work of Uno Cygnceus, the Finnish school reformer, is in part the product of his inspira- tion. In the New World as well as the Old, he had, and still has, faithful followers. It was from Paris that Pestalozzian reform was first transmitted to the United States. A Burgdorf professor, Neef, was appointed to teach in a Paris orphanage in 1803, and his class was even honoured by an official visit from Napoleon, who was accompanied by Talley- rand. Maclure, an American citizen, was present at the interview and, being impressed by the results obtained, he persuaded Neef to leave Paris for Philadelphia, whence he afterwards went to New- 1 Von Muralt belonged to a noble family of Zurich; he lived for several years in Paris. PESTALOZZI 111 harmonie, to organize the Pestalozzian teaching. 1 Later, the son of that Krusi who was PestalozzFs first collaborator at Burgdorf, emigrated to America, and became professor of educational science in the Oswego Normal School, whose founder, Sheldon, introduced and applied sight teaching. Oswego school, established in New York State in 1860, has perhaps more than any other school influenced the professional education of American masters. "This was due," said the Monograph on the 1900 Exhi- bition, "to the practical application of Pestalozzi's method and ideas by Sheldon, its principal.' ' A few years earlier, Lowell Mason, also an American, made use of Pestalozzi's method for singing instruc- tion, 2 as formulated by PfeifTer and Nageli, two Yverdon professors; and in a lecture several times repeated before a crowded audience he expounded Pestalozzianism to his fellow-citizens. Starting from 1835, a school journal, entitled The Pestalozzian, appeared in Ohio. It was by Americans that Horace Mann was called the illustrious apostle of Pestalozzi. 3 Henry Barnard, in his important publications, showed how highly he valued the experiments at Stans and elsewhere. And again this year we read 1 See a pamphlet by Mr. William S. Monroe, Joseph Neef and Pestalozzianism in America, Boston, 1894. 2 See the Pestalozzian Music Teacher, Boston, 1871. 3 Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1892-1893, p. 1658. 112 PESTALOZZI in an American journal: "The Stans experiment was destined to effect a revolution in men's ideas on education. ... It can be said with truth that the present-day educational system is substantially Pestalozzian." i An entire and interesting chapter could be written on the relations of French thought with Pestalozzi. We have already mentioned the efforts of Maine de Biran, who especially prized the Pestalozzian method because it tended "to develop equally for all that faculty of reason which is necessary for all ranks, and applicable to all the conditions and require- ments of human life." Bergerac school, organized in 1808 with Barraud's cooperation, lasted, under very varied forms, until 1881; like the Burgdorf school, it quickly became transformed into a kind of college for the middle classes. Maine de Biran, who had been in direct correspondence with Pesta- lozzi, visited him at Yverdon in 1822; he found that he had " deteriorated/ ' and that he was ruled by Schmid, of whom the French philosopher did not form a favourable opinion. It appeared to him that Schmid was merely " sharp.' ' This enigmatical personage whom, in his simplicity, Pestalozzi lauded to the skies, whilst Fellenberg called him "Satan," and of whom M. Hunziker said to me a few months 1 The Teacher's Institute, February, 1901. PESTALOZZI 113 ago, "Schmid was nothing but a windbag," was received by France after the dispersion of the Yver- don institution. About 1830, he and five other Yverdon professors entered the Morin Institute in Paris, where he gave lessons in mathematics until his death, which occurred in 1851. He it was who provided Philibert Pompee, the first director of the Turgot school, with material for the preparation of the paper which he submitted, in 1847, for the competition opened by the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences on the following subject : " A critical examination of Pestalozzi's system of instruction and education, considered principally in its relations to the welfare and morality of the poorer classes." A great many other facts could yet be mentioned proving what attention France accorded Pestalozzi's works. 1 Let us recall the articles which Madame 1 Pestalozzi has rarely been attacked and criticised in France, but the Pere Burnichon, a Father of the Society of Jesus, did assail him. What grieves me in this affair is that I occasioned these attacks, which were especially intended to be unpleasant to me. Twenty years ago I ventured to write that Pestalozzi was "famous," — a belief in which I persist, — and that he well de- served a place in the front rank of the men who have done honour to the fine name of teacher. Thereupon the Pere Burnichon de- clared war against poor Pestalozzi, of whom he dared to say that "he was deficient in brains." There are many people whom we might wish to have as much ! And he added that "he was but little known in France," proving chiefly that he himself did not know him, especially when he defined the Yverdon institute as "a kind of agricultural colony." 114 PESTALOZZI Guizot wrote on Pestalozzi in 1813, for the Annates de V Education, in connection with Jullien's com- mentary ; — the report which Cuvier drew up in 1815, after a visit to Yverdon, where he had been sent by Carnot the minister; the creation of a Pestalozzian school in Paris, in 1822, by Professor Boniface, who had taught the French language at Yverdon, from 1803 till 1817, whose grammatical studies also have long been classics in France. Neither should it be forgotten that the Societe pour Vinstruction elementaire inscribed Pestalozzi among its corresponding members, and that one of his friends, Prefect Lezay-Marnesia, under his inspira- tion established, in 1810, at Strasbourg, the first normal school in France. Our great historian, Michelet, in 1870, rendered him most eloquent testimony when he said of him that he was "a flame, a life," that "he improvised men," and that he was u a true saint." It was another Frenchman, M. Guillaume, who wrote, a few years ago, a book which is the best biographical study on Rousseau, even if it be compared with that written by M. Morf. 1 And before M. Guillaume, Pestalozzi had 1 M. Morf, director of the Winterthur orphanage, collected a large number of original documents relating to Pestalozzi. Be- tween 1864 and 1867 he published a whole series of detached studies, and he devoted to him a most interesting and complete biography, in four parts, which appeared in 1868, 1885, and 1889. PESTALOZZI 115 in France for panegyrists Augustin Cochin and Philibert Pompee, without forgetting Rapet, who had shared with Pompee the prize of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, for a monograph, still in manuscript/ to which the Pedagogic Museum at Paris owes a collection of Pestalozzian books which can rival that in the Pestalozzianum at Zurich. Time has not effaced Pestalozzi from men's memories. In 1871, Zezchwitz acclaimed him as " the hope of the German people in evil days." In 1873, Wiesinger discoursed on the part due to him in the renovation of the German people. Finally, in 1885, Wienner published a manual of pedagogy on Pestalozzi's principles. The importance attached by educational theorists to the work of the humble teacher of the people is proved by a whole series of books. In these he has been in turn compared with the most celebrated of modern educators. The Pere Girard said, " His- tory will one day draw a parallel between the two Swiss pedagogues, Rousseau and Pestalozzi." His- 1 It is to be regretted that Rapet's monograph has not been printed. His work is superior to that by Pompee, who shared the prize with him. The Academy gave £120 to Rapet and £80 to Pompee. Rapet informs us, in his unpublished notes, that there was a thought of awarding the entire prize to him. But this was in 1848, and Giraud, the correspondent, gave him to understand that £200 would have seemed "too aristocratic a reward." 116 PESTALOZZI tory has not failed to do so. How often the Stans teacher has been compared with the author of Emile in pamphlets and in large volumes. 1 There is hardly an illustrious pedagogue to whom he has not been likened. Here we have a little book entitled, Comenius and Pestalozzi, considered as Founders of the Popular School; 2 another in which Pestalozzi's principles are compared with Froebel's ; 3 a third, in which the resemblances between Pesta- lozzi and Diesterweg are examined ; 4 others again, in which the relations of Pestalozzi's method with Francke's, 5 Fellenberg's, 6 and Herbart's 7 are studied. But it is not alone the study of Pestalozzi's gen- eral theories which has continued to preoccupy the friends of education. Practical workers have not ceased to look to him for directions concerning the various divisions of primary education. Let us mention, for example, Exercices et travaux pour les enjants, selon la methode et les procedes de Pesta- lozzi et de Froebel, published in 1873 by Madame and 1 Herisson, Pestalozzi, eleve de Rousseau, Paris, 1886; Hunziker, Pestalozzi und Rousseau, Bale, 1885; Schneider, Rousseau und Pesta- lozzi, Bromberg, 1866; Zoller, Pestalozzi und Rousseau, Frankfort. 2 Hoffmeister, Comenius und Pestalozzi als Begriinder der Volksschule, Berlin, 1877. 3 Fr. Beust, Die Grundgedanken von Pestalozzi und Froebel, Zurich, 1881 . 4 Balster, Dortmund, 1846. B Kramer, Berlin, 1854. 6 Hunziker, Langensalza, 1879. 7 A. Vogel, Herbart oder Pestalozzi ? Hanover, 1887. PESTALOZZI 117 M. Charles Delon; several manuals of elementary arithmetic, a small work by H. Ruppert, On the Application of Pestalozzi's Method to the Teaching of Mathematics, which appeared at Langensalza, in 1879 ; a treatise by the Englishman, Tate, which, since 1850, has passed through several editions, under the title of First Principles of Arithmetic based on Pestalozzi's Principles; and again, The First Year of Pestalozzian Arithmetic, published by Hoose, the American, in 1882. Let us finally mention, from a more general point of view, the Cahiers de peda- gogic d'apres les principes de Pestalozzi, compiled in 1879 by the Swiss pedagogue Paroz. Our list is by no means complete. 1 If it be true, as Mr. Herbert Spencer said, that the Pestalozzian idea is yet to be realized, it is not the fault of the innumerable commentators who have attempted to develop it. We cannot call to mind a thinker who has traced so deep a furrow in the conscious- ness of humanity. But whatever the interest of the publications which his memory has called forth, it is to himself that we must return, if we wish really to know him; it is in his own writings, his actions, and the virtues of his character that we must seek the causes of our admiration for him, his democratic mind and his popular soul. 1 See also Pestalozzi und Luther, by Schlimpret, 1864. VIII Certainly we must not expect to find models of literary elegance, or studied composition, or even connected and concise reasoning in Pestalozzi's numerous writings. His thought is confused, dis- connected, and obscure; his style often strange. Incapable of governing men, he was no less unable to control his ideas and to master the tumultuous flood of his fancies. Vivid but disordered con- ceptions whirled through his brain. Nothing could be more incoherent, for example, than the com- position of his Lettres a Gessner, and yet these form the best of his works. Sentimental effusions of an overflowing heart, apostrophe and invocation in prophetic and declamatory language, incessantly sever and break the irresolute thread of reasoning. One feels that the author is growing weary and that he finds it difficult to follow up the theoretical dis- cussion on which he has embarked. His imagina- tion is continually breaking loose and wandering. At every moment he is obliged to leave the long digressions in which he strays: "I resume my 118 PESTALOZZI 119 explanation; ... I return to my subject." Com- parisons and figures of speech abound and over- whelm the thought with the whimsicality of their confused fancies. Thus, in the space of a few pages, he likens himself, in turn, "to a sailor who has lost his harpoon and attempts to catch whales with a hook/ 7 when he wishes to express the disproportion between his means and his object; "to a straw which would not provide hold for a cat," to proclaim his lack of importance; to an owl, to portray his isolation; to a reed, to illustrate his weakness; to a mouse afraid of the cat, to describe his timidity. From all this confusion and verbal chaos, however, flashes of sincere, true eloquence shine forth at times. If Pestalozzi is defective in the abstract presenta- tion of general ideas, he makes up for it nobly in his imaginative works. In them he shows himself a clever narrator and an exquisite painter of manners. With Leonard et Gertrude he inaugurated the popular novel ; he created a style which has not found suffi- cient imitators, and of which he himself could not follow the inspiration in Christophe et Else, another of his works, which is nothing but a wearisome and ultra-didactic commentary to Leonard et Gertrude. But in his "first book for the people," in the innocent simple pictures which he traced of village life, there are really exquisite pages. No surprise is felt at 120 PESTALOZZI learning from Madame de Stael that she shed tears at certain passages, — when reading, for example, the touching scene in which the old dying grandmother obtains from her grandson the restoration of some potatoes which he had stolen. This beautiful book, which has been lost sight of too much, is also recom- mended by the portraiture and character analysis which it contains. In it Pestalozzi displayed great subtlety of obser- vation. Nothing could be more delicately studied and described than the moral physiognomies of the seven children of Gertrude, the perfect mother, whose sons and daughters have all the failings com- mon to their age. Although the plot of the novel is not in itself intricate, it is blended with amus- ing anecdotes, comic episodes, and touching scenes which save it from being devoid of interest. The eternal struggle between good and evil is there set out : the representatives of good are honest labourers whom the announcement of a few days' unhoped-for work is sufficient to delight, a simple, good pastor, and a generous, kindly lord ; whilst evil is incarnated in an unjust bailiff, who is at the same time a none too scrupulous publican. "I have long thought," said Pestalozzi, — who would perhaps have occasion to repeat his words if he lived at the present day, — "that a bailiff or mayor should not be a publican PESTALOZZI 121 by trade. . . ." Directed especially against the public house and drunkenness, the novel of Leonard et Gertrude has a high moral value, the importance of which has not diminished with time. The three last parts, although they do not offer the same dramatic attraction as the first, deserve, nevertheless, to be preserved from oblivion; for, in telling the story of the regeneration of a village, they present, as it were, an advance scheme of all the economic and moral reforms which have transformed the condition of the rural populations of Switzerland in the course of a century's constant progress. Sensibility and imagination, beyond all doubt, play the most prominent part in the majority of Pestalozzi's writings. But a ready wit is also ap- parent in them. A teacher of Berne, with whom I recently had the pleasure of conversing, whilst pointing out to me the pointed nose and thin lips in a portrait of Pestalozzi, said: "Do you see? Pestalozzi possessed the ironical faculty. ..." An unexpected criticism, which, however, contains a certain amount of truth. Was not Socrates, a believer and an enthusiast, the father of irony? In the same way, Pestalozzi, sentimental as he may have been, was not wanting, at times, either in deli- cate sarcasm or biting raillery. Take the Manuel des Meres itself, that elementary, infantile book: 122 PESTALOZZI you will find in it a number of pungent observations, which would not be amiss in the work of a moralist. " Lawyers talk a great deal, especially when they are pleading a bad case." — "Many women who examined nothing but their mirror in their youth, prefer to examine their cash-box once they are mar- ried." — "Men and women speak the more as they think the less. . . ." The impress of Pestalozzi's satirical vein is to be found more especially in his Fables, in which he brings before us lords and peasants, as well as animals and plants. Do not let us take him for a scholar, with a re- stricted, narrow mind, confining himself to ques- tions of method and pedagogical procedure. His thought often rises above the school and class room. We must not regard as wholly unworthy of atten- tion the reflections contained in his philosophical book, Recherches sur la marche de la nature, which, of all his writings, as has already been said, gave him most trouble, — he was at work on it for three years, — and of which the lack of success grieved him deeply. In it he distinguishes three elements in the human being : animal man, social man, and, lastly, moral man, which is the work of individual- ism and will. In it he expresses himself strongly on the rights of property. The origin of property, says he, whether legitimate or otherwise, should PESTALOZZI 123 not weigh with us. Property is sacred, since it exists. We ought to respect it because we form a society. But, on the other hand, Pestalozzi com- plains that property-holders do not fulfil all their duties. In their selfishness they forget the unfor- tunate and the poor, who, having the same natural right to property, yet do not share in it ; they forget them, excepting when they require them to undergo military service or to pay taxes. Pestalozzi's thought was generally governed by wisdom and good sense, but at times he used the language of utopianism. For example, he attacked printing, cursing it as the cause of all the evils from which society is suffering. It has turned away the eyes of man — the eyes, which are the principal in- strument of knowledge, — from the instructive and fertile spectacle of the actual universe, to fix and hold them on the dead letters of loquacious and barren books. He also attacked the Protestant Reformation, because it allowed ignorance and stupidity to speak on questions of theology which the human mind will never solve. Penetration was not lacking in Pestalozzi. Lively as was his sympathy with the French Revolution, he could recognize its faults, condemn its excesses, and foresee its consequences. " Either," said he, "it will respect the liberty and rights of all citizens, 124 PESTALOZZI or else it will come about that the opposing minority, richer and craftier, will soon succeed in once more subjugating an imprudent and disordered majority, which those formerly in power persist in regarding as a band of escaped slaves." Rousseau had fore- told the Revolution thirty years in advance: as early as 1793, Pestalozzi was prophesying the re- newal of hostilities by the old regime, the Empire, and also the Restoration. An ardent, burning eloquence often directed Pestalozzi's pen, and a touch of poetry was added. He spoke of his misfortunes and his painful destiny with as much pathos as the author of the Confes- sions, when recounting the trials of his life. But it is especially when he deals with education and the interests of humanity that his solemnly implor- ing voice becomes animated and excited. "We have," cried he, " schools for reading, writing, and catechism; but we have not the essential, schools for forming men. . . . Modern civilization resem- bles the colossus of which the prophet speaks. Its head of gold ; that is, the arts, in which it excels ; it touches the clouds. But popular instruction, which ought to be the basis and support of this magnificent head, is like the feet of the statue, it is made of the coarsest and most fragile clay. . . . The people of Europe are unhappy PESTALOZZI 125 and orphaned: let us give them at least a mother! . . ." The writer, in Pestalozzi, is confused and incom- plete ; numerous defects spoil the qualities. But the man is beyond compare and is almost entirely made up of virtues. I am not speaking only of the purity of his morals, nor of his devotion and abnegation, nor of his activity which scarcely knew repose, nor of his courage: the Zurich schoolboy, laughed at by his comrades, was, nevertheless, the only one who, one day of panic, when the rumblings of an earthquake shook the walls of the school and the occupants of the class rooms fled in fear, ventured to go back into the building and quietly remove his books. But what examples he has left, more especially, of active, superhuman charity, pushed to excess, as at Neuhof and Stans. He it was who, accosted by a beggar, and not having a halfpenny in his pocket, made him a present of the silver buckles of his shoes, and returned to Zurich with his foot- wear gaping, badly fastened with straw. He it was who, bringing away from a friend's house some money, which, in a moment of distress, he had gone to borrow, met on the way a poor peasant who was lamenting the loss of a cow, and he despoiled himself for the man's benefit. . . . Only once was Pesta- lozzi rich, and even then it was merely anticipation. 126 PESTALOZZI When Cotta, the publisher, opened a subscription for the publication of his complete works, it met with great success. Kings and philosophers has- tened to bring their offering: so that Cotta could undertake to pay Pestalozzi about £2000 for his rights as author. But this wealth — expected rather than realized, moreover, for Cotta did not fulfil all his engagements — was only a fresh op- portunity for Pestalozzi to display his admirable disinterestedness. In one of those speeches which he loved to deliver in the presence of his assembled household, 1 on the 12th of January, 1818, he declared that he intended the money which was promised him to go to various scholastic foundations, to a normal school for men and women teachers, to one or more elementary schools, and, lastly, to the continued improvement of all means of instruction and domestic education for the people. And as his grandson, Gottlieb, who had returned to Yver- don a short time before, was present and listened to this solemn donation which robbed him of the most definite portion of his inheritance, Pestalozzi, turning to him, said: "You returned into our midst and said to me: ' Father, I want to be what you are. . . .' These words made me happy. Neither 1 It was from 1808 to 1818 that Pestalozzi formed the habit of delivering every year, in solemn gatherings, Discours a sa maison. PESTALOZZI 127 gold nor silver can make you what I am. . . . My heart alone made me what I am. . . ." The unhappy great man inspires in those who study him closely an admiration mingled with compassion. The material security of existence was often denied him. In 1781, he had no money for the purchase of paper to compose his immortal books, and he wrote Leonard et Gertrude on the margins of an old account book. In order to live he was reduced to selling the medals awarded him by the philanthropic societies of Switzerland. He walked "like a somnambulist in the world of busi- ness. . . ." If one penetrates into his private life, it is impossible not to be touched by all that he had to suffer from his associates, and even from his family. Assuredly he could not have dispensed with his collaborators, who, by their acquirements, remedied the gaps in his education ; he spelled badly and was not sure of himself in the four rules ; with justice could he say, " If Buss, Krusi, and Tobler had not come to my assistance, my theories would have been quenched in my heart, like the stifled flames of a seething volcano which cannot find a vent. . . ." And yet what disillusions, what mor- tification and bitterness, came to him from his asso- ciates, whose slave he became, who were his tyrants, and grieved him by their hatred? "We founded 128 PESTALOZZI this house on love, and love has disappeared from our midst ! . . ." At times he rose in revolt and used hard words to describe masters whom yet he loved: "Jullien is a superficial Frenchman; Krusi is a lazy dog; Schmid behaves like a wild ass. . . ." Did he at least find in his life's companion a com- plete consolation for his sorrows, his afflictions, and the loss of his only son ? It is to be doubted. Madame Pestalozzi was doubtless a devoted and generous wife, ready to sacrifice her patrimony to meet the expenses of her husband's hazardous undertakings. But she does not appear always to have sustained him with her confidence and surrounded him with her care. During the toilsome years of the Neuhof enterprise she absented herself frequently, visiting her friends' mansions, staying there several months at a stretch, and leaving the unhappy man to strug- gle alone in the midst of difficulties of every kind. After the troubles and failure of Neuhof, she be- came uneasy and distrustful, reasonably so we must confess. A few words written by Pestalozzi to her, from Stans, in 1798, throw much light on this point: ". . . If I am worth what I think, you may rely on receiving help and support from me before long. But in the meantime, be quiet. . . . Each of your words lacerates my heart. I cannot endure your eternal incredulity. You have waited PESTALOZZI 129 thirty years: wait another three months! . . ." At Yverdon, Madame Pestalozzi lived apart in a corner of the castle, hardly joining in the life of the institution and her husband's activity, dreading the noise and agitation. Ramsauer, who was decidedly the scandal-monger among the Pestalozzians, nar- rated some details which reveal singular peculiari- ties in the relations of husband and wife. Pesta- lozzi only sat at his wife's table when expressly invited by her. Ordinarily he shared his pupils' meals. To make up for this he was expected to play cards with her every evening. They could not remain together for ten minutes without quar- relling. And yet it was affirmed that they loved each other tenderly. When Madame Pestalozzi died, on the 11th of December, 1818, the survivor was deeply afflicted. Let us, however, note these reflec- tions of a woman friend of theirs who wrote some days before Madame Pestalozzi's death : " There are in them two distinct souls. In her will die a be- loved wife and worthy companion, but not a part of Pestalozzi's ego. 11 In the isolation of his last years, struggling with a thousand cares and in financial embarrassment, Pestalozzi suffered still more. Let us not pity him too much, in spite of all. In the consciousness of his duty done and the joy of his partly executed work, he 130 PESTALOZZI more than once enjoyed heart-felt peace, what he himself called " paradise upon earth.' ' He knew the grandeur of his design, and he found a few hours' happiness by devoting his entire life to the happi- ness of others. He dreamed more than he accomplished, and sowed more than he harvested. We are told that, during his walks, he gathered stones and minerals by the handful, filling his handkerchief and cramming his pockets with them; then, when this unmethodical collector returned home, he put them haphazard in a corner, and never found time to classify and catalogue them. This in some degree represents what he was in his intellectual life, heaping up ob- servations and accumulating experience, without ever succeeding in organizing a body of doctrine. The nobility of his aspirations and the beauty of his aim, more than power of execution, the effort rather than the result, was what characterized him and constituted his worth. As is very justly said by Mr. Herbert Spencer, who of all his forerunners in educational matters mentions Pestalozzi alone, in his book on Education, " Pestalozzi 's mind was one of partial intuitions." As he himself admitted, "I did not know what I was doing; I only knew what I desired. . . ." He desired humanity to be en- nobled through instruction. "The only way of PESTALOZZI 131 putting an end to the social disorder, the fermenta- tions and popular revolutions, as well as to the abuses of despotism both of princes and of the multitude, is to ennoble man." He was sustained by an ardent faith in the natural forces of humanity and the power of education, but his optimism was not absolute. Rarely, said he, is man good. He added, however, that this was the fault of his bad instruction, as man only becomes man by instruction. And like Rousseau, beyond the misery and vice of existing society, he hailed the coming of a good and happy humanity, restored to itself by the effect of a uni- versal education conforming to the laws of nature. "I believe," said he, "in the human heart, and in that belief I walk on ploughed-up ground as I would walk on the firm paving of a Roman road." To estimate equitably a man's merit and the value of a work, it is necessary to restore the setting, the environment in which the man lived and in which the work was attempted. To judge of the impor- tance of Rousseau's attempts, let us make allowance for the wretched state of education in his time. "Despite the fine appearance of civilization, so much vaunted, nine men out of ten are dispossessed of the right belonging to every man living in society, — the right of education." Knowledge, still a privi- lege of the richer classes, does not enlighten the 132 PESTALOZZI poorer classes. " The more I observe the people, the more I am certain that the broad stream of education, which in books seems to flow for them, evaporates in the village and the school into a dark, damp mist." After a hundred years of progress, it is easy to deride the insufficiency and poverty of Pestalozzi's plan of instruction. If we would be just, let us think what primary studies were in Switzerland at that time, " on what a quicksand the cankered schools were built," with what pupils, and also with what teachers, Pestalozzi had to deal. Let us recall how Krusi, his first collaborator, became a teacher. Krusi was eighteen years old in 1793. He was a hawker by trade. One day, on the highway, he met a functionary who said to him point-blank: " Wouldn't you like to be a teacher? There is a situation vacant in the school at Gais." — "But I know nothing," replied Krusi, naively. . . . His interlocutor was not discouraged. "You will easily learn what a teacher can and should know in our schools." Krusi made up his mind, and sat for the regulation examination. "There were two of us competing," he narrated. "The principal test con- sisted in writing the Lord's prayer. I set about it as best I could. I had noticed the use of capital letters in German writing and distributed them liberally, even in the middle of words. When the PESTALOZZI 133 examination was over, Captain Schoefer, who decided the contest, told me that my competitor read better than I did, but that my writing was better, in short, that I was successful. . . . How can we help being indulgent towards teachers recruited from the highways and scarcely able to read and write? . . . How avoid indulgence also towards the educator who, for the accomplishment of his great schemes, had as auxiliaries only masters barely reclaimed from rusticity, who had themselves to be instructed and formed before they could in their turn form the pupils confided to their care ? Pesta- lozzi was not wrong when he said, "The teaching actually in use seemed to me an immense swamp, which I crossed by resolutely plunging into the mire." Everything then remained to be done in order to institute the elementary school, the people's school, the modern school, such as a hundred years of effort have hardly succeeded in organizing in civilized countries. Pestalozzi sketched out the work, and those who have continued it cannot forget what they owe to the heroic impulse given by him. He con- ceived the universal school, open to all children, and distinct from the church. Pestalozzi was the first, in order of date, of the lay teachers. In the last parts of Leonard et Gertrude, he boldly subordinates the pastor to the schoolmaster. And he gives as 134 PESTALOZZI his reason that laymen alone are in a position to prepare men for family and social life. Summariz- ing a conversation between a clergyman and a teacher, he concluded in these terms : "Thus the man, whose power came from his knowledge of the world, spoke to the priest whose weakness was due to his lack of such knowledge." Poor, strange, great man, at once puerile and sublime, awkward in his manners and gestures, but admirable in his intentions and actions ! His con- temporaries ridiculed and derided him at times. At Zurich, his school-fellows called him a " queer chap"; his neighbours at Neuhof described him as a " crank"; his friends themselves, grieved at his lack of practical ability, said that he would die in a poorhouse or a lunatic asylum. But insult, derision, misadventure, and adversity, all glanced aside from his intrepid mind, without cooling its ardour or disturbing its valiant serenity. He went on to the end, smiling at privations, asking only to live under a thatched roof, there to pursue his dream, insensible to reverses, indomitable and patient. At the same time he was modest, recog- nizing that he was only seeking to put into practice "what good sense had taught men for thousands of years," and not hiding from himself the imperfec- tions of his unfinished work. "Examine," said he, PESTALOZZI 135 in the Schwanengesang, his pedagogic testament, — " examine everything in what I have proposed, and retain what is good. If some better conception has ripened in your minds, add it to what I have striven to offer you in a spirit of truth and love; but, I pray you, do not reject the whole work, in its en- tirety and without examination, as though it were a chimera condemned beforehand. . . ." No, his aim was not chimerical. If he did not reach it, he showed his successors the road by which it could be reached. He did not forget himself in vain reveries. Rousseau, with his visionary hu- manitarianism and his platonic outbursts, seems small beside this active philanthropist, who did not rest content with writing, but acted and made his acts conform to his thoughts. Let him not be se- verely judged because he could not define his method with exactitude. He himself was the method, with his animation and his indefatigable enthusiasm. He remains "a unique man," as his friend Lavater said. His life was not wasted, if only on account of the examples which it has left us; and not in vain did his heart beat for the same idea during sixty years. If what Raumer called "his all-power- ful love' 7 could, whilst he was alive, conquer all who approached him, his sentiments can still com- municate themselves from afar to men's minds, give 136 PESTALOZZI rise to noble emulation, and beget fine teaching careers. In any case, whatever its deficiencies, his work remains the product of a reason, superior at times, always and everywhere waited on by infinite tenderness. Queen Louise of Prussia, in transports of admira- tion for Pestalozzi, said of him: "How that man loves humanity! ... I thank him in humanity's name." All posterity should associate itself with this grateful homage, and thank him, in the name of that ignorant humanity which he wished to edu- cate and in the name of that poor, suffering human- ity which he wished to raise and succour, by teaching it industrial work, thrift, and honesty. One day, Pestalozzi, looking out upon the pictu- resque scenery of the mountains and valleys of his native land, exclaimed, "Yes, nature is beautiful," — and where could this be said with greater truth than in Switzerland, that country on which nature has lavished her marvels, and has given to the Alps lakes which bathe their feet, like so many mirrors in which to reflect and multiply their beauties, — "yes, nature is beautiful, but there is something more beautiful than nature and her earthly splen- dours, and that is the human heart." Yes, we say, when it is the heart of a Pestalozzi. BIBLIOGRAPHY Only the principal authorities are mentioned here, the works which have been indicated at the foot of the pages being omitted. In the case of Pestalozzi's own works, reference is made to the complete editions only. Edition Cotta, Sdmmtliche Schriften, Stuttgart and Tubingen, 1819-1826, 15 vols., 8vo. — Edition Seyffarth, Sdmmtliche Werke, Brandenburg, 1869-1872, 18 vols., 12vo; a new edition, prepared by M. Seyffarth, has been in course of publication since 1899. There is also a collection of CEuvres choisies (Ausgewdhlte Werke), by F. Mann, Langensalza, 1869-1870, 4 vols. Translations into French : — Manuel des meres, translated from the German, Paris-Geneva, 1821. — Leonard et Gertrude, translated from the German by the Baroness de Guimps (the first part only), Paris-Geneva, 1832.— Comment Gertrude instruit ses enfants, translated from the Ger- man by Dr. E. Darin, Paris, 1882. Commentaries and biographies in French : — M*** de H***, Precis de la nouvelle methode d' education de M. Pestalozzi, etc., Paris, 1804. Chavannes, Expose de la methode elementaire de H. Pes- talozzi, suivi d'une notice sur les travaux de cet homme celebre, son institut et ses principaux collaborateurs, Paris, 1805. Le P. Girard, Rapport sur Vinstitut de M. Pestalozzi, a Yverdon, etc., Fribourg, 1810. Jullien (de Paris), Precis sur Vinstitut a" education oVYverdon, 1 vol., 8vo, Milan, 1812; second edition, Paris, 1842, under the title : Expose de la methode d' education de Pestalozzi. 137 138 BIBLIOGRAPHY Raymond, Lettre sur V etablissement d' education d'Yverdon, fonde et dirige par M. Pestalozzi, 1814. De Thon (Mme. Adele), Notice sur Pestalozzi, a pamphlet, Geneva, 1827. Mlle. Cornelie Chavannes, Biographie de H. Pestalozzi, 1 vol., 8vo, Lausanne, 1853. Paroz, Pestalozzi, sa vie, sa methode et ses principes, Berne, 1850. Roger de Guimps, Histoire de Pestalozzi, de sa pensee et de son ceuvre, 1 vol., Lausanne, 1874. Pompee, Etudes sur la vie et les travaux pedagogiques de J. H. Pestalozzi, Paris, 1878. Augustin Cochin, Pestalozzi, etc., Paris, 1880. L. Vuillemin, Souvenirs, Lausanne, Bridel, 1880. J. Guillaume, Pestalozzi, Etude biographique, Paris, Hachette, 1890. A. Pinloche, Pestalozzi et V education populaire moderne, Paris, Alcan, 1902. Refer also to Psychologie de V effort by M. A. Bertrand, at the chapter on le Biranisme applique a V education, Paris, 1889; in the Revue pedagogique, to the articles by M. Martin, on Greaves, November, 1886; by M. Pauliet, on VEcole pestaloz- zienne de Bergerac, April, 1890; in the Bibliotheque universelle et Revue Suisse, the article by M. E. Naville, Pestalozzi et Maine de Biran, April, 1890. — Consult lastly Rapet's manuscripts, which are preserved in the Musee pedagogique: 1st, a Memoire of 800 pages presented to the Institute in 1847 ; 2nd, a collection of notes made by Rapet from that date until the last years of his life. Works in German : — The list of German publications will be found in the bibliog- raphy compiled by M. Guillaume at the end of his fine book, in the Catalogue des ouvrages du Musee pedagogique of Paris, 1886- 1889, and in the Catalogue of the Pestalozzianum at Zurich. BIBLIOGRAPHY 139 We will confine ourselves to a few references : — Ramsauer, Kurze Skisse meines padagogischen Lebens, Olden- bourg, 1838. Blockmann, Pestalozzi, Ziige aus dem Bilde seines Lebens, etc., Leipzig, 1846. H. Morf, Zur Biographie H. Pestalozzis, 2 parts, 8vo, Winterthur, 1865-1866. — Pestalozzi und seine Anstalt in der zweiten Hdlfte der Burgdorfferzeit, Winterthur, 1885. — Einige Blatter aus Pestalozzis Lebens und Leidens geschichte, Langen- salza, 1887. K. von Raumer, Geschichte der Pddagogik, etc., 4 vols., 8vo, Stuttgart, 1846-1854. The part devoted to Pestalozzi has been translated into English by Tikierd, London, 1855. Otto Hunziker, Geschichte der schweizerischen Volksschule, 3 vols., Zurich, 1881-1882, Vol. II, and various other works. Morikofer, Die schweizerische Liter atur, Leipzig, 1861. Works in English : — Biber, Henry Pestalozzi and his Plan of Education, etc., 1 vol., 8vo, London, 1831. Henry Barnard, Life, Educational Principles, and Methods of John Henry Pestalozzi, articles reproduced from the Journal of Education, 1 vol., 8vo, New York, 1859. Rev. Dr. Mayo, Lectures on the Life of Pestalozzi, London, 1850. H. Krusi, Pestalozzi, his Life, Work, and Influence, 1 vol., 8vo, Cincinnati, New York, 1875. Joseph Payne, Pestalozzi, the Influence of his Principles and Practice on Elementary Education, a pamphlet of 20 pages, Lon- don, 1875. R. Hebert Quick, Educational Reformers, New York, 1893. William H. Payne, Contributions to the Science of Educa- tion, New York, 1886 (Chap. XIV. The Teacher as a Philan- thropist). OCT 1 1907