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THE 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM 
 
 PESTALOZZI 
 
 BY 
 
 KARL VON RAUMEU. 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN 
 
 BY 
 
 J. TILLEARD. 
 
 LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS 
 39, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 1855. 
 
J. ALFRED NOVELLO, PRINTER, DEAN STREET, SOHO, LONDON. 
 
 s 
 
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 The following" account of the life and system of Pestalozzi is trans- 
 lated from M. de Raumer's large work, " Geschichte der Padagogik," 
 of which it forms a section. That work is generally regarded as the 
 best history of educational science which exists in the German lan- 
 guage. The author is a man distinguished for his literary and 
 scientific attainments, for the interest which he has always taken in 
 the subject of education, and for the great amount of attention which 
 he has given to the theory and practice of teaching. His merits in 
 these respects appear to have recently raised him to the honorable 
 office of Minister of PubHc Worship and Instruction in Prussia. He 
 possessed a special qualification for wTiting the Hfe of Pestalozzi, 
 having resided for a considerable time in the Pestalozzian institution 
 at Yverdun. He had thus ample opportunities for forming an inde- 
 pendent opinion respecting Pestalozzi's management of the institution, 
 the methods of instruction and discipline which were adopted by his 
 assistants under his direction, the character and ability of these 
 several assistants, and the merits of the unhappy disputes which 
 arose among them, imbittering the days of the great educator and 
 good man, and finally breaking up the institution. 
 
 M. de Raumer's detail of the events of Pestalozzi's hfe is believed 
 to be the most accurate and faithful, his estimate of the genius and 
 character of Pestalozzi the most unbiassed and truthfid, that has 
 appeared. In one very important respect, this biogrnphy differs from 
 most of the others, both German and English, which have been written : 
 Pestalozzi's other biographers, carried away by their admiration for 
 him, have perhaps somewhat too impHcitly accepted the practical 
 parts of his method as apphcations of his principles j M. de Raumer 
 has succeeded in showing that, in some cases, the actual method 
 adopted was diametrically opposed to these principles, and has re- 
 commended educators to obtain their knowledge of Pestalozzi's great 
 principles direct from his leading educational writings, as the 
 fountain-head, and to seek to develop and apply them by their own 
 methods, independently of those adopted by Pestalozzi himself. 
 
 240453 
 
iv. 
 
 Pestalozzi's leading educational writings M. de Raumer takes to be 
 the " Evening" Hour of a Hermit," Leonard and Gertrude," and 
 " How Gertrude teaches her Children." 
 
 It is to be regTetted that, in this country, we do not possess complete 
 translations of all these works. The Translator is not aware that 
 a complete English translation of any one of them is at present pro- 
 curable. He has ascertained that a translation of " Leonard and 
 Gertrude" was published in this country some twenty or thirty 
 years ago j but this seems to have suddenly disappeared : in all 
 probability it fell dead on the market. A translation of the book, 
 " How Gertrude teaches her Children," was announced by a certain 
 publishing firm some years ago ; but it does not seem to have made 
 its appearance. We possess fragments of both these books in our 
 language. Of the Evening Hour of a Hermit," the Translator 
 believes, the portions given in the following- biography are the only 
 ones that have ever been rendered into English, although the whole 
 is but small. The Translator has already proceeded some way in 
 translating "Leonard and Gertrude," wliich is perhaps Pestalozzi's 
 greatest work, and certainly the one that has had the widest circu- 
 lation and influence in Germany and Switzerland ; and he is prepared 
 to complete and publish the translation, whenever he believes that 
 there exists an adequate demand for such a work. 
 
 It is proper to state that the following translation has already 
 appeared in the Educational Expositor. 
 
 June 16, 1855. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 1. Pestalozzi's Childhood and Youth. 1746—1767 
 
 2. Agricultural and Educational Experiments at Neuhof 
 
 3. The Evening Hour of a Hermit. 1780 
 
 4. Leonard and Gertrude. 1781 - - - 
 
 5. Pestalozzi's Life and Writings between 1781 and 1798 
 
 6. Pestalozzi at Stanz. 1798 
 
 7. Pestalozzi at Burgdorf. 1799—1804 
 
 8. Pestalozzi at Buchsee. 1804 _ - - 
 
 9. Pestalozzi at Yverdun — 
 
 From 1805 to the departure of Schmid, i« 1810 - 
 From 1810 to 1815 - - - 
 
 10. Pestalozzi's Last Years. 1825—1827 
 
 11. Pestalozzi and Christianity - - 
 
 12. Retrospect 
 
 1 
 
 - 7 
 9 
 
 - 12 
 17 
 
 - 22 
 25 
 
 - 39 
 
 39 
 
 - 57 
 68 
 
 - 70 
 78 
 
THE LIFE AND SYSTEM 
 
 OF 
 
 PESTALOZZI. 
 
 1. Pestalozzi's Childhood and Youth. 
 1746—1767. 
 
 John Henry Pestalozzi ^Yas born at Zurich on the 12th of January, 
 1 746. His father was a medical practitioner ; his mother, whose 
 maiden name was Hotze, was a native of Wadenschwyl on the Lake 
 of Zurich, and first cousin to the Austrian general Hotze, who fell at 
 Schannis in 1799.^' 
 
 The father died prematurely, when Pestalozzi was only six years 
 old ; from this time forward, therefore, everything was wanting, in 
 the influences around him, which a manly education of the faculties so 
 urgently requires at that age." " I was brought up," he relates, *' by \ 
 the hand of the best of mothers like a spoilt darling, such that you 
 will not easily find a greater. From one year to another I never left 
 the domestic hearth ; in short, all the essential means and inducements 
 to the development of manly vigor, manly experience, manly ways 
 of thinking, and manly exercises, were just as much wanting to me, 
 as, from the peculiarity and weakness of my temperament, I especially 
 needed them." 
 
 This peculiarity, according to Pestalozzi's own statement, was, that 
 with the most sensitive feelings and the liveliest imagination, he was ^ 
 deficient in the power of sustained attention, in reflection, circum- 
 spection, and foresight. 
 
 His mother devoted herself wholly to the education of her three 
 children, in which she was assisted by a faithful servant-girl from the 
 country, of the name of Babeli. Pestalozzi's father, on his death-bed, 
 sent for this girl. " Babeli," said he, " for the sake of God and mercy, 
 do not leave my wife ; when I am dead, she will be forlorn, and my 
 children will fall into strange and cruel hands." " I will not leave 
 your wife when you die," replied Babeli ; " I will remain with her 
 till death, if she has need of me." Her words pacified the dying- 
 father ; she kept her promise, and remained till her death with the 
 mother. "Her great fidelity," Pestalozzi says, "was the result of 
 her strong, simple, and pious faith." As the mother was in very 
 straitened circumstances, Babeli economized wherever she could ; she 
 even restrained the children when they Avanted to go into the street, 
 
 * Pestalozzi liad a biothcr and a sister, who was married to Gross, a mcrcliant of 
 
 Leipzig. 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZl. 
 
 or to any place where they had no business to go, with the words, 
 " Why will you needlessly wear out your shoes and clothes ? See 
 how much your mother denies herself, in order to be able to give 
 you an education ; how for weeks and months together she never 
 goes out anywhere, but saves every farthing for your schooling." 
 Nevertheless, the mother was liberal in those expenses which re- 
 spectability requires, nor did she let the children be without handsome 
 Sunday clothes. These, however, they were allowed to wear but 
 seldom, and they had to take them off again as soon as they came 
 home. 
 
 " I saw the world," says Pestalozzi, " only within the narrow limits 
 of my mother's parlour, and within the equally narrow limits of my 
 schoolroom ; to real human life I was almost as great a stranger, 
 as if I did not live in the world in which I dwelt." 
 
 How different was Rousseau's childhood from that of Pestalozzi ! 
 The mother of the former died when he was born ; his whimsical 
 father appears to have had little affection for him. Pestalozzi, on 
 the contrary, early loses his father ; but there remains to him an 
 affectionate mother, and the faithful, pious, homely Babeli. How 
 these first impressions of childhood influence the whole life of the 
 two men ! Love remains the key-note of Pestalozzi's life till old age ; 
 his exaggerated veneration for mothers, his regard for the domestic 
 hearth, flow from the piety of the mother's pet child. Of a mother's 
 or a father's love Rousseau knows little or nothing, nothing of the 
 sacredness of the domestic hearth ; his own children he places in 
 a foundling hospital ; his Emilius experiences none of the warm and 
 endearing love of a father and mother ; as a poor substitute, he gives 
 him a heartless tutor. 
 
 Pestalozzi's grandfather on the mother's side was minister at Hongg, 
 a village three miles from Zurich. With him Pestalozzi spent several 
 months every year, from the time when he was nine years old. The 
 old man conscientiously cared for the souls of his flock, and thereby 
 exercised a great influence upon the village school ; his piety made 
 a deep and lasting impression on his grandson. 
 
 Of his early school-days, Pestalozzi relates the following : — 
 
 ''In all boys' games, I was the most clumsy and helpless among 
 all my fellow-scholars, and nevertheless, in a certain way, I always 
 wanted to excel the others. This caused some of them very frequently 
 to pass their jokes upon me. One of them gave me the nickname 
 ' Harry Whimsical of Foolstown.' Most of them, however, liked my 
 good-natured and obliging disposition ; though they knew my general 
 clumsiness and awkwardness, as well as my carelessness and 
 thoughtlessness in everything that did not particularly interest me. 
 
 " Accordingly, although one of the best pupils, I nevertheless 
 committed, with incomprehensible thoughtlessness, faults of which 
 not even the worst of them was ever guilty. AMiile I generally 
 seized with quickness and accuracy upon the essential matter of 
 the subjects of instruction, I was very generally indifferent and 
 thoughtless as to the forms in which it was given. At the same time 
 that I was far behind my fellow-scholars in some parts of a subject, 
 in other parts of the same subject I often surpassed them in an unusual 
 degree. This is so true, that once, when one of my professors, who 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 a 
 
 had a very good knowledge of Greek, but not the least eloquence of 
 style, translated and published some orations of Demosthenes, I had 
 the boldness, with the limited school rudiments which I then possessed, 
 to translate one of these orations myself, and to give it in, at the 
 examination, as a specimen of my progress in this branch of study. 
 A portion of this translation was printed in the Linden Journal, in 
 connection with an article entitled 'Agis.' Just in the same manner as 
 I made incomparably more progress in certain parts of my subjects of 
 instruction than in others, so generally it was of far more importance 
 to me to be sensibly affected by ( I dare not say to understand 
 thoroughly) the branches of knowledge which I was to learn, than to 
 exercise myself in the means of practising them. At the same time, 
 the wish to be acquainted with some branches of knowledge that took 
 hold on my heart and my imagination, even though I neglected the 
 means of acquiring them, w^as nevertheless enthusiastically alive 
 within me ; and, unfortunately, the tone of public instruction in my 
 native towm at this period w'as in a high degree calculated to foster 
 this visionary fancy of taking an active interest in, and believing one's 
 self capable of, the practice of things in which one had by no means 
 had sufficient exercise, and this fancy w^as very prevalent among the 
 youth of my native town generally." A^Tiat a foreshadowing is Pesta- 
 lozzi's childhood of the w^hole of his subsequent career ! 
 
 Among Pestalozzi's teachers, there w^ere three who exercised an in- 
 fluence upon him in his youth, — Bodmer, Breitinger, and Steinbriichel. 
 Bodmer was Professor of History from 1725 to 1775 ; he is known by 
 his literary controversies with Gottsched and Lessing, his edition 
 of the Minniesingers,** and his epic poem upon the Deluge. 
 Breitinger, Professor of Greek and Hebrew from 1731 to 1776, edited 
 the Septuagint. Steinbruchel is described as a witty and learned man, 
 but very much inclined to infidel " i lluminat ion." " Independence, 
 freedom, benefice nce, self-sacrifice, and patriotism, were the watch- 
 words of our public education," says Pestalozzi. " But the means of 
 attaining all this which was particularly commended to us — mental 
 distinction — was left without solid and sufficient training of the prac- 
 tical ability which is its essential condition. We were taught, in a 
 visionary manner, to seek for ii^dependence in an abstract acquaint- 
 ance with truth, without being made to feel strongly what w^as essen- 
 tially necessary to the security both of our inward and of our outward 
 domestic and civil independence. The tone of the instruction which 
 we received led us, with much vivacity and many attractive repre- 
 
 * Carlyle refers to Bodmer's edition of the Minniesingers in the first paragraph 
 of his essay on the Nibelungen Lied : — 
 
 " In the year 1757, the Swiss Professor Bodmer printed an ancient poetical ma-^ 
 nuscript, under the title of Chriemhilden Rache und die Klage (Chriemhilde's Revenge, 
 and the Lament) ; which may be considered as the first of a series, or stream of 
 publications and speculations still rolling on, with increased current, to the present 
 day. Not, indeed, that all these had their source or determining cause in so insig 
 nificant a circumstance ; their source, or rather thousand sources, lay far elsewher.^ 
 As has often been remarked, a certain antiquarian tendency in literature, a fonder, 
 more earnest looking back into the Past, began about that time to manifest itself 
 in all nations (witness our own Percy's Beliques) : this was among the first distinct 
 symptoms of it in Germany ; where, as with ourselvesj its manifold effects are still 
 visible enough."— Tr. 
 
4 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 eentations, to be so short-sighted and inconsiderate as to set little value 
 upon, and almost to despise, the external means of wealth, honor, and 
 consideration. This was carried to such a length, that we imagined, 
 while we were yet in the condition of boys, that, by a superficial 
 school-acquaintance with the great civil life of Greece and Rome, we 
 could eminently prepare ourselves for the little civil life in one of the 
 Swiss cantons." 
 
 Pestalozzi further relates, that the appearance of the writings of 
 Rousseau was a great means of keeping alive the errors into which 
 the noble flight of true and patriotic sentiment had led the more 
 distinguished of the young Swiss. They had run," he says, " into 
 one-sided, rash, and confused notions, into which Voltaire's seductive 
 infidelity, being opposed to the pure holiness of religion, and to its 
 simplicity and innocence, had helped to lead them. Out of all this," 
 he tells us, " a new tendency was produced, which was totally incon- 
 sistent with the real welfare of our native town, constituted as it was 
 according to the old-fashioned style of the imperial free cities, which 
 was neither calculated to preserve what was good in the old insti- 
 tutions, nor to introduce any that were substantially better." 
 
 At this time, Pestalozzi's contemporary, Lavater, founded a league 
 which Pestalozzi joined, being then a lad of fifteen. The young men 
 who formed this league, with Lavater at their head, brought a public 
 charge of injustice against Grebel, the governor of the canton, im- 
 peached the character of Brunner, the mayor of Zurich, and declared 
 war against unworthy ministers of religion. 
 , " The moment Rousseau's Emile appeared," says Pestalozzi, " my 
 / visionary and highly speculative mind was enthusiastically seized by 
 ' this visionary and highly speculative book. I compared the education 
 which I enjoyed in the corner of my mother's parlour, and also in the 
 school which I frequented, with what Rousseau demanded for the 
 education of his Emilius. The home as well as the public education 
 of the whole world, and of all ranks of society, appeared to me alto- 
 gether as a crippled thing, w^hich w^as to find a universal reniedy for 
 its present pitiful condition in Rousseau's lofty ideas. 
 
 " The ideal system of liberty, also, to which Rousseau imparted 
 fresh animation, increased in me the visionary desire for a more ex- 
 tended sphere of activity, in which I might promote the welfare and 
 happiness of the people. Juvenile ideas as to what it was necessary 
 and possible to do in this respect in my native town, induced me to 
 abandon the clerical profession, to which I had formerly leaned, and 
 for which I had been destined, and caused the thought to spring up 
 within me, that it might be possible, by the study of the law, to find 
 a career that would be likely to procure for me, sooner or later, -the 
 opportunity and means of exercising an active influence on the civil 
 condition of my native town, and even of my native land." * 
 
 There was at this time a great controversy in the canton of Zurich, 
 articularly between the town and the country. Pestalozzi had already 
 s a boy, when living with his grandfather, the village pastor, won the 
 
 * Henning relates that Pestalozzi stuck several times in his first sermon, and 
 did not say the Lord's Praj^er correctly. This, he says, was another reason why 
 Pestalozzi gave up theology. 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 5 
 
 affection of the people of tlie country, and might early have heard the 
 complaint of the country clergy, omne malum ex urhe.* A fierce 
 hatred lo_Vk:a^s_Jhe_ar who oppressed the country people was 
 
 kindled in his young heart, and even in old age it was not altogether 
 extinguished. This warmth of anger co-existed in him with great 
 warmth of Ipyejbr the_people ; Gothe's saying — 
 
 " Youth's wings should trim themselves for flight 
 Ere youthful strength be gone, 
 Thro' hate of wrong and love of right 
 To bear him bravely on — "f 
 
 characterizes not only the young Pestalozzi, but also the old man ; it 
 characterizes most of his writings. 
 
 Henning relates that Pestalozzi once told him, patriotism and the ' 
 rights of the oppressed party had so powerfully agitated his breast in 
 his youth, that he had thought upon all the means for their deliverance, 
 and might easily have become the assassin of those who had appeared 
 to him as despots. 
 
 He was seconded at this time by a friend of the name of Bluntschli, 
 but a pulmonary complaint laid this young man upon his death -bed. 
 He sent for Pestalozzi, and said to him, I die, and when you are left 
 to yourself, you must not plunge into any career which, from your 
 good-natured and confiding disposition, might become dangerous to 
 you. Seek for a quiet, tranquil career ; and unless you have at your 
 side a man who will faithfully assist you with a calm dispassionate 
 knowledge of men and things, by no means embark in any extensive 
 undertaking whose failure would in any way be perilous to you." An 
 opinion of Pestalozzi's character which was strikingly confirmed by 
 almost every subsequent event of his life. 
 
 Soon after his friend's death, Pestalozzi himself became dangerously 
 ill, probably in consequence of his overstrained exertion in the pursuit 
 of his legal and historical studies. His physicians advised him to give 
 up scientific pursuits for a time, and to recreate himself in the country. 
 This advice, which was strengthened by Rousseau's anti- scientific 
 diatribes, Pestalozzi followed too faithfully. He renounced the study 
 of books, burnt his manuscripts, went to his maternal relation. Dr. 
 Hotze, at Richterswyl, and from thence to Kirchberg, in the canton of 
 Bern, to Tschiffeli, a farmer of considerable reputation. From him 
 Pestalozzi sought advice as to how he might best realize his 
 plans for the country-people. " I had come to him," says Pestalozzi, 
 " a p olitic al visio nary. though.with many j)rofound and correct attain- 
 ment s, vi ews, and prospects in political matters ; and I went away 
 Irom him just as great an^agficultural visionary, though with many 
 enlarged and correct ideas and intentions in regard to agriculture. My 
 stay with him only had this effect — that the gigantic views in relation 
 to my exertions were awakened within me afresh by his agricultural 
 plans, which, though difficult of execution, and in part impracticable, ^ 
 were bold and extensive ; and that, at the same time, they caused me, 
 in my thoughtlessness as to the means of carrying them out, to fall 
 into a callousness, the consequences of which contributed in a decisive 
 
 * " All harm comes from the town," 
 
 t 1 am indebted to F. T. Palgi-avc, Esq., for the translation of this verse. — Tu. 
 
6 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTAL02ZI. 
 
 manner to the pecuniary embarrassment into which I was plunged in 
 the very first years of my rural life." 
 
 Tschiffeli's plantations of madder were exciting great attention at 
 that time, and induced Pestalozzi to make a similar experiment. He 
 learnt that near the village of Birr there was a large tract of barren 
 chalky heath-land to be sold, which was only used for a sheep-walk. 
 He joined a rich mercantile firm in Zurich and bought about 100 acres 
 of this land, at the nominal price of ten florins. A builder erected 
 for him, on the land he had purchased, a dwelling-house in the Italian 
 style ; Pestalozzi himself calls this an injudicious and imprudent step. 
 To the whole estate he gave the name of Neuhof. 
 
 Among the friends of Pestalozzi's youth was Schulthess (the son 
 of a wealthy merchant in Zurich), for whose beautiful sister, 
 Anna Schulthess, Pestalozzi entertained an affection. A letter which 
 he wrote to the beautiful maiden, gives us a profound insight into the 
 workings of his heart, and even into his future life. In this letter he 
 lays before her his hopes and resolutions, and also, with the utmost 
 candor and with great self-knowledge, his faults. He thus writes : — 
 
 My dear, my only Friend, 
 
 Our whole future life, our whole happiness, our duties towards our coun- 
 try and our posterity, and the security of virtue, call upon us to follow the 
 only correct guide in our actions — Truth. I will, with all candor, make 
 known to you the serious reflection I have had in these solemn days upon 
 the relation subsisting between us ; I am happy that I know before-hand, 
 that my friend will find more true love in the calm truth of this contemplation, 
 which so intimately concerns our happiness, than in the ardor of pleasant, 
 but often not too wise, outpourings of a feeling heart, which I now with 
 difficulty restrain. 
 
 Dear friend, first of all I must tell you that in future I shall but seldom 
 dare to approach you. I have already come too frequently and too impru- 
 dently to your brother's house ; I see that it becomes my duty to hmit my 
 visits to you ; I have not the slightest ability to conceal my feelings. My 
 sole art in this respect consists in fleeing from those who observe them ; 
 I should not be able to be in company with you for even half an evening, 
 without its being possible for a moderately acute observer to perceive that 
 I was in a disturbed state of mind. We know each other sufficiently, dear, 
 to be able to rely upon mutual straightforward honesty and sincerity. I pro- 
 pose to you a correspondence in which we shall make our undisguised thoughts 
 known to each other with all the freedom of oral conversation. Yes, I will 
 open myself fully and freely to you ; I will even now, with the greatest 
 candor, let you look as deep into my heart as I am myself able to penetrate ; 
 I will show you my views in the light of my present and future condition, as 
 clearly as I see them myself. 
 
 Dearest Schulthess, those of my faults which appear to me the most impor- 
 tant in relation to the situation in which I may be placed in after-life, are 
 improvidence, incautiousness, and a want of presence of mind to meet unex- 
 pected changes in my future prospects, whenever they may occur. I know 
 not how far they may be diminished by my efforts to counteract them, by 
 calm judgment and experience. At present, I have them still in such a de- 
 gree, that I dare not conceal them from the maiden whom I love ; they are 
 faults, my dear, which deserve your fullest consideration. I have other 
 faults, arising from my irritability and sensitiveness, which oftentimes will 
 not submit to my judgment. I very frequently allow myself to run into 
 excesses in praising and blaming, in my likings and dislikings ; I cleave so 
 strongly to many things which I possess, that the force with which I feel 
 myself bound to them often exceeds the limits which reason assigns ; when- 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 7 
 
 ever my country or my friend is imhappy, I am myself unhappy. Direct 
 your whole attention to this weakness ; there will be times when the cheer- 
 fulness and tranquillity of my soul will suffer under it. If even it does not 
 hinder me in the discharge of my duties, yet I shall scarcely ever be great 
 enough to fulfil them, in such adverse circumstances, with the cheerfulness 
 and tranquillity of a wise man, who is ever true to himself. Of my great, 
 and indeed very reprehensible negligence in all matters of etiquette, and ge- 
 nerally in all matters which are not in themselves of importance, I need not 
 speak ; any one may see them at first sight of me. I also owe you the open 
 confession, my dear, that I shall always consider my duties towards my 
 beloved partner subordinate to my duties towards my country ; and that, 
 although I shall be the tenderest husband, nevertheless I hold it to be my 
 duty to be inexorable to the tears of my wife, if she should ever attempt to 
 restrain me by them from the direct performance of my duties as a citizen, 
 whatever this might lead to. My wife shall be the confidant of my heart, the 
 partner of all my most secret counsels. A great and honest simplicity shall 
 reign in my house. And one thing more. My life will not pass without 
 important and very critical undertakings. I shall not forget the precepts of 
 Menalk, and my first resolutions to devote myself wholly to my country ; 
 I shall never, from fear of man, refrain from speaking, when I see that the 
 good of my country calls upon me to speak : my whole heart is my country's ; 
 I will risk all to alleviate the need and misery of my fellow-countrymen. 
 What consequences may the undertakings to which I feel myself urged on, 
 draw after them ; how unequal to them am I ; and how imperative is my 
 duty to show you the possibility of the great dangers which they may bring 
 upon me ! 
 
 My dear, my beloved friend, I have now spoken candidly of my character 
 and my aspirations. Reflect upon everything. If the traits which it was my 
 duty to mention, diminish your respect for me, you will still esteem my sin- 
 cerity, and you will not think less highly of me, that I did not take advantage 
 of your want of acquaintance with my character, for the attainment of my 
 inmost wishes. Decide now whether you can give your heart to a man with 
 these faults and in such a condition, and be happy. 
 
 My dear friend, I love you so truly from my heart, and with such fervor, 
 that this step has cost me much ; I fear to lose you, dear, when you see me as 
 I am ; I had often determined to be silent ; at last I have conquered myself. 
 My conscience called loudly to me, that I should be a seducer and not a lover, 
 if I were to hide from my beloved a trait of my heart, or a circumstance, 
 which might one day disgust her and render her vmhappy ; I now rejoice at 
 what I have done. If the circumstances into which duty and country shall 
 call me set a limit to my efforts and my hopes, still I shall not have been 
 base-minded, not vicious ; I have not sought to please you in a mask, — I have 
 not deceived you with chimerical hopes of a happiness that is not to be looked 
 for ; I have concealed from you no danger and no sorrow of the future ; 
 I have nothing to reproach myself with. 
 
 2. Agricultural and Educational Experiments at Neuhof. 
 
 It was in the year 1767 that Pestalozzi removed to Neuhof. On the 
 24th of January, 1769, tv^o years later, he married Anna Schulthess, 
 being then only twenty-four years old. It was not long before troubles 
 came upon the young married couple. The madder plantation did not ^ 
 prosper ; an assistant whom Pestalozzi had engaged caused himself to be 
 hated by everybody ; the Zurich firm, which had advanced money to 
 Pestalozzi, sent two competent judges to examine into the condition of 
 the estate — both of them reported so unfavorably upon it, especially 
 upon the buildings, that the firm preferred taking back their capital with 
 
8 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 loss, to trusting it any longer in Pestalozzi's hands. " The cause of the 
 failure of my undertaking," says he, " lay essentially and exclusively in 
 myself, and in my pronounced incapacity for every kind of undertaking 
 which requires eminent practical ability." 
 
 Notwithstanding the great distress into which he fell, he resolved 
 y not only to go on with farming, but to combine with it a school for 
 ^ poor children. " I wished," says he, " to make my estate a centre for 
 my educational and agricultural labors. In spite of all difficulties, 
 I wanted, like a visionary, to reach the highest point in every re- 
 spect, at the same time that I lacked the faculties, abilities, and skill, 
 from which alone can proceed a proper attention to the first and 
 humblest beginnings and preparatory steps to the great things which 
 I sought after. So great, so unspeakably great, in consequence of the 
 peculiarity of my mind, was the contrast between what I wished to do 
 and what I did and was able to do, w^hich arose from the disproportion 
 between my good-natured zeal, on the one side, and my mental impo- 
 tency and unskilfulness in the affairs of life on the other." 
 
 By mental impotency, we must understand only a want of schooling 
 or intellectual disciplining of the mind, for just at this time Pestalozzi's 
 literary talent made itself known. He came forward with a plan for the 
 establishment of the Poor School. His views and principles met with 
 so much approbation in an economical point of view, in spite of the want 
 \l of confidence in his practical ability, that he received offers of assistance 
 A from Zurich, Bern, and Basel, and many poor children were sent to him. 
 y Thus began the Neuhof Poor School in the year 1775 ; it had soon 
 fifty pupils. In the summer, the children were to be chiefly employed 
 in field-work, — in winter, with spinning and other handicrafts. During 
 the time that they were engaged in the handicrafts, Pestalozzi gave them 
 instruction ; exercises in speaking were predominant. 
 
 But no long time elapsed before the establishment declined ; to which 
 result many things contributed. The children, who were to earn their 
 support by their work, were, although beggar children, spoilt and full of 
 demands. Their parents, Avho every Sunday besieged Neuhof, confirmed 
 them in this, and also ran off with them as soon as they had got new 
 clothes. None of the authorities protected Pestalozzi against this mis- 
 conduct, from which the farming suffered a great deal. " But these 
 difficulties," says Pestalozzi, might gradually have been more or less 
 overcome, if I had not sought to carry out my experiment on a scale that 
 was quite disproportioned to my strength, and had not, with almost in- 
 credible thoughtlessness, wanted to convert it, in the very beginning, into 
 an undertaking which presupposed a thorough knowledge of manufactures, 
 men, and business, in which I was deficient in the same proportion as 
 they were rendered necessary to me by the direction which I now gave my 
 undertaking. I, who so much di^approyed of the hur^ryijog to thehigher 
 stages of instruction, before a thorougFlb'uhdation had been laid inthe 
 f elementary steps of the lower stages, and looked upon it as the fundamental 
 /' error in the education of the day, and who also believed that I was myself 
 endeavouring with all my might to counteract it in my plan of educa- 
 tion, allowed myself to be carried away by illusions of the greater 
 remunerativeness of the higher branches of industry, without knowing 
 even remotely either them or the means of learning and introducing 
 them, and to commit the very faults in teaching my school -children 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 9 
 
 spinning and weaving which, as I have just said, I so strongly repro- 
 bated and denounced in the whole of my views on education, and which 
 I considered dangerous to the domestic happiness of all classes. I 
 wanted to have the finest thread spun, before my children had gained 
 any steadiness or sureness of hand in spinning even the coarser kinds, and, 
 in like manner, to make muslin fabrics, before my weavers had acquired 
 sufficient steadiness and readiness in the weaving of common cotton 
 goods. Practised and skilful manufacturers ruin themselves by such 
 preposterous conduct, — how much more certain to be ruined by such con- 
 duct was I, who was so blind in the discernment of what was necessary 
 to success, that I must distinctly say, that whoever took but a thread of 
 mine into his hand was at once in a position to cause half of its value to 
 vanish for me ! Before I was aware of it, too, I was deeply involved in 
 debt, and the greater part of my dear wife's property and expectations 
 had in an instant, as it were, gone up in smoke. Our misfortune was 
 decided. I was now poor. The extent and rapidity of my misfortune 
 was owing to this among other causes — that, in this undertaking, as in 
 the first, I readily, very readily, received an unquestioning confidence. 
 My plan soon met with a degree of confidence which an attentive con- 
 sideration of my former conduct would have shown that which I did not 
 merit in the present undertaking. After all the experience they had had 
 of my errors in this respect, people still did not think the extent of my 
 incapacity for everything practical was so great as it really was. I even 
 yet enjoyed for a while, to all appearance, an extensive confidence. But 
 when my experiment went rapidly to wreck, as it necessarily did, this 
 feeling changed, in my neighbourhood, into just as inconsiderate a 
 degree of the contrary, into a totally blind abandonment of even the last 
 shadow of respect for my endeavours, and of belief in my fitness for the 
 accomplishment of any part of them. It is the course of the world, and 
 it happened to me as it happens to every one who thus becomes poor 
 through his own fault. Such a man generally loses, together with his . 
 money, the belief and the confidence in what he really is and is able to / 
 do. The belief in the qualifications which I really had for attaining my 
 objects was now lost, along with the belief in those which, erring in my 
 self-deception, I gave myself credit for, but which I really had not." 
 
 Thus it happened, that in the year 1780 Pestalozzi was obliged to 
 break up the establishment at Neuhof, after it had been five years in 
 operation. His situation was frightful. Frequently in his only too 
 elegant country-house he wanted money, bread, fuel, in order to pro- 
 tect himself against hunger and cold. His faithful wife, who had 
 pledged nearly the whole of her property for him, fell into a severe 
 and tedious illness. " My friends," relates Pestalozzi, " now only loved 
 me without hope ; in the whole circuit of the surrounding district it 
 was everywhere said that I was a lost man, that nothing more could be 
 done for me." 
 
 3. The Evening Hour of a Hermit. 
 1780. 
 
 The breaking up of the establishment at Neuhof was a fortunate 
 thing for Pestalozzi — and for the world. He was no longer to fritter 
 away his strength in efforts to which he was not equal. And, never- 
 theless, his severe mental and physical labor was not to have been in 
 
10 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 vain, but was to bear precious fruits. As the first of these fruits, there 
 appeared in 1780 a paper of his, brief but full of meaning, in Iselin's 
 Ephemerides, under the title, The Evening Hour of a Hermit. It con- 
 tains a series of aphorisms, which nevertheless are cast in one mould, 
 and stand among one another in the closest connection. Fruits of the 
 past years of Pestalozzi's life, they are at the same time seeds of the 
 following years, programme and key to his educational labors. " Iselin's 
 Ephemerides," he writes in 1801, alluding to this Evening Hour, " bear 
 witness, that the dream of my wishes is not more comprehensive now, 
 than it was when at that time I sought to realize it." 
 
 It is scarcely possible to make a selection from these concise and 
 thought-teeming aphorisms, the more so because they form, as I have 
 said, a beautiful and ingenious whole, which suffers in the selection. 
 Nevertheless, I will run the risk of selecting some of the principal 
 thoughts. 
 
 The .paper begins with melancholy seriousness. " Pastors and 
 teachers of the nations, know you man ; is it with you a matter of con- 
 science to understand his nature and destiny ? 
 
 " All mankind are in their nature alike, they have but one path to 
 contentment. The natural faculties of each one are to be perfected 
 into pure human wisdom. This general education of man must serve 
 as the foundation to every education of a particular rank. 
 "-^ " The faculties grow by exercise. 
 
 1^ « The intellectual powers of children must not be urged on to re- 
 mote distances before they have acquired strength by exercise in 
 things near them. 
 
 The circle of knowledge commences close around a man, and from 
 thence stretches out concentrically. 
 
 " Keal knowledge must take precedence of word-teaching and mere 
 talk. 
 
 ^ "All human wisdom is based upon the strength of a good heart, 
 obedient to truth. Knowledge and ambition must be subordinated to 
 inward peace and calm enjoyment. 
 
 " As the education for the closest relations precedes the education 
 for more remote ones, so must education in the duties of members 
 of families precede education in the duties of citizens. But nearer 
 than father or mother is God, ' the closest relation of mankind is their 
 relation to Him.'* 
 
 Faith in God is ' the confiding childlike feeling of mankind towards 
 the paternal mind of the Supreme Being.' This faith is not the result 
 and consequence of cultivated wisdom, but is purely an instinct of sim- 
 plicity ; a childlike and obedient mind is not the consequence of a 
 finished education, but the early and first foundation of human culture. 
 Out of the faith in God springs the hope of eternal life. * Children of 
 God are immortal.' 
 
 " Belief in God sanctifies and stren gthens the tie between parents 
 and "children, between~suhjects"and7rulers ; unbelief loosens all ties, 
 aninliilates all blessings. 
 
 Sin is the source and consequence of unbelief, it is acting contrary 
 to the inward witness of right and wrong, the loss of the childlike 
 mind towards God. 
 
 * Deus interior intimoy says St. Augustine. 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 11 
 
 " Freedom is based upon justice, justice upon love, therefore Jree^ 
 dom also is based uponJ .ove. 
 
 ^TJusHcTin families, the purest, most productive of blessings, has 
 love for its source. 
 
 *' Pure childlike feeling is the true source of the freedom that is 
 based upon justice, and pure paternal feeling is the source of all power 
 of governing that is noble enough to do justice and to love freedom. 
 And the source of justice and of all worldly blessings, the source of 
 the love and brotherly feeling of mankind towards one another, this is 
 based upon the great thought of religion, that we are children of God, 
 and that the belief in this truth is the sure ground of all worldly j 
 blessings. In this great thought of religion lies ever the spirit of all 
 true state-policy that seeks only the blessing of the people, for all in- I 
 ward power of morality, enlightenment and worldly wisdom, is based ' 
 upon this ground of the belief of mankind in God ; and ungodliness, 
 misapprehension of the relation of mankind as children to the Supreme 
 Being, is the source w^hich 4issolves_ all the power with which morals, 
 enlightenment, and wisdom, are capable of blessing mankind. There- 
 fore the loss of this childlike feeling of mankind towards God is the 
 greatest misfortune of the world, as it renders impossible all paternal 
 education on the part of God, and the restoration of this lost childlike 
 feeling is the redemption of the lost children of God on earth. 
 
 " The Son of God, who with suffering and death has restored to 
 mankind the universally lost feeling of filial love towards God, is the 
 Kedeemer of the World, He is the sacrificed Priest of the Lord, He is 
 Mediator between God and sinful mankind. His doctrine is pure jus- 
 tice, educative national philosophy; it is the revelation of God the 
 Father to the lost race of his children." 
 
 Much might be said upon these aphorisms ; each is a text for 
 a discourse ; indeed, Pestalozzi's life is a paraphrase in facts of these 
 texts. We must accuse human weakness, if the realization of his great 
 anticipations henceforward also turns out but miserably, nay, only 
 too often stands in the most glaring contradiction with them. The 
 plan of an inventive builder however retains its value, if even the 
 builder himself lack the skill to carry out the building according to 
 the plan. 
 
 Rousseau's Emile appeared eighteen years before Pestalozzi's N 
 Evening Hour ; in what relation does Rousseau stand to Pestalozzi ? 
 In particular points they frequently agree. Like Pestalozzi, Rousseau 
 '^requires real knowledge and trained skill in the business of life, not an 
 ' empty display of words, without an insight into the things themselves, 
 and a ready power of acting. Like Pestalozzi, Rousseau also ridicules 1 
 the plan of giving children a discursive knowledge about things remote, 
 'l' and leaving them in ignorance of the things in their immediate vicinity ; ] 
 ^ he requires, like Pestalozzi, that they should first Ke at home in this^' 
 vicinity. 
 
 In this manner many other things might be pointed out in which 
 both men agree, arising principally from their common aversion to a 
 baseless, dead talkativeness, without any real intelligence, activity of 
 mind, or readiness of action. But when viewed more closely, how 
 immensely different are the two men in all that is most essential ! 
 
 Rousseau will not have God named before children ; he is of opinion 
 
12 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 that long physical and metaphysical study is necessary to enable lis 
 to think of God. With Pestalozzi, God is the nearest, the most inti- 
 mate being to man, the Alpha and Omega of his whole life. Rousseau's 
 God is no paternal God of love, his Emile no child of God. The 
 man who put his children into a foundling-hospital knew nothing of 
 paternal and filial love ; still less of rulers as the fathers of the nations, 
 and of the childlike obedience of subjects ; his ideal was a cold, 
 heartless freedom, which was not based upon love, but was defensive, 
 isolating, and altogether selfish. 
 
 While, therefore, according to Pestalozzi, the belief in God pene- 
 trates, strengthens, attunes, sanctifies all the relations of men ; while 
 the relations between ruler and subjects, between fathers and children, 
 and the paternal love of God to his children, men, are everywhere 
 reflected in his paper — with Rousseau there is never any mention of 
 such bonds of love. 
 
 But how does Pestalozzi's view, as exhibited in the Evening Hour, 
 stand related to the Christian doctrine ? This important question 
 I shall endeavour to answer in the sequel. 
 
 4. Leonard and Gertrude. 
 1781. 
 
 A year after the publication of the Evening Hour, namely, in 1781, 
 
 appeared the first part of that work of Pestalozzi's which established 
 his reputation, which exercised an extensive and wholesome influence 
 at the time, and which will continue to exercise an influence in future. 
 That work is " Leonard and Gertrude : A Book for the People." 
 
 The origin of this highly important book is so remarkable, that 
 I must give it as it is related by Pestalozzi himself. 
 
 At the time of his greatest misfortunes, when he was compelled to 
 give up the Neuhof Poor School, he still had a true friend in the book- 
 seller, Fussli, of Zurich. " This person told me frankly," rel^ites 
 Pestalozzi, " that my old friends looked upon it as almost settled, that 
 I should end my days in a workhouse or a lunatic asylum." " This 
 amiable friend took a deep and heartfelt interest in my fate," continues 
 Pestalozzi, *'and in the very room in which he told me this there 
 happened at the same period a circumstance which suddenly appeared 
 likely to bring about an improvement in my pecuniary state, and a 
 termination to the mournful condition of my family. Fussli was a 
 true friend of the absence of pretension which characterized the citizens 
 in former times, and even of the obsolete remains of the simplicity of 
 antiquity in the forms of the civic service ; and the crooked watchmen 
 before the Council House and under the gates were just about to be 
 transformed into a shape suited to the fashionable republican govern- 
 ment notions of the civil service which were then springing up. This 
 innovation had an intimate connection with the awakening fashionable 
 spirit of military pomp without military power, and was supported by 
 persons of influence, who took more pleasure in the drawing up of idle 
 burghers and peasant 3oldiers on parade, and could better judge of and 
 estimated higher their decorum and pomp, than the value of the 
 industry and the honor of citizens, from which proceeded the domestic 
 happiness of our native town in former days, and which in antiquity 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 13 
 
 prevailed universally for centuries. This measure, when it was carried 
 out, displeased very many citizens who were of an old-fashioned way of 
 thinking, and among others myself. In a playful moment, I put 
 together a short composition turning this innovation into ridicule, 
 which happened to be lying on Fiissli's table when he was talking with 
 his brother, the painter, who, as far as I know, is now living in London,* 
 where he is held in great esteem, about my sad fate, and lamenting 
 that he knew of no means of helping me out of my present situation, 
 considering the sort of man I was, and the manner in which I acted. 
 Just at this instant the painter took up the squib upon the transform- 
 ation of the crooked, dusty, and uncombed town-watchmen under our 
 gates, into straight, combed, and trim ones, read it through several 
 times, and then said to his brother, ' This man can help himself to any 
 extent he pleases ; he has talent for writing in a style which at the time 
 in which we live will most certainly excite interest ; encourage him to 
 do so, and tell him on my part, that he can most certainly help himself 
 as an author, if he only will.' My friend sent for me on the spot, and 
 was overjoyed while he told me this, and added, ' I cannot conceive at 
 all how it was possible that this should not have struck me.' I felt as 
 if he were telling me a dream. In the pressure of events, I had so 
 neglected my own improvement, that I could scarcely write a line 
 without committing grammatical errors ; and in spite of all that Fiissli 
 said, I thought myself quite incapable of such work. But necessity, 
 which is so often said to be a bad counsellor, was now a good one to 
 me. Marmontel's Coiites moraiix were lying on my table when I came 
 home; I immediately took them np, and asked myself the distinct 
 question, whether it might be possible for me to do anything of the 
 kind, and after I had read a few of these tales, and read them again, it 
 appeared to me that, after all, this might not be altogether impossible. 
 I attempted five or six similar little stories, of which all I know is that 
 no one of them pleased me; the last was Leonard and Gertrude, 
 w^hose history flowed from my . pen, I know not how, and developed 
 itself of its own accord, without my having the slightest plan in my 
 head, and even without my thinking of one. In a few weeks, the book 
 stood there, without my knowing exactly how I had done it. I felt its 
 value, but only as a man in his sleep feels the value of some piece of 
 good fortune of which he is just dreaming. I scarcely knew that I was 
 awake, and yet a new ray of hope began to dawn upon me, when 
 I thought that it might be possible in this walk to better my pecuniary 
 condition, and to make it more supportable to my family. I showed 
 my attempt to a friend of Lavater's, who was also a friend of mine. 
 This person thought it interesting, but said, however, that the book 
 could not be printed in its present state ; it was insufferably incorrect 
 and unpolished, and would gain much from the revision of a man who 
 had practice in writing, adding that, if I was agreeable, he would put 
 it into the hands of a friend whom he thought very fit for the task. 
 With as little pretension as a child, I replied that I was quite agree- 
 able, and forthwith handed over to him the first three or four sheets of 
 the manuscript for such revision. But what was my astonishment, 
 when he returned three sheets to me together with the revised version ! 
 
 * Where he attained celebrity under the ItaHanized name of Fuseli. — Tr. 
 
14 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 It was a regular piece of divinity student's work, which changed the 
 plain picture of the real peasant life, as it was simply and artlessly 
 pourtrayed by me from nature in its naked but true shape, into affected 
 forms of art, and made the peasants in the inn speak a stiff pedagogue's 
 language which did not leave behind so much as a shadow of the pecu- 
 liarity of my book. This did not by any means please me. The friend 
 who had given the young man this commission was now ashamed of 
 the result himself, and I declined the further revision of my manuscript. 
 I was determined, at all events, not to let it go forth to the world 
 mutilated from my original, as it came before me in this revised ver- 
 sion, and I made up my mind that I would go to Basel in the course of 
 a few days to see the Recorder Iselin, with whom, as a member of the 
 Helvetic Society, I had become acquainted at Schinznach, and whom 
 I very highly esteemed, and consult him about everything relating to 
 my book, and the mode in which it was to be brought out. I directed 
 my attention to him in this matter especially because I was sure that, 
 in judging of the tone of my book, he would be less disposed to take 
 contracted views than I foresaw and had to fear that most of my re- 
 maining friends would. But his opinion and his conduct exceeded all 
 my expectations. The impression which it made upon him was quite 
 extraordinary. He said directly, ' There is nothing like it of its kind, 
 and the views which pervade it are an urgent necessity of our time ; 
 the want of orthographical accuracy,' he added, ' can easily be recti- 
 fied;' and he at once undertook to see to this himself, as also to take 
 steps for the publication of the book, and for the payment to myself of 
 a fitting remuneration on account of it. He added, however, in refer- 
 ence to the latter point, * It will probably not be considerable, because 
 you are new as an author, and have as yet no name.' And he imme- 
 diately wrote to Decker in Berlin, who payed me a louis d'or per 
 sheet, but promised at the same time, that, if the sale of the work 
 should render a second edition necessary, he would pay me the same , 
 again. I was unspeakably satisfied. A louis d'or per sheet was to I 
 me much, very much, in the circumstances in which I then was. The 
 book appeared, and excited quite a remarkable degree of interest in my 
 own country and throughout the whole of Germany. Nearly all the 
 journals spoke in its praise, and, what is perhaps still more, nearly all 
 the almanacs became full of it ; but the most unexpected thing to me 
 was that, immediately after its appearance, the Agricultural Society of 
 Bern awarded me their great gold medal, with a letter of thanks. 
 Pleased as I was with the medal, and glad as I should have been to 
 keep it, I was nevertheless obliged to part with it in my then situation, 
 and sold it some weeks after for its value in money at a goldsmith's." 
 
 Pestalozzi himself has repeatedly spoken of the character and object 
 of Leonard and Gertrude. In the preface to the first edition of the 
 work, he says : "In that which I here relate, and which I have for the 
 most part seen and heard myself in the course of an active life, I have 
 even taken care not once to add my own opinion to what I saw and 
 heard the people theimelves feeling, judging, believing, speaking, and 
 attempting. And now this will show itself : — If the results of my 
 observation are true, and if I gave them as I received them, and 
 as it is my aim to do, they will find acceptance with all those who 
 themselves have daily before their eyes the things which I relate. If, 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 15 
 
 however, they are incorrect, if they are the work of my imagination^ 
 and the preaching of my own opinions, they will, like other Sunday 
 sermons, vanish on the Monday."* In the preface to the second 
 edition, Pestalozzi gives as the object of the book, " To bring about a 
 better popular education, based upon the true condition of the people / 
 and their natural relations." " It was," he says, " my first word to the 
 heart of the poor and destitute in the land. It was my first word to 
 the heart of those who stand in God's stead to the poor and destitute 
 in the land. It was my first word to the mothers in the land, and to 
 the heart which God gave them, to be to theirs what no one on earthj 
 can be in their stead." 
 
 " I saw the misery of the people," says Pestalozzi in another place. 
 " The book which my sense of this condition extorted from my inno- 
 cence, Leonard and Gertrude, was a work of my inward helplessness, 
 and stood there among my contemporaries like a stone that speaks of 
 life and is dead." 
 
 " I desired nothing, and to-day (1800) I desire nothing else, as the 
 object of my life, but the welfare of the people, whom I love, and 
 whom I feel to be miserable as few feel them to be miserable, having 
 with them borne their sufferings as few have borne them." 
 
 The remarks which I have cited characterize the soul of Leonard 
 and Gertrude. In the severe years of suffering at Neuhof, Pestalozzi 
 appeared to have wrought and suffered in vain. " To the accomplish- 
 ment of my purpose," he says, " there stood opposed my entire want of 
 trained practical skill, and a vast disproportion between the extent of 
 my will and the limits of my ability." 
 
 He did not work in vain, however ; what was denied him on the 
 one side turned out to his advantage on the other. If he lacked all 
 skill in carrying out his ideas, he possessed on the other hand, in the 
 highest degree, the faculty of observing, comprehending, and pourtray- 
 ing character. If he was not able to exhibit to the world his ideal 
 realized, it was given to him to infuse the loving desires of his heart 
 into the hearts of others, by means of his talent of poetical delineation. 
 He might hope that men of practical ability would be among the 
 readers of his book, and would be incited by it to realize what he only 
 knew how to picture. He has found such readers, f Leonard and 
 Gertrude is in so many hands, that it is almost superfluous to give a 
 selection from the work. Only this. The principal person in it is 
 Gertrude, the wife of Leonard, a good-natured but rather weak man, 
 whose stay and guardian she is. The manner in which she keepsNj 
 house and instructs and trains her children, is Pestalozzi's ideal. Such 
 house -keeping, such a manner of instructing and training, he desires 
 for all people. Gertrude is consulted even in the management of the 
 village school. Her house-keeping is the bright side of the circum- 
 
 * Anxious ministers of the gospel said, in reports upon the state of Communes, 
 that the observations which they had made entirely agreed with the pictures which 
 Pestalozzi gives of the state of the villages. The Bavarian authorities were right, 
 therefore, in recommending Leonard and Gertrude to clergymen and schoolmasters. 
 
 f Henning relates that Leonard and Gertrude had been translated into Danish ; 
 and that nobles, and among others the Countess Schimmelman, had been induced 
 by the book to adopt measures in their villages for the amelioration of the 
 condition of their peasantry. 
 
16 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 stances depicted ; in contrast with her is a terribly dark side, a peasant 
 community in the deepest depravity. It is related what Arner, the 
 equally benevolent and intelligent lord of the village, does to check 
 the depravity. 
 
 Pestalozzi wished to give the people the knowledge and skill need- 
 ful for them chiefly by means of a good elementary instruction. If 
 this instruction began at the right place, and proceeded properly, 
 what an entirely different race would arise out of the children so 
 instructed, a race made independent by intelligence and skill ! What 
 increased strength would a people renewed by this means acquire, to 
 cope with their oppressors, the aristocrats, and even to out-bid the 
 / superficially educated ! * 
 
 )(/ In vain, however, did Pestalozzi look around him for elementary 
 teachers who could and would instruct after his manner and in his 
 spirit. Seminaries, too, were wanting in which such teachers could be 
 trained. Then the thought occurred to him who had grown up in his 
 Imother's parlour : " I will place the education of the people in the 
 hands of the mothers ; I will transplant it out of the schoolroom into 
 (the parlour." Gertrude was to be the model of mothers. But how 
 tare the mothers in the lower classes to be qualified for instructing ? — 
 iWe shall see how Pestalozzi's Compendiums are meant to be an answer 
 jto this question, to supply the place of knowledge and teaching talent. 
 
 X The mothers have only to keep strictly to these books in the in- 
 jstruction of their children ; if they do this, the mother of the most 
 limited capacity will instruct just as well as the most talented ; com- 
 pendiums and method are to equalize their minds : such was Pestalozzi's 
 idea, to which I shall afterwards come back. 
 
 With extreme short-sightedness, the persons in immediate inter- 
 course with Pestalozzi saw in this book of his dearly-bought experience 
 nothing more than a proof that its author was born for novel-writing, 
 and would in future be able to earn his bread by it. 
 
 Others understood better the value of the book. Karl von Bonstetten 
 entreated Pestalozzi to come and live with him on his estate in Italian 
 Switzerland; the Austrian Minister of Finance, Count Zinzendorf, 
 wished to have him in his neighbourhood. Subsequently, he became 
 known, through Count Hohenwart, in Florence, to the Grand Duke 
 Leopold of Tuscany, who was about to give him an appointment, when 
 he was called by the death of Joseph II. to the imperial throne of 
 Germany, and the appointment was therefore not made. If it be asked 
 whether he would have been of any use in a post of importance, a word 
 of Lavater's upon this subject may contain the answer. Pestalozzi, 
 tells us : " He once said to my wife, * If I were a prince, I would^consult 
 Pestalozzi in everything that concerns the people and the improve- 
 ment of their condition, but I would never trust him with a farthing of 
 money.' At another time, he said to myself, ' When I only once see a 
 line of yours without a mistake, I will believe you capable of much, 
 very much, that you would like to do and to be.' " 
 
 * In these sentiments, it should be remembered, we have a German's opinion on 
 
 Germany. — Tr. 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 17 
 
 5. Pestalozzi's Life and Writings between 1781 and 1798. 
 
 For seventeen years after the publication of Leonard and Gertrude, 
 Pestalozzi continued to drag on his needy and depressed existence 
 at Neuhof, where he spent altogether thirty years. Of his outward life 
 during those seventeen years, w^e learn little else, besides the general 
 fact just stated. It is worthy of mention, that in this period he entered 
 the order of lUuminati, an order which was characterized by infidelity, 
 exaggerated ideas of enlightenment, and destructive but not recon- 
 structive principles, and that he even became eventually the head of 
 the order in Switzerland. He -soon discovered his mistake, however, 
 and withdrew from it. " That which is undertaken by associations," 
 he says, " usually falls into the hands of intriguers." 
 
 In this period he wrote several books. 
 
 In the year 1782, he published " Christopher and Alice." He 
 himself relates the origin of this work. People had imbibed from 
 Leonard and Gertrude the idea, that all the depravity among the com- 
 mon people proceeded from the subordinate functionaries in the villages. 
 " In Christopher and Alice," says Pestalozzi, " I wished to make 
 apparent to the educated public the connexion of those causes of 
 popular depravity which are to be found higher in the social scale, but 
 which on this account are also more disguised and concealed, with the 
 naked, undisguised, and unconcealed causes of it, as they are mani- 
 fested in the villages in the persons of the unworthy functionaries. For 
 this purpose, I made a peasant family read together Leonard and Ger- 
 trude, and say things about the story of that work, and the persons 
 introduced in it, which I thought might not occur of themselves to 
 everybody's mind." 
 
 So says Pestalozzi in the year 1826 ; but he spoke otherv^ise in the 
 preface to the book when it first appeared, in 1782. Reader I" he 
 says, " this book which thou takest into thy hand is an attempt to 
 produce a manual of instruction for the use of the universal school of 
 humanity, the parlour. I wish it to be read in every cottage." 
 
 This wish was not accomplished, as we learn from the preface to the 
 second edition (1824), which commences thus, This book has not 
 found its way at all into the hands of the people. In my native land, 
 even in the canton of my native town, and in the very village in which 
 I once lived, it has remained as strange and unknown, as if it had not 
 been in existence." 
 
 This fact fully show'S that in this book Pestalozzi did not hit the, 
 popular tone.* Particular passages in it are excellent ; thus the pic- 
 ture of the old and the new time, the attack directed against contempt 
 of the Bible, and other passages. Especially worthy of notice is the 
 decision with which the ardent man speaks a gainst al l revolutionizing^, 
 ay even against the revolt of the old Swiss ; it is as if one heard 
 Luther. " We thank God," he says, " for the results which have flowed 
 from the fidelity and courage of the founders of our freedom. But 
 a particular act in their conduct, which was a consequence of the re- 
 markably desperate condition of their unhappy country, can in no case, 
 
 * There occur in it such expressions as, empiricism, rhodomontade, per fas et 
 ne/as, &c., to say nothing of much reasoning that is far too subtile, and much wit 
 that is far too refined. 
 
18 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 whatever blessed effects it may have had, be regarded as the criterion 
 of the legality of any political act at the present day. We may assume 
 it as unconditionally true, and history plainly shows it to be so, that 
 our forefathers exhausted every means of winning by humility, patience, 
 and loyalty the hearts of the governors who so abused their power, be- 
 fore they resolved upon a measure of self-redress. But as we ought to 
 pja y to God J hatjio nation may sink into this unhappy condition, so 
 we ought to bear in~mincl, at the same time, that ihe ^xsnrpi^" of 
 self-redress exhibited by our forefathers is by no means sufficient to 
 authorize any man to expose his country, whatever may be the circum- 
 stances in which it is placed, to those dangers which are necessarily 
 attendant upon every attempt at such self-redress, and under which our 
 country must have succumbed, if God's providence had not preserved 
 us from them in a wonderful manner. Or who has ever taken the ba- 
 lance into his hand, weighed one scale against the other, and pointed 
 out the case where right and justice, where wisdom and humanity, 
 and where the country's interest and necessity, allow and require that 
 a man shall take up the sword against the tyrant of his country and 
 slay him ? I, for my part, lay my hand upon my mouth, and am silent. 
 But, God be praised, the time of clublaw and rude barbarism, in which 
 the most lawless acts of violence, both of high agaiut low and low 
 against high, were made to appear lawful and right, is past. God be 
 praised ! the voice of humanity, wisdom, and love, which speaks in the 
 divine words, ' Put up again thy sword into his place : for all they 
 that take the sword shall perish with the sword ' — is in our civilized 
 world, in spite of its unhappily increasing weakness and just as unhap- 
 pily increasing errors, everywhere more and more widely felt. Even 
 our weaknesses and errors contribute to make these divine words of 
 love more and more acknowledged and felt among us. T ^e prop ensity 
 to violftupp. is fearful and ter rible even in the individual man ; when it 
 has entered the minds of multitudes~snd masses of men collectively, it 
 is horrible and appalling." 
 
 In the same year, 1782, and the one following, Pestalozzi edited 
 " A Swiss Journal," of which a number appeared every week. In 
 this journal, he communicated, among other things, memoirs of de- 
 ceased friends. Thus he wrote the memoirs of Frolich, the pastor of 
 Birr, who had died young. Pestalozzi says of him, He dedicated 
 himself to the work of the great divine calling, but eternal love dedi- 
 cated him to the liberty of eternal life." The way in which he speaks 
 of the excellent Iselin, who had died in 1782, is particularly affecting. 
 " I should have perished in the depths into which I had fallen," he 
 says, " if Iselin had not raised me up. Iselin made me feel that I had 
 done something, even in the Poor School." * 
 
 The discourse "on Legislation and Infanticide" also appeared in 1782. 
 
 About 1783, Pestalozzi contemplated the establishment of a lunatic 
 asylum and a reformatory institution, and wrote upon the subject; the 
 manuscript, however, was lost. 
 
 In the years between 1780 and 1790, " in the days of the approach- 
 ing French revolution, and in the first symptoms of the dangers which 
 
 Unfortunately, I do not possess a copy of the Swiss Journal, and only quote from 
 the biographies of Henning and Heusler. 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PE8TAL0ZZI. 
 
 19 
 
 its influence on Switzerland might entail," * he wrote " The Figures 
 to my ABO-Book;" they were not published, however, till 1795: a new 
 edition, under the title of " Fables," came out in 1805. They relate 
 principally to the condition of Switzerland at that time.f 
 
 In 1798 appeared Pestalozzi's ' '^Resear ches into the Course of 
 Nature in the Develo pment of the Hum an~Race." He says himself, 
 speaking of this book, " I wrought at it for three long years with in- 
 credible toil, chiefly with the view of clearing up my own mind upon 
 the tendency of my favorite notions, and of bringing my natural feel- 
 ings into harmony with my ideas of civil rights and morality. But 
 this work too is, to me, only another evidence of my inward 
 helplessness, the mere play of my powers of research ; my views were 
 altogether one-sided, while I was without a proportionate degree of 
 control over myself in regard to them, and the work was left void of 
 any adequate effort after practical excellence, which was so necessary 
 for my purpose. The disproportion between my ability and my views 
 only increased the more. The effect of my book upon those by whom 
 I was surrounded was like the effect of all that I did ; scarcely any one 
 understood me, and I did not find in my vicinity two men who did 
 not half give me to understand that they looked upon the entire book 
 as so much balderdash." 
 
 Others have bestowed high praise upon these Researches. 
 
 One of Pestalozzi's biographers says that the Evening Hour of 
 a Hermit is written in oracular sentences. I could feel myself tempted, 
 with reference to this, to apply to Pestalozzi what Plato says in Phse- 
 drus of the prophetess at Delphi and the priestesses at Dodona : " In 
 their madness, they have done many glorious services for Greece, both 
 privately and publicly, but in their sober senses, little or nothing." 
 
 In my opinion, the oracular sentences of the Evening Hour stand 
 high above the elaborate thought of the Researches, which thought, as 
 it appears to me, has by no means succeeded in attaining its object, 
 either as regards the clearness of separate ideas, or the unity of the 
 whole. At times you think you hear Rousseau ; then Christian tones 
 are heard through the rest ; the highest ideal appears, by anticipation, 
 to be that of Fichte.J 
 
 Pestalozzi here assumes three states of man : an original, instinct- 
 like, innocent, animal state of nature, out of which he passes into the 
 social state (this reminds us of Rousseau) ; he works himself out 
 of the social state and raises himself to the moral. The social man is 
 in an unhappy middle condition between animal propensities and moral 
 elevation. 
 
 The original animal state of nature cannot be pointed to in any one 
 individual man ; the innocence of that state ceases with the first cry of 
 the new-born child, and animal depravity arises from whatever stands 
 opposed to the normal condition of our animal existence." Against 
 
 * Pestalozzi's words in the preface to the '* Figures." 
 
 t In the summer of 1792, he went to Germany, at the invitation of his sister in 
 Leipzig, and became acquainted with Gbthe, Herder, Wieland, Klopstock, and 
 Jacobi ; he also visited several normal schools. 
 
 \ Fichte was a German Idealist philosopher, who taught towards the beginning 
 of the present century. — Tr. 
 
20 
 
 IJKE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 this depravity, man seeks for aid in the social state, but finds it not ; 
 it is only the moral will that can save him, " the force of which he 
 opposes to the force of his nature. He will fear a God, in order that 
 the animal instincts of his nature shall not degrade him in his inmost 
 soul. He feels what he can do in this respect, and then he makes what 
 he can do the law to himself of what he ought to do. Subjected to 
 this law, which he imposes upon himself, he is distinguished from all 
 other creatures with which we are acquainted." 
 
 According to this, the conscience itself would be a product of the 
 human will I 
 
 " Morality is quite an individual matter ; it does not exist between 
 two persons. No man can feel for me that I am. No man can feel 
 for me that I am moral." 
 
 If in this passage we think we hear Fichte, in other passages we 
 think we hear the Bible. Christianity Pestalozzi calls the religion of 
 morality, the moral process, mortification, regeneration, the highest 
 effort to make the spirit rule over the flesh. 
 
 I refer the reader to what I have said against Rousseau's men of 
 nature.* Such views have a resemblance to the historical novels, those 
 
 * In 1753, the Acadeni}'- of Dijon offered a prize for the best essay on the origin 
 of the inequahty among men. Rousseau sent in an essay, but did not obtain the 
 prize. He meditated liis discourse in the woods of St. Germain ; there he found 
 the pictare of primitive history, which he proceeded to paint in strong colors, 
 " I combated," he says, speaking of his performance, " the petty lies of men. 
 I ventured to represent human nature in its nakedness, to follow the progress of 
 time and things, by which this nature became deformed, and, by comparing the 
 man of society with the man of nature, to show the reader the true source of his 
 miseries in his imagined perfection." " Ye fools," he exclaims, " who unceasingly 
 complain of nature, leam that all your sufferings come from yourselves." 
 
 Rousseau himself declares that, in his inquiiy, he abstracted his view from all the 
 facts of history. He portrays fictitious men of nature and their condition, and nar- 
 rates how the present, really frightful, civilized state has gradually developed itself 
 out of the primitive state of nature ; this narration he offers to the I'eader as the 
 history of his species. And yet he pretends to censure most of our philosophers on 
 account of its not having occurred to them to doubt if there ever was such a state 
 of nature, as, according to Moses, in whom eveiy Christian philosopher must place 
 belief, Adam, after being taught by God, ceased to be a mere man of nature. Ne- 
 vertheless, he says, we may make conjectures as towiiatthe human race would have 
 become, if it had been left entirely to itself. A singular biography of the human 
 race ! Just as if any one should write the history of a man's life, leaving totally 
 out of sight that he had had a tender father, who had affectionately watched over 
 his helpless childhood; just as if the earth were a great foundling-hospital, in which 
 God the Father had exposed Adam, leaving him to himself, and entirely abandoning 
 Him. But of God the Father there is no mention; only of a certain Mother Nature, 
 however fantastically Rousseau portrays and extols the fictitious primitive state of 
 mankind, every reader, who has any feeling, who has even the faintest,conception 
 of what is meant by the expression " image of God," will turn away in disgust 
 from his rude pastoral. " When I divest man," he says, " of all the supernatural 
 gifts which he has received, and all the artificial abilities which he could attain only 
 in a long process of development, when, in a word, I contemplate him as he must 
 have proceeded fiom the hand of nature, I behold in him an animal, weaker and 
 less active than many other animals, but, on the w^hole, more advantageously 
 organized than all the rest." 
 
 These animals, called men, lived, according to Rousseau, without shelter, roving 
 about in the woods, without language, without any desire for the society of their 
 fellows, perhaps without knowing one another at all personally, and without 
 marriage. " The mother satisfied the wants of her children in the first instance, 
 because it did herself good ; she continued to nourish them because they had 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PE8TAL0ZZI. 
 
 21 
 
 hybrid offspring of truth and fiction. Who would wish to become 
 acquainted with history through such works ? Just as little do we 
 become acquainted with the outlines of the history of the life of hu- 
 manity, or of an individual man, from Pestalozzi's Researches, and still 
 less from Rousseau : the understanding of both runs riot in the regions 
 of fancy ; in vain does the reader weary himself with the effort to 
 convert the almost odious creations of their imagination into real 
 existences. Where and when, for example, did Pestalozzi's man of 
 nature ever exist — an innocent an'mml man, endowed with instinct ? 
 This character does not apply to Adam in Paradise, who was not an 
 animal, but a lord of the animals, and still less does it apply to any 
 child of Adam. In how simple and sublime a manner, on the contrary, 
 do the Holy Scriptures comprehend and characterize the whole human 
 race. 
 
 At the same time, T will not deny that Pestalozzi's Researches con- 
 tain a great number of very excellent passages, and compel the serious 
 reader to reflect. From those passages, I will only select one. As in 
 Christopher and Alice, so here Pestalozzi declares himself decidedly 
 against rebellion, but just as decidedly against grovelling servility. 
 " Although I doubt," he says, " whether the people are more debased 
 by rebellion, than by political deception, yet I approve of rebellion as 
 little as of the deceitful violence of state-policy. The depravity of the 
 
 become dear to her by habit ; they forsook the mother as soon as they had gained 
 sufficient strength to seek their own nourishment ; and, as they were pretty certain 
 to be permanently dispersed, if once they went out of each other's sight, it was 
 never long before they ceased even to recognize each other." There was no 
 mention of the father, he never knew his children, and education there was none 
 whatever. The first men were also dumb, as language was only invented in the 
 course of thousands of years..(*) 
 
 It will scarcely be necessary to follow Rousseau in his further execution of the 
 portraiture of these natural men, as, according to him, they " proceeded from the 
 hand of nature." Who then is this Nature of whom Rousseau talks? Is she 
 forsooth that Monster that Gothe represents to us, eternally gulping down her food, 
 eternally chewing the cud? In any case, she would be a bungling and unfeeling 
 artist, if the m-^n she produced were such as Rousseau depicts. He asserts, never- 
 theless, that these men "lived tranquil and innocent lives," that their souls were 
 in peace, and their bodies in health ; Imt that, unfortunately, they had been robbed 
 of that paradisaical life through their " perfectibility." 
 
 Although we nmst censure Rousseau's discourse as fanciful, yet, in one point of 
 view, it has decided truth in it. Surrounded by a godless, profane race, himself 
 contaminated by their depravity, he turned his gaze in despair to nations in which 
 he saw the opposite of French over-refinement, and appealed repeatedly to Hotten- 
 tots and Caribs, whose mode of existence, he affirmed, stood nearest to the natural 
 state of man. He resembles a physician v/ho has the clearest perception of the 
 desperate condition of a patient, but despises, because he does not comprehend, the 
 proper remedy, and therefore searches about for wrong ones. — Raumer's Life of 
 Rousseau. 
 
 (*) Voltaire wrote the following characteristic letter to Rousseau about his discourse, in 1755 : — 
 " I have received your new book against the human race, and thank you for it. You will please 
 men, to wliom you speak the truth, but not make them better. No one could paint in stronger 
 colors the horrors of human society, from whicli our ignorance and weakness promise themselves 
 so many delights. Never has any one employed so much genius to make us into beasts ; when 
 one reads your book, one is seized with a desire to go down on all fours. Nevertheless, as I have 
 left off tt'is habit already more than sixty years, I feel, unfortunately, that it is impossible for me 
 to take to it again, and I leave this natural mode of walking to others who are more worthy of it 
 than you and I. Neither can I take ship, in order to visit the savages of Canada, firstly, because 
 the maladies to which I am condemned render a European phy.siciaii necessary to me, then again, 
 because there is at present war in that country, and the example of our nations has made the 
 savages almost as bad as we are ourselves. I am content to live as a peaceful savage in the 
 lonely district adjoining your native land, &<■ " 
 
22 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OP PE8TAL0ZZI. 
 
 social condition leads us obviously to two extremes, which ruin our 
 species in different ways, but both ways equally, and these are reck- 
 lessness and enervation. We dare not, however, for fear of the dangers 
 which recklessness, and its utmost evil, rebellion, suspend over our 
 species, mistake those which the enervation of our citizens causes in 
 the social state. It is a total want of faith in political virtue, a total 
 indifference to the question of social rights. Whoever is degraded by 
 it despises himself, and hates the man who does not do so. If rights 
 are spoken of, he says, * We have wherewithal to eat and to drink and 
 fine houses;' if the people are spoken of, he asks, 'Who are they?' 
 The human race, he thinks, is the money-chest — freedom, everything 
 that brings in money and everything that gives pleasure — slavery, 
 everything that costs money and everything that gives pain. In this 
 condition, our species combines the most disgusting ostentation with 
 the most profound meanness. Loaded with the curse of the political 
 yoke, without political strength, a stranger to all those invigorating 
 feelings which arise from a happy independence, it dances for bread, 
 the ring in its nose, bows down, kneels, and performs antics before the 
 man who has taught it this dance of service with a stick in his hand. 
 Man is without benevolence towards his species ; if the needy condition 
 of his children is spoken of, he says, * Let them care for themselves, 
 I have had to care for myself;' and just as little is he concerned about 
 posterity, his species, and his nation. The question, whether man may 
 not be more debased by such an enervation than by rebellion, is then, 
 please God, no captious question." 
 
 6. Pestalozzi in Stanz. 1798. 
 
 Thus we see Pestalozzi but little or not at all engaged in educational 
 undertakings during the eighteen years from 1780 to 1798 ; his 
 writings too during this time are mainly of a philosophical and 
 political character, and relate only indirectly to education. But the 
 French Revolution introduced a new epoch, for Pestalozzi, as well as 
 for Switzerland. 
 
 The revolutionary armies of France pressed into the country, old 
 forms were destroyed, the whole of Switzerland was consolidated into 
 an ''inseparable republic," at the head of which stood five directors, after 
 the model of the French directional government of that time. Among 
 these was Legrand, a man of a class that is always becoming more 
 rare. I visited the amiable octogenarian in Steinthal, where formerly, 
 with his friend Oberlin, he had labored for the welfare of the com- 
 munes. When the conversation turned on the happiness or the 
 education of the people, or on the education of youth generally, the 
 old man became animated with youthful enthusiasm, and tears started 
 to his eyes.* 
 
 Legrand was a friend of Pestalozzi's ; no wonder, seeing that the 
 two men very nearly resembled each other in their way of thinking, as 
 Well as in their enthusiastic activity and their unbounded hopefulness. 
 Pestalozzi joined the new republic, while, at the same time, he did all 
 in his power to subdue the jacobinical element in it. He wrote 
 a paper " On the Present Condition and Disposition of Mankind." In 
 
 ♦ In our times, there is too great a tendency to consider such enthusiasm Quixotic. 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 23 
 
 this paper, as also in the Swiss People's Journal," which he edited at 
 the instigation of the government, he pressed upon the attention of 
 the people the necessity of a return to the integrity and piety of their 
 ancestors; the instruction and education of youth, he represented, 
 were the means for attaining this object. 
 
 At this time, he declared that he would become a schoolmaster.* 
 
 Legrand entered into the idea ; and Pestalozzi was already about to 
 open an educational institution in the canton of Argovia, when one of 
 the misfortunes of war intervened. On the 9th of September, 1798, 
 Stanz in Unterwalden was burnt by the French, the entire canton 
 was laid waste, and a multitude of fatherless and motherless children 
 were wandering about destitute and without a shelter. Legrand now 
 M called upon Pestalozzi to go to Stanz and undertake the care of the 
 ' destitute children. 
 
 Pestalozzi went ; what he experienced he has himself told us. 
 
 The convent of the Ursulines there was given up to him ; he took 
 up his abode in it, accompanied only by a housekeeper, before it was 
 even put into a fit condition for the reception of children. Gradually 
 he gathered around him as many as eighty poor children, from four to 
 ten years old, some of them orphans, horribly neglected, infected with 
 the itch and scurvy, and covered with vermin. Among ten of them, 
 scarcely one could say the alphabet. He describes the educational 
 experiments which he made with such children, and speaks of these 
 experiments as *'a sort of feeler of the pulse of the science which 
 he sought to improve, a venturesome effort." " A person with the use 
 of his eyes," he adds, " would certainly not have ventured it ; fortu- 
 nately, I was blind." 
 
 For example, under the most difficult circumstances, he wanted to 
 prove, by actual experiment, that those things in which domestic X X 
 education possesses advantages must be imitated in public education. 
 
 He gave the children no set lessons on religion ; being suspected 
 by the Roman Catholic parents, as a Protestant, and at the same 
 time as an adherent of the new government, he did not dare ; but 
 whenever the occurrences of daily life presented an opportunity, he 
 would make them the groundwork of inculcating some religious or 
 moral lesson. As he had formerly done at Neuhoff, he sought to 
 ''^ combine intellectual instruction with manual labor, the establishment 
 ^ for instruction with that for industrial occupations, and to fuse the two 
 
 ♦ There is a gap here in Rauraer's account, which I fill up from an excellent 
 essay on PestalozzVs Idea of Human Culture, by my friend Dr. Monnich, of 
 Nuremberg. — Tb. 
 
 " Although, in pointing to an ennobling education of youth, and especially the 
 youth of the people and the poor, as the securest guarantee of a lawfully ordered 
 political condition, he only did that which he could not leave undone, still most 
 people believed that he was speaking and writing thus industriously, merely with the 
 view of procuring for himself an office under the new government, when an oppor- 
 tunity should arise. The government, on whom he urged with far too much 
 vehemence the importance of order, justice, and law, actually offered him an 
 appointment, in the hope that he would then be quiet. But what was their 
 astonishment, when, in reply to their inquiry as to what office he would be willing 
 to accept, he said, ' I will be a Schoolmaster.' But few understood him, only 
 those who, like himself, were earnestly desirous for the foundation of a truly 
 equitable political condition." 
 
24 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 into each other. But it became clear to him, that the first stages of in- 
 tellectual training must be separated from those of industrial training and 
 precede the fusion of the two. It was here in Stanz also that Pesta- 
 lozzi, for want of other assistants, set children to instruct children, 
 a plan which Lancaster was similarly led to adopt in consequence of 
 the inability of the teacher to instruct the large numbers of children 
 who were placed under his charge.* Pestalozzi remarks, without disap- 
 probation, that a feeling of honor was by this means, awakened in the 
 children ; a remark which directly contradicts his opinion, that the 
 performance of the duties of the monitor proceeded from a disposition 
 similar to brotherly love. 
 
 Another plan, which is now imitated in countless elementary schools, 
 was likewise tried by Pestalozzi at Stanz, namely, that of making 
 a number of children pronounce the same sentence simultaneously, 
 syllable for syllable.f " The confusion arising from a number of 
 children repeating after me at once," he says, "led me to see the 
 necessity of a measured pace in speaking, and this measured pace 
 heightened the effect of the lesson." 
 
 Pestalozzi repeats, in his account of the Stanz institution, what he 
 had brought forward in Leonard and Gertrude. " My aim^ " he says, 
 " was to carry the simplification of the means of teaching so far, 
 that all the common people might easily be brought to teach their 
 children, and gradually to render the schools almost superfluous for the 
 first elements of instruction. As the mother is the first to nourish her 
 child physically, so also, by the appointment of God, she must be the 
 first to give it spiritual nourishment ; I reckon that very great evils 
 have been engendered by sending children too early to school, and 
 by all the artificial means of educating them away from home. The 
 time will come, so soon as we shall have simplified instruction, when 
 every mother will be able to teach, without the help of others, and 
 thereby, at the same time, to go on herself always learning." J 
 
 I refer the reader to Pestalozzi' s own description of his singularly 
 active labors in Stanz, where he was not only the teacher and trainer 
 of eighty children, but, as he says, paymaster, man-servant, and almost 
 housemaid, at the same time. In addition to this, sickness broke out 
 among the children, and the parents showed themselves shamelessly 
 ungrateful. 
 
 Pestalozzi would have sunk under these efforts had he not been 
 liberated on the 8th of June, 1799, by the French, who, being hard 
 pressed by the Austrians, came to Stanz, and converted one wing of 
 the convent into a military hospital. This induced him to let the 
 children return to their friends, and he went himself up the 
 Gurnigel mountain. § Only twenty-two children remained ; these, 
 
 * Lancaster's monitors, i. e. children set to teach and superintend other children. 
 At that time (1798)," says Pestalozzi, "nobody had begun to speak of mutual 
 instruction." ^ 
 
 f The plan of simultaneous reading and speaking had been introduced into the 
 Austrian schools at an earlier period. 
 
 % With views diametrically opposite to these, people go on erecting and con- 
 ducting numbers of infants' schools. 
 
 § In the Bernese Oberland. There is a medicinal spring there. 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 25 
 
 says Mr. Heussler, " were attended to, taught, and trained, if not in 
 Pestalozzi's spirit, still with care and with more order and cleanliness, 
 under the guidance of the reverend Mr. Businger." 
 
 " On the Gurnigel," says Pestalozzi, " I enjoyed days of recreation. 
 I required them ; it is a wonder that I am still alive. I shall not 
 forget those days, as long as I live : they saved me, but I could not 
 live without my work." 
 
 Pestalozzi was much blamed for giving up the Stanz institution, 
 although necessity had compelled him to do so. " People said to my 
 face," he says, "that it was a piece of folly, to believe that, because 
 a man had written something sensible in his thirtieth year, he would 
 therefore be capable of doing something sensible in his fiftieth year. 
 I was said to be brooding over a beautiful dream." 
 
 Pestalozzi came down from the Gurnigel ; at the advice of Chief 
 Justice Schnell, he went to Burgdorf, the second town in the canton 
 of Bern. 
 
 7. Pestalozzi at Burgdorf. 1799-1804:. 
 
 Through the influence of well-wishers, Pestalozzi obtained leave to 
 give instruction in the primary schools of Burgdorf.* He had many- 
 enemies. The head master of the schools imagined that Pestalozzi 
 wanted to supplant him in his appointment : the report spread that the 
 Heidelberg catechism was in danger : " it was whispered," says Pesta- 
 lozzi, that I myself could not write, nor work accounts, nor even read 
 properly. Popular reports are not always entirely destitute of truth," 
 he adds ; it is true that I could not write, nor read, nor work accounts 
 well." 
 
 As far as the regulations of the school would allow, Pestalozzi pro- 
 secuted here the experiments in elementary instruction which he had 
 begun at Stanz. M. Glayre, a member of the executive council of the 
 canton, to whom he endeavoured to explain the tendency of these ex- 
 periments,, made the ominous remark, " Yo u want to TOTidar fi^dnr^^"^'^^ 
 mechanical." " He hit the nail on the head," says Pestalozzi, " and 
 supplied me with the very expression that indicated the object of my 
 endeavours, and of the means which I employed for attaining it." 
 
 Pestalozzi had not been schoolmaster at Burgdorf quite a year, when 
 he had a pulmonary attack ; in consequence of this he gave up the 
 appointment, and a new epoch of his life commenced. M. Fischer, 
 secretary to the Helvetian minister of public instruction, had enter- 
 tained the idea of founding a normal school in the castle of Burgdorf, 
 but had died before carrying it into execution. With this end in view, 
 he had induced M. Krusi to come to Burgdorf. Krusi was a native of 
 Gaiss, in the canton of Appenzell, was schoolmaster there at the early 
 age of eighteen, and had migrated thence in the year 1799, taking 
 with him 28 children.l Pestalozzi now proposed to Kriisi to join him 
 in establishing an educational institution : Kriisi willingly agreed, and 
 through him the co-operation of M. Tobler, who had been for the last 
 five years tutor in a family in Basel, was obtained ; through Tobler, 
 
 * In a school in which children of from four to eight years old received instmction 
 in reading and writing, under the general superintendence of a female teacher, 
 t Of this migration more will be said further on. 
 
26 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PE8TAL0ZZI. 
 
 that of M. Buss, of Tubingen. With these three assistants, Pestalozzi 
 opened the institution in the winter of 1800. 
 
 It was in Burgdorf that Pestalozzi commenced a work which, with 
 the " Evening Hour" and "Leonard and Gertrude," stands out con- 
 spicuously amongst his writings. It was commenced on the 1st of 
 January, 1801. 
 
 It bears the queer title, " How Gertrude teaches her Children : an 
 attempt to give Directions to Mothers how to instruct their own Chil- 
 dren." The reader must not be misled by the title ; the book contains 
 anything but directions for mothers. 
 
 There are numerous contradictions throughout the book, as well as 
 on the title page ; and it is therefore a most difficult task to give a con- 
 densed view of it. Almost the only way to accomplish this will be to 
 resolve it into its elements. 
 
 Nothing can be more touching than the passage in which the author 
 speaks of the desire of his whole life to alleviate the condition of the 
 suffering people — of his inability to satisfy this desire — of his many 
 blunders — and of his despair of himself ; and then humbly thanks God, 
 who had preserved him, when he had cast himself away, and who gra- 
 ciously permitted him, even in old age, to look forward to a brighter 
 future. It is impossible to read anything more affecting. 
 
 The second element of this book is a fierce and fulmmat ing bat tle 
 against the sins andfaults of. his tim^L. He advances to tHe assault at 
 storm-pace, and clears everything before him with the irresistible force 
 of truth. He directs his attack principally against the hollow education 
 of our time, particularly in the higher ranks of society. He calls the 
 members of the aristocracy " miserable creatures of mere words, who 
 by the artificialities of their mode of life are rendered incapable of 
 feeling that they themselves stand on stilts, and that they must come 
 down off their wretched wooden legs, in order to stand on God's earth 
 with even the same amount of firmness as the people." 
 
 In another part of the book, Pestalozzi declaims warmly against all 
 the education of the present age. " It sacrifices (he says) the substance 
 of all instruction to the nonsense about particular isolated systems of 
 instruction, and by filling the mind with fragments of truth, it quenches 
 the spirit of truth itself, and deprives mankind of the power of inde- 
 pendence which is based thereon. I have found, what was very obvious, 
 that this system of instruction does not base the use of particular means 
 either on elementary principles or elementary forms. The state of 
 popular instruction rendered it inevitable that Europe should sink into 
 error, or rather madness, and into this it really did sink. On the one 
 hand, it raised itself into a gigantic height in particular arts ; on 
 the other, it lost for the whole of its people all the stability and support 
 which are to be obtained by resting on the guidance of nature. On the 
 one side, no quarter of the globe ever stood so high ; but on the other, 
 no quarter of the globe has ever sunk so low. With the golden head 
 of its particular arts, it touches the clouds, like the image of the pro- 
 phet ; but popular instruction, which ought to be the basis and support 
 of this golden head, is everywhere, on the contrary, the most wretched, 
 fragile, good-for-nothing clay, like the feet of that gigantic image." 
 
 For this incongruity in our intellectual culture, he blames chiefly the 
 art of printing^ through which^ he says, the eyes have become„,bpo^^" 
 eyes — men have become book-men. 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OP PE8TAL0ZZI. 
 
 27 
 
 . .Throughout the work, he speaks against the senseless use of the 
 tongue^against the habit of talking without any real purpose. "TThe 
 babbling disposition of our time (he says) is so much bound up with the 
 struggle of tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands for their daily 
 bread, and with their slavish adherence to custom, that it will be long, 
 very long, before this temporizing race shall gladly receive into their 
 hearts truths so much opposed to their sensual depravity. Wherever 
 the fundamental faculties of the human mind are allowed to lie dormant, 
 and on those dormant faculties empty words are propt up, there you 
 are making dreamers, whose visions are all the more visionary because 
 the words that were propt up on their miserable yawning existence 
 were high-sounding and full of pretension. As a matter of course, such 
 pupils will dream any and every thing before they will dream that they 
 are sleeping aiid dreaming ; but all those about them who are awake 
 perceive their presumption, and (when it suits) put them down as 
 somnambulists." 
 
 "The meaningless declamation of this superficial knowledge pro- 
 duces men who fancy that they have reached the goal in all branches of 
 study, just because their whole life is a belabored prating about that 
 goal ; but they never accomplish so much as to make an effort to reach 
 it, because through their life it never had that alluring charm in their 
 eyes which any object must possess to induce a man to make an effort 
 to attain it. The present age abounds in men of this class, and is 
 diseased by a kind of wisdom which carries us forward proformd, as 
 cripples are borne along a race-course, to the goal of knowledge, when, 
 at the same time, it could never enable us to advance towards this goal 
 by our own efforts, before our feet had been healed." 
 
 In other parts of the book he attacks go vernments as indifferent to ^ 
 the welfare of the people. " The lower ""classes of Europe (he says) 
 are neglected and wretched : most of those who stand sufficiently near 
 to be able to help them have no time for thinking what may be for 
 their welfare — they have always something to do quite different from 
 this." 
 
 From this, the second and polemical element of the book, I pass to 
 the third and positive one, namely, the kind of education by which 
 Pestalozzi proposes to replace the false education of our time. This 
 might in some measure be anticipated from the polemical passages which 
 have been cited. 
 
 He thus enunciates the problem which he proposed to himself to , 
 solve : " In the empirical researches which I made in reference to my 
 subject, I did not start from any positive system ; I was not acquainted 
 with any one ; I simply put to myself the question. What would you , i 
 do, if you wanted to give a single child all the theoretical knowledge 
 and practical skill which he requires in order to be able to attend pro- K 
 perly to the great concerns of life, and so attain to inward contentment?" 
 
 Theoretical knowledge and practical skill constitute, accordingly, 
 the most important subjects of the work. They are treated with 
 a special relation to the two questions, — What knowledge and skill do 7^ 
 children require ? and. How are these best imparted to them ? The 
 aim is to point out the proper object of education, and the way to attain 
 that object. 
 
 Of practical skill, however, there is comparatively very little said, 
 
28 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 notwithstanding that Pestalozzi sets so high a value upon it. KijOW- 
 ledge without skill (he says) is perhaps the most fatal gift which an i 
 evil genius has bestowed upon^the present age." But Pestalozzi's ideas 
 in relation to practical skill, and the method of attaining it, seem to 
 have been still indistinct. 
 
 On the other hand, he is qaite at home in the region of theoretical 
 knowledge : to show the starting-point, the road, and the destination, 
 in the journey through this region, is the main design of his work. 
 
 His polemic against senseless talking shows that he had spught and 
 found the real root of the tree of which words are the spiritual blossoms. 
 
 The beginning of all knowledge, according to Pestalozzi, k opscrv- 
 f ation ; the last point to be attained, a clear notion. He says : " If 
 I look back and ask myself what I have really done towards the 
 improvement of the methods of elementary instruction, I find that, in 
 recognizing observation as the absolute basis of all knowledge, I have 
 established the "Rrst and most important principle of instruction, and 
 that, setting aside all particular systems of instruction, I have endea- 
 voured to discover what ought to be the character of the instruction 
 itself, and what are the fundamental laws according to which the edu- 
 cation of the human race must be determined by nature." In another 
 place, he requires it to be acknowledged, " that observation is the ab- 
 solute basis of all knowledge, in other words, that all knowledge must 
 proceed from observation and must admit of being retraced to that 
 source." 
 
 But what does Pestalozzi understand by observation ?^ " It is (he 
 says) simply directing the senses to outward objects, and exciting-con- 
 sciousness of the impression produced on them by those objects." He 
 -y refers, of course, principally to the sense of sight. But the ear is not 
 ' to be neglected. " When sounds are produced so as to be heard by the 
 child, and its consciousness of the impression which these sounds make 
 on its mind through the sense of hearing is aroused, this, to the child, 
 is just as much observation, as when objects are placed before its eyes, 
 and consciousness is awakened by the impression which the objects 
 make on the sense of sight. By the aid of his Spelling Book, therefore,. | 
 the child's ear is to be familiarized with the series of elementary sounds p 
 which constitutes the foundation of a knowledge of language, just as 
 it is to be made acquainted with visible objects by the aid of his Book 
 for Mothers. 
 
 ^ According to this, observation would mean every impression which 
 r the mind receives through the eye and the ear. 
 
 Does Pestalozzi exclude the remaining senses ? No ; for he fre- 
 quently speaks of the impressions of the Jive senses, and he says that 
 the understanding collects the impressions which the senses receive 
 from external nature into a whole, or into a notion, and then develops 
 this idea until it attains clearness. And elsewhere he says that the 
 mechanical form of all instruction should be regulated by the eternal 
 laws according to which the human mind rises from the perceptions of 
 sense to clear notions. 
 
 Pestalozzi repeatedly dwells upon this process of intellectual 
 development. 
 
 Above everything, he will have attention given to the first step in 
 the process, namely observation. Care is to be taken that the objects 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 29 
 
 are seen separately by the children, not dimly at a distance, but close 
 at hand and distinctly ; then also that there shall be placed before the , 
 children, not abnormal, but characteristic specimens of any class of 
 objects — such as will convey a correct idea of the thing and of its most 
 important properties. Thus, for example, a lame, one-eyed, or six- 
 fingered man, he says, would not be proper to convey the idea of the 
 human form. 
 
 Out of the observation of an object, the first thing that arises, he 
 says, is the necessity of naming it ; from naming it, we passj^yg^JtObdAw- 
 termining its properties, that is to description ; out of a clear description 
 is^ftirally~develope'd'the definition — the distinct idea of the object. The 
 full maturity of this, the last fruit of all instruction, depends materially 
 on the vigorous germination of the seed sown in the first instance — on 
 the amount of wisdom exercised in guiding the children to habits of 
 observation, definitions not founded on observation, he says, produce 
 a superficial and unprofitable kind of knowledge.*) 
 
 Just when we begin to think that we understand Pestalozzi's views, 
 he again leads us into uncertainty as to the idea which he attaches to 
 observation. 
 
 He says the idea had only lately struck him, that all our knowledge 
 arises out of number, form, and words." On this triple basis, he says, 
 education must proceed ; and — 
 
 "1. It must teach the children to look attentively at every object 
 which they are made to perceive as unity, that is, as separated from 
 those other objects with which it appears in connexion. 
 
 " 2. It must make them acquainted with the form of every object, 
 that is, its size and proportion. 
 
 " 3. It must teach them as early as possible the names and words 
 applicable to all the objects with which they are acquainted." 
 
 Pestalozzi found it difficult, however, to answer the question, "Why 
 are not all the other properties which the five senses enable us to per- 
 ceive in objects, just as much elements of our knowledge as number, 
 form, and name ?" His answer is, " All possible objects have neces- 
 sarily number, form, and name ; but the remaining properties which 
 the senses enable us to perceive are not possessed by any object in 
 common with all others, but this property is shared with one object, 
 and that with another." 
 
 When Pestalozzi made form a category to embrace all and everything, 
 he only thought of the visible, as is evidenced by the further develop- 
 ment of his instruction in form, which deals chiefly with the measuring 
 of visible objects. 
 
 But there are innumerable observations which have nothing whatever 
 to do with form and number ; for example, tasting honey, smelling 
 roses, &c. 
 
 The prominence which Pestalozzi gave to form and number caused 
 him to undertake a new treatment of the subjects of geometry and arith- 
 metic. Subsequently he divided geometry into instruction in form and 
 instruction in spaces, for the reason that we perceive shape and size 
 
 * This important principle of education is still but very imperfectly understood 
 by English teachers, who far too often begin with the definition, instead of making 
 it the ultimate point to be attained. 
 
30 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 (mathematical quality and quantity) independently of each other ; 
 drawing he made a part of the instruction in form — writing a part of 
 drawing.* 
 
 But what became of Pestalozzi's principle, that observation is the 
 foundation of all intelligence, when he thus gave an undue prominence 
 to form and number, and neglected all other properties ? Suppose that 
 we put a glass cube into the hands of a child, and he observes in respect 
 to it nothing else but that it has the cubic form, and, over and above 
 this, that it is one cube, — so far this glass cube is in no way distin- 
 guished from a wooden one. But if I require to take notice of other 
 properties, such as color, transparency, weight, &c., in order that I may 
 form a correct idea of the glass cube, as a separate object, and so de- 
 scribe it that it shall be distinguished with certainty from every other 
 cube, — then I must fix my attention, not only on form and number, but 
 on all apparent properties, as elements in a complete observation. 
 
 Lastly, language itself has nothing to do with observation. Why 
 should I not be able to form a perfectly correct notion of an object that 
 has no name — for instance, a newly-discovered plant ? Language only 
 gives us the expression for the impressions of the senses ; in it is re- 
 flected the whole world of our perceptions. " It is," as Pestalozzi rightly 
 observes, " the reflex of all the impressions which Nature's entire do- 
 main has made on the human race."t But what does he go on to say? 
 
 Therefore I make use of it, and endeavour, by the guidance of its 
 uttered sounds, to reproduce in the child the selfsame impressions 
 which, in the human race, have occasioned and formed these sounds. 
 Great is the gift of language. It gives to the child in one moment 
 what nature required thousands of years to give to man." 
 
 In that case, every child would be a rich heir of antiquity, without 
 the trouble of acquisition ; words would be current notes for the things 
 w^hich they designate. But both Nature and History protest against 
 payment in such currency, and give only to him that hath. Does not 
 Pestalozzi himself repeatedly protest against this very thing ? " The 
 christian people of our quarter of the world (he says) have sunk into 
 these depths, because in their lower school establishments the mind has 
 been loaded with a burden of empty words, which has not only effaced 
 the impressions of Nature, but has even destroyed the inward 
 susceptibility for such impressions." 
 
 Pestalozzi's further treatment of the instruction in language clearly 
 proves that, contrary to his own principles, he really ascribed a magical 
 power to words — that he put them more or less in the place of observ- 
 ation — and (to speak with a figure) that he made the reflected image 
 of a thing equal to the thing itself. 
 
 As this error of Pestalozzi's is of the greatest consequence, I will 
 examine it more closely. In the instruction in language, he begins 
 with lessons 9n sounds ; these are followed by lessons on words ; and 
 these again by lessons on language. 
 
 * I shall say more on this point when I come to speak of the mathematical 
 instruction. 
 
 f I here leave unnoticed the two facts, that language is not merely a living reflex 
 of Nature — of the outer world of phenomena — but also of the inner man, and that 
 a word itself may be an object of observation and a subject of discussion. 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 81 
 
 I. Lessons on Sounds. — "The Spelling Book (says Pestalozzi) must 
 contain the entire range of sounds of which the language consists, and 
 portions of it should be repeated daily in every family, not only by the 
 child that is going through the exercises to learn how to spell, but also 
 by mothers, within hearing of the child in the cradle, in order that these 
 sounds may, by frequent repetition, be so deeply impressed upon the 
 memory of the child, even while it is yet unable to pronounce a single 
 one of them, that they shall never be forgotten. No one imagines to 
 what a degree the attention of infants is aroused by the repetition of 
 such simple sounds as ba, ba, ba, da, da, da, ma, ma, ma, la, la, la, &c., 
 or what a charm such repetition has for them." 
 
 And so the child in the cradle is to have no rest from elementary 
 teaching ; the cradle songs sung to it are to consist of such delightful 
 bawling and bleating as ba, ba, ba, &c., which might well scare away 
 the child's guardian angels. 
 
 As soon as the child begins to talk, it is to " repeat some sequences 
 of these sounds every day ;" then follow exercises in spelling. 
 
 II. " Lessons in Words, or rather. Lessons in Names." — According 
 to Pestalozzi, " all the most important objects in the world are brought 
 imder the notice of the child in the Book for Mothers." 
 
 " Lessons in Names consist in giving the children lists of the names 
 I of the most important objects in all three kingdoms of nature, in 
 history, in geography, and in the pursuits and relations of mankind. 
 These lists of words are placed in the hands of the child, merely as 
 exercises in learning to read, immediately after he has gone through 
 his Spelling Book ; and experience has shown me that it is possible to 
 make the children so thoroughly acquainted with these lists of words, 
 that they shall be able to repeat them from memory, merely in the time 
 that is required to perfect them in reading : the gain of what at this 
 age is so complete a knowledge of lists of names so various and com- 
 prehensive, is immeasurable, in facilitating the subsequent instruction 
 of the children." 
 
 Here again it is not even remotely hinted that the children ought to 
 know the things named ; words, mere words, are put in the place of 
 observation. 
 
 3. Lessons in Language.^ — The highest aim of language, according 
 to Pestalozzi's idea, is to lead us from dim perceptions to clear notions, 
 and that by the following process : — 
 
 1. " We acquire a general knowledge of an object, and name it as 
 miity, as an object. 
 
 2. " We gradually become conscious of its distinguishing qualities, 
 and learn how to name them. 
 
 3. " We receive through language the power of designating these 
 qualities of the objects more precisely by means of verbs- and adverbs." 
 
 The first step in this process is, as we have seen, the object of the 
 Pestalozzian lessons in names ; but, when viewed more closely, the 
 lessons are found to consist, not in the naming of objects arising out of 
 knowing them, but in the names for their own sake. 
 
 In reference to the second operation, when Pestalozzi writes on the 
 black board the word " eel," and adds the qualities, " slippery, worm- 
 shaped, thick-skinned," the children by no means become conscious of 
 the distinguishing qualities of an eel, and learn to name them, through 
 
32 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 observing an eel ; they rather get adjectives to the noun " eel." Of 
 the process by which these adjectives arise from the observation of the 
 qualities which they express, there is again nothing said. 
 
 This neglect of observation is still more striking, when Pestalozzi, 
 further on, classifies what is to be learned under the following heads : 
 
 1. Geography. 3. Physics. 5. Physiology. 
 
 2. History. 4. Natural History. 
 
 Each of these five heads he divides again into forty subdivisions, so 
 that he makes two hundred subdivisions. He now proceeds to give 
 lists of words in all these subjects in alphabetical order, which lists are 
 to be impressed upon the children's memories, " till it is impossible 
 they should be forgotten." Afterwards, this alphabetical nomenclature 
 is to be transformed into a " scientific" one, " I do not know (says 
 Pestalozzi) whether it is necessary to illustrate the matter further by 
 an example ; it appears to me almost superfluous : nevertheless, I will 
 do so, on account of the novelty of form. E. G. One of the subdi- 
 visions of Europe is Germany : the child is first of all made well 
 acquainted with the division of Germany into ten circles, so that he 
 shall not be able to forget it ; then the names of the towns of Germany 
 are placed before him, at first in mere alphabetical order, for him to 
 read, but each of these towns is previously marked with the number 
 of the circle in which it lies. As soon as the child can read the names 
 of the towns fluently, he is taught the connection of the numbers 
 with the subdivisions of the main heads, and in a few hours he is able 
 to determine the place of the entire number of German towns in these 
 subdivisions. For example, suppose the names of the following places 
 in Germany are set before him, marked by numbers : — 
 
 Aachen (Aix-la-Cha- 
 
 pelle), 8. 
 Aalen, 3. 
 Abenberg, 4. 
 Aberthan, 11. 
 Acken, 10. 
 Adersbach, 11. 
 Agler, 1. 
 Ahrbergen, 10. 
 Aigremont, 8. 
 
 Allenbach, 5. ' Alteusalza, 10. 
 Allendorf, 5. Altkirchen, 8. 
 
 Allersperg, 2. Altona, 10. 
 
 Alschaufen, 3. Altorf, 1. 
 
 Alsleben, 10. Altranstadt, 9. 
 
 Altbunzlau, 11. Altwasser, 13. 
 
 Altena, 8. Alkerdissen, 8. 
 
 Altenau, 10. Amberg, 2. 
 
 Altenberg, 9. Ambras, 1. 
 
 Altenburg, 9. Amoneburg, 6. 
 
 Ala, 1. Andernach, 6. 
 
 He reads them all in the following manner : — 
 Aachen lies in the Westphalian circle ; 
 Abenberg in the Franconian circle ; 
 Acken in the Lower Saxony circle ; and so on. 
 In this manner, the child is evidently enabled, at first sight of the 
 number or mark referring to the subdivisions of the main head, to de- 
 termine the place of each word of the list in the scientific classification 
 of the subject, and thus, as I before said, to change the alphabetical 
 into a scientific nomenclature." 
 
 It is quite unnecessary to give a refutation of these views.* 
 
 * Observe, too, how Pestalozzi has taken the names of any obscure places that 
 occurred to him at the moment, such as Aberthan, Ala, &c. Out of the 31 places 
 whose names are given, five at most would deserve to be included in a school 
 geography. Not a word is said about maps. 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 33 
 
 Further on in the book, there follow some directions " how to ex- 
 plain more fully to the pupil the nature, qualities, and functions of all 
 the objects with which the lessons in names have made him acquainted, 
 and which have already been explained to him, to a certain extent, by 
 placing their qualities side by side with their names." For this pur- 
 pose, the mother is to read to the child certain sentences, and the child 
 is to repeat them after her. Many of these sentences would be quite 
 unintelligible to a child ; for instance, " The creditor desires payment," 
 " The right must be maintained." They are mere exercises in reading, 
 not based in the slightest degree on observation. 
 
 We have seen that Pestalozzi fixed his attention chiefly on the prin- 
 ciple that instruction must be based on observation, out of which the 
 clear idea is at last developed. He says that we are dazzled by the 
 charm of a language, which we speak without having any real 
 knowledge of the ideas conveyed by the words which we allow to run 
 through our mouths." He combats all scientific teaching which is 
 analyzed, explained, and dictated by men who have not learnt to think 
 and speak in harmony with the laws of nature," whose " definitions 
 must be conjured into the soul like a deus ex macliind, or must 
 be blown into the ears as by stage -prompters ;" the effect of whicli is 
 that men "sink into a miserable mode of education, fit only for forming 
 play-actors." He speaks with great warmth against "definitions not i 
 founded on observation." " A definition (he says) is the simplest 
 expression of clear ideas, but for the child it contains truth only in so far 
 as he has a clear and comprehensive view of the groundwork of obser- >^ 
 vation on which these ideas are based; whenever he is left without 
 the greatest clearness in the observation of a natural object which has 
 been defined to him, he only learns to play with words like so many 
 counters, deceives himself, and places a blind belief in sounds which 
 will convey to him no idea, nor give rise to any other thought, except 
 just this, that he has uttered certain sounds.* 
 Hinc nice lacrymcB^ 
 
 These excellent principles cannot receive too much attention ; but if 
 Pestalozzi's own method of instruction be squared by them, it will be 
 found to run quite counter to tliem. He begins, not with observation, 
 but with words ; with him, substantives stand in the place of the 
 observation of objects, adjectives in the place of the observation of the 
 properties of objects. His polemic against empty word-wisdom hits 
 therefore his own method of instruction. Fichte says very truly in 
 regard to Pestalozzi's idea : " In the field of objective knowledge, which 
 relates to external objects, the acquaintance with the literal sign that 
 represents the clearness and definiteness of the knowledge, adds nothing 
 whatever, for the student himself ; it only heigbtens the value of the 
 
 * Pestalozzi also shows briefly and truly that none but those who_ have a 
 thorough knowledge of a subject can possibly give a real explanation of it in words. 
 " If I have not a clear perception of a thing," he says, " J cannot say with certainty 
 wliat its attributes are, much less what it is ; I cannot even describe it, much less 
 define it. If then a third person puts into my mouth the words by means of which 
 some other person, who had a clear conception of the thing, makes it intelligible 
 to people of his own stamp, it is not on this account any clearer to me ; but it is 
 clear to the other person and not to me so long as the words of this person are not 
 for me what they are for him : the definite expression of the full clearness of an 
 idea*." 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 knowledge with reference to its communication to others, which is a 
 totally different matter. The clearness of such knowledge can result 
 only from observation, and that which we can at pleasure reproduce in 
 all its parts, just as it really is, in the imagination, is perfectly known, 
 whether we have a word for it or not. We are even of opinion that 
 this perfection of observation should precede the acquaintance with the 
 literal sign, and that the opposite way leads directly to that world of 
 fog and shadows, and to that early use of the tongue, both of which are 
 so justly hateful to Pestalozzi ; nay even, that he who is only concerned 
 to know the word at the earliest possible moment, and who deems his 
 knowledge complete so soon as he knows it, lives precisely in that 
 world of fog, and is only concerned for its extension. " 
 ^""^^^..-^^ should have expected from Pestalozzi some directions, first, how 
 to exercise the senses of children, and cultivate in them the power of 
 rapidly arriving at clear conceptions of objects ; second, how we should 
 teach them to express in language the impressions of their senses — to 
 translate their mute observations into words. 
 
 But Pestalozzi does give some hints, particularly as to the method 
 in which instruction in natural history should be imparted. We must 
 not allow the child to go into the woods and meadows, in order to 
 become acquainted with trees and plants. " Trees and plants (he says) 
 do not there stand in the order best adapted to make the character of 
 each class apparent, and to prepare the mind by the first impressions 
 of the objects for a general acquaintance with this department of 
 science." It would take me too far away from my purpose, were I to 
 refute this excessive pedantry of method (with the best will in the 
 world, I can find no better word for it), against which every mind that 
 has any degree of freshness, and is alive to the beauties of nature, will 
 at once rise up in condemnation. 
 
 But, though nothing further is said, in the work before us, on the 
 education of the senses, and the instruction in language connected 
 therewith, Pestalozzi refers us to his "Book for Mothers" for more 
 on these points. His principle, that the learning of a child must com- 
 mence with what lies near to it, appears to have led him to the idea, 
 I that no natural object lay nearer to a child than its own body, and 
 7 that therefore it should commence by observing that. The Book for 
 V,' Mothers describes the body, with all its limbs and parts of limbs, down 
 to the minutest joints. Few persons (I do not speak of surgeons) 
 are so well acquainted with the structure of the body as the child is 
 to be made. Few people will understand, for instance, the following 
 description : " The middle bones of the index finger are placed outside, 
 on the middle joints of the index finger, between the back and middle 
 members of the index finger," &c. The mother is to go through the 
 book, word for word, with the child, making constant reference to the 
 child's own body. 
 
 It was a great mistake on the part of Pestalozzi, to select the child's 
 body as the first object on which it should exercise its faculties of 
 sight and speech, and, generally, the so-called exercises in observation 
 employed by Pestalozzi and his school ought properly to be regarded 
 as exercises in reading, in which the object is far more to make the 
 children acquainted with words and sentences than to give them dis- 
 tinct and lasting impressions and a real knowledge of the thing 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 35 
 
 spoken of. He who yesterday saw a man, with whose image he was 
 so strongly impressed that he can to-day depict it from his inward 
 conception — he who to-day can correctly sing from memory a melody 
 which he heard yesterday — he who yesterday smelt vinegar, and to-day 
 feels the water gather in his mouth at the recollection of the smell — 
 gives proof of his observation by the conception which he has formed, 
 even though he does not translate that conception into words. The 
 generality of the exercises of Pestalozzi and his followers never pro- 
 duce such an imagination of perceptions as this. 
 
 Towards the conclusion of the work, Pestalozzi asks himself : '* How 
 does the question of religion stand with relation to the principles 
 which I have adopted as true in regard to the development of the 
 human race in general?" 
 
 It is difficult to follow him in his answer to this question. Every 
 thing that is lofty in man is founded, according to him, in the relation- 
 which subsists between the infant and its mother. The feelings of 
 gratitude, confidence and love in the child towards the mother gradually 
 unfold themselves, and are, at a later period, transferred by tlie child, U 
 on the admonition of the mother, to God. This, with Pestalozzi, is /\ 
 the onl^ way of training the child in religion. It pre-supposes a 
 mother pure as an angel, and a, child originally quite innocent. The 
 mother is also, like a saint, to take the child under her wings, when it 
 grows up and is enticed to evil by the world, which is not innocent, 
 " as God first created it." According to this view, motherless orphans 
 must remain entirely without religious training. ' There is scarcely a 
 word about the father; just once he is mentioned, and then it is said 
 that he is ** tied to his workshop," and cannot give up his time to the 
 child. 
 
 In short, the mother is represented as the mediator between God y 
 and the child. But not once is it mentioned that she herself needs a 
 mediator ; not once in the whole book does the name of Christ occur. 
 It is nowhere said that the mother is a Christian mother, a member of 
 the Church, and that she teaches the child what she, as a member of the 
 Church, has learnt. Holy writ is ignored ; the mother draws her 
 theology out of her own heart. There pervades this work therefore 
 a decided alienation from Christ. But we shall afterwards see that it 
 would be unjust to measure Pestalozzi's ideas on religious instruction 
 by the untenable theory brought forward in the last chapters of this 
 work. 
 
 Having thus considered the contents of this book, which was written 
 and had its origin in Burgdorf, which contains fundamental educational 
 principles of the highest value and importance, side by side with the 
 most glaring educational blunders and absurdities, it will be of the 
 greatest interest to hear how Pestalozzi performed his work as a 
 teacher, and as the director of his institution, in Burgdorf. We 
 shall obtain information on this point from a small but in many 
 respects highly interesting and valuable pamphlet, entitled "A Short 
 Sketch of my Educational Life by John Ramsauer."* The writer, 
 who was the son of a tradesman and was born in 1790 at Herisau in 
 
 * When Pestalozzi himself speaks of his teaching, he is too apt to mix up what 
 he intended with what he really effected. 
 
3G 
 
 I;IFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 the Swiss canton of Appenzell, migrated thence in 1800 along with 
 forty-four other children from ten to fourteen years of age, at a time 
 when several cantons, Appenzell among the rest, had been totally 
 desolated in consequence of the French Revolution ; and he came thus 
 to Schleumen, not far from Burgdorf. While at Schleumen, he attended 
 the lower burgh school of Burgdorf, in which, as already stated, 
 Pestalozzi taught. He gives the following account of Pestalozzi's 
 teaching : — 
 
 " I got about as much regular schooling as the other scholars, namxcly, 
 none at all ; but his (Pestalozzi's) sacred zeal, his devoted love, which 
 caused him to be entirely unmindful of himself, his serious and 
 depressed state of mind, which struck even the children, made the 
 deepest impression on me, and knit my childlike and grateful heart to 
 his for ever. 
 
 "It is impossible to give a clear picture of this school as a whole ; 
 all that I can do is to sketch a few partial views. 
 
 Pestalozzi's intention was that all the instruction given in this school 
 should start from form, number, and language, and should have a con- 
 stant reference to these elements. There was no regular plan in 
 existence, neither was there a time-table, for which reason Pestalozzi 
 did not tie himself down to any particular hours, but generally went 
 on with the same subject for two or three hours together. There were 
 about sixty of us, boys and girls, of ages varying from eight to fifteen 
 years ; the school hours were from 8 till 11 in the morning, and from 
 2 to 4 in the afternoon. The instruction which we received was 
 entirely limited to drawing, ciphering, and exercises in language. We 
 neither read nor wrote, and accordingly we had neither reading nor 
 writing books ; nor were we required to commit to memory anything 
 secular or sacred. 
 
 " For the drawing, we had neither copies to draw from nor directions 
 what to draw, but only crayons and boards ; and we were told to draw 
 * what we liked' during the time that Pestalozzi was reading aloud 
 sentences about natural history (as exercises in language). But we did 
 not know what to draw, and so it happened that some drew men and 
 women, some houses, and others strings, knots, and arabesques, or 
 whatever else came into their heads. Pestalozzi never looked to see 
 what we had drawn, or rather scribbled ; but the clothes of all the 
 scholars, especially the sleeves and elbows, gave unmistakeable evidence 
 that they had been making due use of their crayons. 
 
 " For the ciphering, we had between every two scholars a small 
 table pasted on millboard, on which in quadrangular fields were marked 
 dots, which we had to count, to add together, to subtract, to multiply 
 and divide by one another. It was out of these exercises that Kriisi 
 and Buss constructed, first the Unity Table, and afterwards the Fraction 
 Tables. But, as Pestalozzi only allowed the scholars to go over and 
 to repeat the exercises in their turns, and never questioned them nor 
 set them tasks, these exercises, which w^ere otherwise very good, 
 remained without any great utility. He had not sufficient patience to 
 allow things to be gone over again, or to put questions ; and in his 
 enormous zeal for the instruction of the whole school, he seemed not to 
 concern himself in the slightest degree for the individual scholar. 
 
 " The best things we had with him were the exercises in language, 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 37 
 
 at least those which he gave us on the paper-hangings of the school- 
 room, and which were real exercises in observation. These hangings 
 were very old and a good deal torn, and before these we had frequently 
 to stand for two or three hours together, and say what we observed in 
 respect to the form, number, position and color of the figures painted 
 on them and the holes torn in them, and to express what we observed 
 in sentences gradually increasing in length. On such occasions, he 
 wo\Jd say : ' Boys, what do you see ?' (He never named the girls). 
 Answer. A hole (or rent) in the wainscoat. 
 Pestalozzi. Very good. Now repeat after me : — 
 
 I see a hole in the wainscoat. 
 
 I see a long hole in the wainscoat. 
 
 Through the hole I see the wall. 
 
 Through the long narrow hole I see the wall. 
 Pestalozzi. Repeat after me : — 
 
 I see figures on the paper-hangings. 
 
 I see black figures on the paper-hangings. 
 
 I see round black figures on the paper-hangings. 
 
 I see a square yellow figure on the paper-hangings. 
 
 Beside the square yellow figure, I see a black round figure. 
 
 The square figure is joined to the round one by a thick black stroke. 
 And so on. 
 
 Of less utility were those exercises in language which he took 
 from natural history, and in which we had to repeat after him, and at 
 the same time to draw, as I have already mentioned. He would say : — 
 Amphibious Animals. Crawling amphibious animals. 
 
 Creeping amphibious animals. 
 Monkeys. Long-tailed monkeys. 
 
 Short-tailed monkeys. 
 
 And so on. 
 
 We did not understand a word of this, for not a word was explained, 
 and it was all spoken in such a sing-song tone, and so rapidly and 
 indistinctly, that it would have been a wonder if any one had under- 
 stood any thing of it, and had learnt anything from it ; besides, Pesta- 
 lozzi cried out so dreadfully loud and so continuously, that he could 
 not hear us repeat after him, the less so as he never waited for us 
 when he had read out a sentence, but went on without intermission, 
 and read off a whole page at once. What he thus read out was drawn 
 up on a half-sheet of large-sized millboard, and our repetition con- 
 sisted for the most part in saying the last word or syllable of each 
 phrase, thus ' monkeys — monkeys,' or * keys — keys.' There was never - 
 any questioning or recapitulation. 
 
 As Pestalozzi in his zeal, did not tie himself to any particular time, 
 we generally went on till eleven o'clock with whatever he had com- 
 menced at eight, and by ten o'clock he was always tired and hoarse. 
 We knew when it was eleven by the noise of other school-children in 
 the street, and then usually we all ran out without bidding good-bye. 
 
 Although Pestalozzi had at all times strictly prohibited his assistants 
 from using any kind of corporal punishment, yet he by no means dis- 
 pensed with it himself, but very often dealt out boxes on the ears right 
 and left. But most of the scholars rendered his life very unhappy, so 
 much so that I felt a real sympathy for him, and kept myself all the 
 
38 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 more quiet. This lie soon observed, and many a time he took me for 
 a walk at eleven o'clock, for in fine weather he went every day to the 
 banks of the river Emme, and for recreation and amusement looked for 
 different kinds ot stones. I had to take part in this occupation myself, 
 although it appeared to me a strange one, seeing that millions of 
 etones lay there, and I did not know which to search for. He himself 
 was acquainted with only a few kinds, but nevertheless he dragged 
 along home from this place every day with his pocket and his pocket- 
 handkerchief full of stones, though after they were once deposited 
 at-home, they were never looked at again. He retained this fancy 
 throughout his life. It was not an easy thing to find a single entire 
 pocket-handkerchief in the whole of the institution at Burgdorf, 
 for all of them had been torn with carrying stones. 
 
 " There is one thing which, though indeed unimportant, I must not 
 forget to mention. The first time that I was taken into Pestalozzi's 
 school, he cordially welcomed and kissed me, then he quickly assigned 
 me a place, and the whole morning did not speak another word to me, 
 but kept on reading out sentences without halting for a moment. 
 As I did not understand a bit of what was going on, when I heard the 
 word * monkey, monkey,' come every time at the end of a sentence, and 
 as Pestalozzi, who was very ugly, ran about the room as if he was wild, 
 without a coat, and without a neck-cloth, his h)ng shirt-sleeves hanging 
 down over his arms and hands, which swung negligently about, I was 
 seized with real terror, and might soon have believed that he himself 
 was a monkey. During the first few days too, I was all the more 
 afraid of him, as he had, on my arrival, given me a kiss with his strong, 
 prickly beard, the first kiss which I remembered having received 
 in my life." 
 
 Ramsauer does not relate so much about the instruction given 
 by the other teachers. Among the fruits of their instruction were two 
 of the three elementary works which appeared in 1803, under Pesta- 
 lozzi's name : (1) " The A B 0 of Observation, or Lessons on the Rela- 
 tions of Size," (2) " Lessons on the Relations of Number." The third 
 elementary work alone was written by Pestalozzi himself ; it is the one 
 already mentioned, the " Book for Mothers, or Guide for Mothers in 
 teaching their children to observe and speak." 
 
 The institution attracted more and more notice ; people came from 
 a distance to visit it, induced particularly by Pestalozzi's work, " How 
 Gertude teaches her children." M. Decan Ith, who was sent by the 
 Helvetian government in 1802 to examine the institution, made a very 
 favorable report on it, in consequence of which the government re- 
 cognized it as a public institution, and granted small salaries, to the 
 teachers out of the public funds. 
 
 But that government was dissolved by Napoleon the very next year, 
 and the Constitution of the Cantons restored. The Bernese govern- 
 ment now fixed on the castle of Burgdorf, as the seat of one of the 
 chief magistrates of the canton ; and Pestalozzi had to clear out of it, 
 on the 22nd of August, 1804. 
 
 In 1802, during Pestalozzi's stay at Burgdorf, Napoleon required 
 the Swiss people to send a deputation to him at Paris. Two districts 
 chose Pestalozzi as a deputy. Before his departure, he published a 
 pamphlet, entitled " Views on the Objects to which the Legislature of 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OP PESTALOZZI. 
 
 39 
 
 Helvetia has to direct its attention." He put a memorandum on the 
 wants of Switzerland into the hands of the First Consul, who paid as 
 little attention to it as he did to Pestalozzi's educational efforts, de- 
 claring that he could not mix himself up with the teaching of the ABO. 
 
 8. Pestalozzi at Buchsee. 1804. 
 
 The Bernese government gave up the monastery of Buchsee to 
 Pestalozzi for his institution, and had the building properly arranged 
 for him. Close by Buchsee lies the estate of Hofwyl, where Fellen- 
 berg resided. To him the teachers gave the principal direction of the 
 institution, " not without my consent," says Pestalozzi, " but to my 
 profound mortification." 
 
 Notwithstanding, Pestalozzi allows Fellenberg to have possessed in 
 a high degree the talent of governing. In Fellenberg the intellect 
 predominated, as in Pestalozzi the feelings ; in the institution at 
 Buchsee, therefore, " that love and warmth was missing which, in- 
 spiring all who came within its influence, rendered every one at 
 Burgdorf so happy and cheerful : at Buchsee everything was, in this 
 respect, totally different. Still Buchsee had this advantage, that in it 
 more order prevailed, and more was learned than at Burgdorf."* 
 
 Pestalozzi perceived that his institution would not become in- 
 dependent of Fellenberg, so long as it should remain at Buchsee, 
 and he gladly accepted, therefore, a highly advantageous proposal on 
 the part of the inhabitants of Yverdun, that he should remove his 
 institution to their town. He repaired thither, with some of his 
 teachers and eight pupils ; half a year later, the remaining teachersf 
 followed, having, as Pestalozzi remarks, soon found the government 
 of Fellenberg far more distasteful than the want of government, under 
 him, had ever been to them. 
 
 9. Pestalozzi at Yverdun. 
 
 1. From 1805 to the departure of Schmid in 1810. 
 
 We now enter on a period when Pestalozzi and his institution 
 acquired a European reputation, when Pestalozzian teachers had 
 schools in Madrid, Naples, and St. Petersburgh, when the Emperor 
 of Russia gave the venerable old man a personal proof of his favor 
 and esteem, and when Fichte saw in Pestalozzi and his labors the 
 commencement of a renovation of humanity. 
 
 But to write the history of this period is a task of unusual difficulty. ' 
 On one side stand extravagant admirers of Pestalozzi, on the other bitter 
 censurers ; a closer examination shows us that both are right, and both 
 wrong. A fearful dissension arises, in the institution itself, among the 
 teachers ; at the head of the two parties stand Niederer and Schmid, 
 who abuse each other in a manner unheard of. With which party 
 shall we side ; or shall we side with neither, or with both ? 
 
 If we ask to which party Pestalozzi inclined, or whether he 
 held himself above the parties, and then go entirely according to his 
 judgment, our embarrassment will only be increased. He pronounced 
 a very different opinion on the same man at different times : at one 
 
 * Such is the opinion of Ramsauer. 
 
 t There were bcveu or eight teachers and about seventy pupils. 
 
40 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PE8TAL0ZZI. 
 
 time he saw in him a helping angel, before whom he humbled himself 
 more than was seemly, and from whom he expected every benefit to 
 his institution ; at another time, he saw in him an almost fiendish 
 being, who was only bent on ruining the institution. 
 
 If any fancy that they have a sure source of information in the 
 account drawn up by Pestalozzi and Niederer, and published in 1807, 
 namely, the Report on the State of the Pestalozzian Institution, 
 addressed to the Parents of the Pupils and to the Public ;" they will 
 be undeceived by some remarks which Pestalozzi himself added to 
 that report at a later period,* but still more so by his last work, " The 
 Fortunes of my Life." This work is altogether at variance with those 
 which give a high degree of praise to the Pestalozzian Institution, in 
 its former condition. From the year in which the dispute between 
 Niederer and Schmid, broke out (1810) most of those who give any 
 information on the subject range themselves on Niederer's side ; while 
 Pestalozzi himself, from the year 1815 till his death, holds unchange- 
 ably with Schmid. 
 
 I should despair of ever being able to thread my way in this 
 labyrinth with any degree of certainty, were it not for the fact that 
 I resided some time in the institution, namely, from October, 1809, till 
 May, 1810, and there became more intimately acquainted with persons 
 and circumstances than I could otherwise have been. But the reader will 
 ask for my credentials : he will want to know whether I alone have 
 kept myself free from all partiality in the matter, and thereby pre- 
 served a clear and unclouded view. To this I reply, that I entered 
 the institution with the best will, and had no anticipation of the 
 discord which slumbered in the dispositions and characters of several 
 of the teachers. Which side I took (if the reader will so have it) 
 when the quarrel broke out, I will, as far aa I can, relate impartially. 
 Thirty-seven years have how elapsed since the time when these things 
 took place, and during four of these years, I was myself at the head of 
 an educational institution ; so that I have had a good deal of experience, 
 and sufficient time to mature a calm and deliberate judgment in regard 
 to the circumstances connected with the Pestalozzian Institution. 
 I will now relate how I came to the determination to visit Pestalozzi, 
 what I saw at Yverdum, and why I quitted it. 
 
 After I had studied at Gottingen and Halle, I devoted several years 
 to the pursuit of mineralogy, under the direction of Werner, in 
 Freiberg, and, having explored mountain -chains in Germany and 
 France, I went to Paris in the Autumn of 1808, in order to continue 
 my studies. 
 
 At Paris my views and intentions in regard to the future occupation 
 of my life underwent a great change, which was brought about by two 
 different causes. For one thing, I had learnt by my own experience 
 how little a single individual is able to accomplish for the science of 
 mineralogy, even if he goes to work with the best will and the most 
 toilsome industry, that it required much more the united, intelligent 
 and persevering labors of many, in order to pass from a mere belief in 
 the laws of mineralogy to an actual perception of their operation in 
 mountain-chains. I thus became convinced that we ought not to work 
 
 * In the collected edition of his works. 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF TESTALOZZI. 
 
 41 
 
 for science as individuals, but that we should, . after passing through our 
 own apprenticeship, instruct others and train them for the pursuit of 
 science. How much more useful is it, thought I, to produce one new 
 workman than one single new work, seeing that the former can execute 
 many works, and even train other workmen. This conviction caused 
 me to turn my attention to the question of education. But a second 
 cause operated in a still higher degree to produce the same result. 
 The sad time that had passed since 1806 had affected me with horror 
 and dismay ; it had made me wish to shun the society of my fellow- 
 men, and had quite disposed me to give myself up to the most solitary 
 researches among the mountains. This disposition was strengthened 
 at Paris, in the midst of the haughty despisers of our German father- 
 land. But it was here, too, where Hope first dawned within me, 
 where a solitary light beamed towards me through the darkness of 
 night. I read Pestalozzi, and what Fichte says, in his " Addresses to 
 the German Nation," about Pestalozzi and education. The thought, 
 that a new and better Germany must rise from the ruins of the old 
 one, that youthful blossoms must spring from the mouldering soil, took 
 strong hold of me. In this manner, there awoke within me a 
 determination to visit Pestalozzi at Yverdun. 
 
 Fichte's Addresses had a great influence on me. Surrounded by 
 Frenchmen, the brave man pointed out to his Berlin hearers in 
 what way they might cast off the French yoke, and renew and 
 strengthen their nationality. 
 
 He promised deliverance especially through a national education of 
 the Germans, which he indicated as the commencement of an entire 
 reformation of the human race, by which the spirit should gain a 
 complete ascendancy over the flesh. To the question, to which of the 
 existing institutions of the actual world he would annex the duty of 
 carrying out the new education, Fichte answered, To the course of 
 instruction which has been invented and brought forward by Henry 
 Pestalozzi, and which is now being successfully carried out under 
 his direction." 
 
 He then gives an account of Pestalozzi, and compares him with 
 Luther, especially in regard to his love for the poor and destitute. 
 His immediate object, says Fichte, was to help these by means of 
 education, but he had produced something higher than a scheme of 
 popular education, — he had produced a plan of national education 
 which should embrace all classes of society. 
 
 Further on he expresses himself in his peculiar manner on the 
 subject of Pestalozzi's method, which he criticises. He takes exception 
 to Pestalozzi's view of language, namely, "as a means of raising man- 
 kind from dim perceptions to clear ideas," and to the Book for Mothers. 
 On the other hand, he strongly recommends the development of bodily 
 skill and dexterity proposed by Pestalozzi, for this, among other 
 reasons, that it would make the whole nation fit for military service, 
 and thus remove the necessity for a standing army. Like Pestalozzi, 
 he attaches a high value to the skill necessary for gaining a livelihood, 
 as a condition of an honorable political existence. 
 
 He especially insists that it is the duty of the State to charge itself 
 with education. He spoke in the year 1808, in the capital of Prussia, 
 which had been deeply humiliated by the unhappy war of the preced- 
 ing years, and in the most hopeless period of Germany's history. 
 
42 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PE8TALOZ2I. 
 
 " Would that the State," he said to a Prussian audience, among 
 whom were several high officers of State, " would look its present 
 peculiar condition steadily in the face, and acknowledge to itself what 
 that condition really is ; would that it could clearly perceive that there 
 remains for it no other sphere in which it can act and resolve as 
 an independent State, except the education of the rising generation ; 
 that, unless it is absolutely determined to do nothing, this is now all it 
 can do ; but that the merit of doing this would be conceded to it un- 
 diminished and unenvied. That we are no longer able to offer an active 
 resistance, was before presupposed, as obvious and as acknowledged 
 by every one. How then can we defend our continued existence, thus 
 obtained by submission, against the reproach of cowardice and an 
 unworthy love of life ? In no other way than by resolving not to live 
 for ourselves, and by acting up to this resolution ; by raising up 
 a worthy posterity, and by preserving our own existence solely in 
 order that we may accomplish this object. If we had not this first 
 object of life, what else were there for us to do ? Our constitutions 
 will be made for us, the alliances which we are to form and the direc- 
 tion in which our military resources shall be applied, will be indicated 
 to us, a statute book will be lent to us, even the administration of 
 justice will sometimes be taken out of our hands ; we shall be relieved 
 of all these cares for the next years to come. Education alone has 
 not been thought of ; if we are seeking for an occupation, let us seize 
 this ! We may expect that in this occupation we shall be left undis- 
 turbed. I hope (perhaps I deceive myself, but as I have only this 
 hope still to live for, I cannot cease to hope) that I convince some 
 Germans, and that I shall bring them to see that it is education alone 
 which can save us from all the evils by which we are oppressed. 
 I count especially on this, as a favorable circumstance, that our need 
 will have rendered us more disposed to attentive observation and 
 serious reflection than we were in the day of our prosperity. Foreign 
 lands have other consolations and other remedies ; it is not to be 
 expected that they would pay any attention, or give any credit to this 
 idea, should it ever reach them ; I will much rather hope that it will 
 be a rich source of amusement to the readers of their journals, if they 
 ever learn that any one promises himself so great things from 
 education." 
 
 It may easily be imagined how deep an impression such words made 
 on me, as I read them in Paris, the imperial seat of tyranny, at a time 
 when I was in a state of profound melancholy, caused by the igno- 
 minious slavery of my poor beloved country. There also I was 
 absorbed in the perusal of Pestalozai's work, " How Gertrude- teaches 
 her children." The passages of deep pathos in the book took powerful 
 hold of my mind, the new and great ideas excited strong hopes in me ; 
 at that time I was carried awky on the wings of those hopes oyer 
 Pestalozzi's errors and failures, and I had not the experience which 
 would have enabled me to detect these easily, and to examine them 
 critically. 
 
 About the same time I read the Report to the Parents on the state 
 of the Pestalozzian Institution, which has already been mentioned ; it 
 removed every doubt in my mind as to the possibility of seeing my 
 boldest hopes realized. Hereupon, I immediately resolved to go to 
 
LIFE AN.D SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 43 
 
 Yverdun, which appeared to me a green oasis, full of fresh and living 
 springs, in the midst of the great desert of my native land, on which 
 rested the curse of Napoleon. 
 
 A friend accompanied me to Yverdun, where we arrived towards 
 the end of October. It was in the evening of a cold rainy day that we 
 alighted at the hotel called the Red House. The next morning we 
 went to the old castle, built by Charles the Bold, which with its four 
 great round towers incloses a courtyard. Here we met a multitude 
 of boys ; we were conducted to Pestalozzi. He was dressed in the 
 most negligent manner : he had on an old grey overcoat, no waistcoat, 
 a pair of breeches, and stockings hanging down over his slippers ; his 
 coarse bushy black hair uncombed and frightful. His brow was 
 deeply furrowed, his dark brown eyes were now soft and mild, now 
 full of fire. You hardly noticed that the old man, so full of geniality, 
 was ugly ; you read in his singular features long continued suffering 
 and great hopes. 
 
 Soon after, we saw Niederer, who gave me the impression of a young 
 Roman Catholic priest ; Krusi, who was somewhat corpulent, fair, 
 blue-eyed, mild, and benevolent ; and Schmid, who was, if possible, 
 more cynical in his dress than Pestalozzi, with sharp features and eyes 
 like those of a bird of prey. 
 
 At that time 137 pupils, of ages varying from six to seventeen years, 
 lived in the institution ; 28 lodged in the town, but dined in the 
 institution. There were in all, therefore, 165 pupils. Among them 
 there were 78 Swiss ; the rest were Germans, French, Russians, 
 Italians, Spaniards', and Americans. Fifteen teachers relfded in the 
 institution; nine of whom were^wiss teachers, who had been educated 
 there. Besides these, there were 32 persons who were studying the 
 method ; seven of them were natives of Switzerland. The interior of 
 the building made a mournful impression on me ; but the situation was 
 extremely beautiful. An extensive meadow separates it from the 
 southern end of the glorious lake of Neufchatel, on the west side of 
 which rises the Jura range of mountains, covered with vineyards. 
 From the heights of the Jura, above the village of Granson, rendered 
 famous by the defeat of Charles the Bold, you survey on the one side 
 the entire chain of the Alps, from Mount Pilatus, near Lucerne, to 
 Mont Blanc ; on the other side you see far away into France. 
 
 A short time after my arrival, I went to live in the institution, where 
 I took my meals, and slept along with the children. If I wanted to do 
 any work for myself, I had to do it while standing at a writing-desk 
 in the midst of the tumult of one of the classes. None of the teachers 
 had a sitting-room to himself. I was fully determined to devote all 
 my energies thenceforth to the institution, and accordingly I had 
 brought with me Freddy Reichardt, the brother of my future wife, 
 a boy of eight years, and now placed him among the other scholars. 
 My position was well suited to enable me to compare the report on the 
 institution with what I daily saw and experienced. The higher my 
 expectations had been raised by that report, the deeper was my pain, 
 as I was gradually undeceived ; I even thought I saw the last hopes of 
 my native land disappear. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary for me to particularize the respects in which 
 I was undeceived ; they may be learnt from Pestalozzi's notes to the 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 latter copy of his report, but especially from his work, " The Fortunes 
 of my Life." Nevertheless I will advert to one or two principal 
 points. 
 
 I will particularly advert to what is said in the report about the 
 spirit__of the institution, which is represented as being similar to that 
 which pervades a FamTly. 
 
 " We may with a good conscience," say the writers of the report, 
 " declare publicly that the children in our institution are happy 
 cheerful; that their "innocence is preserved, their religious disposi- 
 tion cherished, their nTiiicTs" formed, their knowledge increg^fi^, thVir 
 hearts elevated. The arrangements which have been adopted for 
 attaining these objects possess a quiet inward power. They are based 
 principally on the benevolent and amiable character which dis- 
 tinguishes the teachers of our house, and which is supported by 
 a vigorous activity. There reign^ throughout the entire insti tution jt he 
 spirit of a great domestic, union, in whicli, according to the require- 
 ments of such a union, a pure paternal and fraternal feeling everywhere 
 shines forth. The children feel themselves free, their activity finds 
 even a powerful charm in their employments ; the confidence reposed 
 in them, and the affection shown towards them, elevate their senti- 
 ments." " The life in the house is, to a rare extent, a school for culti- 
 vating domestic affection and domestic unity." " All the teachers in 
 common, acting as an organized whole, do for all the children what 
 a careful mother does for the few children of her own family." The 
 body of teachers "attains the most perfect unity of thought and 
 action, and appears to the children as only one person." 
 
 " In general, it is to be remarked that we seek throughout to awaken 
 and to foster the spirit of peace, of love, and of mutua l brothe rly fel- 
 lowship. The dispositioff^f the great body of our'inmates is good. 
 A spirit of strength, of repose, and of endeavour rests on the whole. 
 There is much in our midst that is eminently good. Some pupils 
 evince an angelic disposition, full of love and of a presentiment of higher 
 thoughts and a higher existence. The bad ones do not feel themselves 
 comfortable in the midst of our life and labor; on the other hand, 
 every spark of good and noble feeling which still glimmers even in the 
 bad ones is encouraged and developed. The children are in general 
 neither hardened by punishment, nor rendered vain and superficial by 
 rewards. The mild forbearance of the most amiable household has the 
 most undisturbed play in our midst. The children's feelings are not 
 lightly wounded. The weak are not made to compare themselves with 
 the strong, but with themselves. We never ask a pupil if he can do 
 what another does. We only ask him if he can do a thing. ■ But we 
 always ask him if he can do it perfectly. As little of the struggle 
 / of competition takes place between one pupil and another, as between 
 affectionate brothers and sisters who live with a loving mother in a 
 happy condition." \ 
 
 "m^e live together united in brotherly love, free and cheerfulj and 
 are, i-n respect to that which we acknowledge as the one thing needful, 
 one heart and one soul. We may also say that our pupils are one 
 heart and one soul with us. They feel that we treat them in a fatherly 
 manner ; they feel that we serve them and that we are glad to serve 
 them ; they feel that we do not merely instruct them ; they feel that 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 45 
 
 for their education we give life and motion to everything in them that 
 belongs to the character of man. They also hang with their whole 
 hearts on our actions. They live in the constant consciousness of their 
 own strength." 
 
 Must not even a sober reader of these passages be led to believe that 
 a spirit of the most cordial love and concord reigned in a rare manner 
 in the Pestalozzian institution. How much more did I believe so, who, 
 deeply distressed by the calamities of those days, and inspired with hope 
 by the eloquence of Fichte, perceived in Yverdun the commencement 
 of a better time, and ardently longed to hasten its approach. Those 
 who did not themselves live through those years of anguish, in which 
 injustice increased and love waxed cold in the hearts of many, may 
 perhaps smile at the enthusiasm of despair. 
 
 Pestalozzi himself says of the institution that, as early as the time 
 when it was removed from Buchsee to Yverdun, it bare within itself 
 "the seeds of its own internal decay (these are his own words) in the 
 unequal and contradictory character of the abilities, opinions, inclina- 
 tions, and claims of its members ; although as yet this dissension had 
 done anything but declare itself general, unrestrained, and fierce." He 
 says, that nevertheless many of the members were still desirous for 
 peace, and that others were moderate in their views and feelings. 
 " But the seeds of our decay had been sown, and though they were 
 still invisible in many places, had taken deep root. Led aside by 
 worldly temptations and apparent good fortune from the purity, 
 simplicity, and innocence of our first endeavours, divided among 
 ourselves in our inmost feelings, and from the first made incapable, 
 by the heterogeneous nature of our peculiarities of ever becoming 
 of one mind and one heart in spirit and in truth for the attainment 
 of our objects, we stood there outwardly united, even deceiving 
 ourselves with respect to the real truth of our inclination to this 
 union, and unfortunately we advanced, each one in his own manner^ 
 with firm and at one time with rapid steps along a path which, without 
 our being really conscious of it, separated us every day further from 
 the possibility of our ever becoming united. 
 
 What Ramsauer says entirely agrees with this. In Burgdorf, he 
 says, there reigned a kindly spirit. " This ceased when the family- 
 life was transformed in the institution into a constitutional state 
 existence. Now the individual was more easily lost in the crowd : 
 thus there arose a desire on his part to make himself felt and noticed. 
 Egotism made its appearance every day in more offensive forms. 
 Envy and jealousy rankled in the breasts of many." " Much indeed 
 was said about * a domestic life,* which ought to prevail in an 
 educational establishment, just as a very great deal was said and 
 written about * an harmonious development of all the faculties of the 
 pupil ; ' but both existed more in theory than in practice. It is 
 true, that a good deal of common interest was evinced in the general 
 working of the institution, but the details were allowed to go on or 
 stand still very much as they might, and the tone of the whole house 
 was more a tone of pushing and driving than one of domestic 
 quietude." 
 
 In the report is this passage : " In respect to the execution of the 
 design, we may say decidedly that the institution has stood the fiery 
 ordeal of eight severe years." 
 
46 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 On this passage Pestalozzi remarks as follows in 1823 : " What 
 is here said in confirmation of this view is altogether a consequence 
 of the great delusion under which we lay at that period, namely, 
 that all those things in regard to which we had strong intentions 
 and some clear ideas, were really as they ought to have been, and 
 as we should have liked to make them. But the consequences of 
 the partial truth which in this instance had hold of our minds were, 
 from want of sufficient knowledge, ability, and skill for carrying it out, 
 fixed in our midst, confused, and made the seed of countless weeds, by 
 which the good seed that lay in the ground was on all sides crowded, 
 and here and there choked. Neither did we perceive the weeds at 
 that time ; indeed, as we then lived, thought, acted, and dreamt, it was 
 impossible that we should perceive them." 
 
 I am fully aware that by some these later observations of Pestalozzi 
 have been attributed partly to the weakness of old age, partly to the 
 influence of Schmid. To this I cannot assent. As early as new 
 year's day, 1808, at the same time as the report appeared, Pestalozzi 
 said to his teachers : " My work was founded in love ; love vanished 
 from our midst ; it could not but vanish. We deceived ourselves as 
 to the strength which this love demands; it could not but vanish. — 
 I am no longer in a position to provide any help for it. The poison 
 which eats into the heart of our work is accumulating in our midst. 
 Worldly honor will increase this poison. 0 God, grant that we may 
 no longer be overcome by our delusion. I look upon the laurels 
 which are strewn in our path as laurels set up over a skeleton. I see 
 before my eyes the skeleton of my work, in so far as it is my work. 
 I desire to place it before your eyes. I saw the skeleton which is in 
 my house appear crowned with laurels before my eyes, and the 
 laurels suddenly go up in flames. They cannot bear the fire of affliction 
 which must and will come upon my house ; they will disappear ; they 
 must disappear. My work will stand. But the consequences of my 
 faults will not pass away. I shall be vanquished by them. My deli- 
 verance is the grave. I go away, but you remain. Would that these 
 words now stood before your eyes in flames of fire ! — Friends, make 
 yourselves better than I was, that God may finish his work through 
 you, as he does not finish it through me. Make yourselves better 
 than I was. Do not by your faults lay those same hindrances in your 
 way that I have lain in mine. Do not let the appearance of success 
 deceive you, as it deceived me. You are called to higher, to general 
 sacrifice, or you too will fail to save my work. Enjoy the passing 
 hour, enjoy the fulness of worldly honor, the measure of which has 
 risen for us to its greatest height ; but remember that it vanishes like 
 the flower of the field, which blooms for a little while, but soon passes 
 away." 
 
 What contradictions ! Does then the same fountain send forth both 
 sweet and bitter ? Was the report actually intended to deceive the 
 world ? 
 
 Never; but Pestalozzi was not entirely free from an unfortunate 
 spirit of wordly calculation, although his calculations in most cases 
 turned out incorrect. Ever full of the idea of spreading happiness 
 over many lands, in a short time, by means of his methods of in- 
 struction and education, he naturally considered it all-important that 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PE8TAL0ZZI. 
 
 47 
 
 people should have a good opinion of his institution. By the bulk 
 of the public, indeed, the institution was taken as substantial evidence 
 for or against the excellence and practicability of his educational 
 ideas : with it they stood or fell. 
 
 The concern which Pestalozzi felt about the reputation of his 
 establishment became especially apparent when foreigners, particularly 
 persons of distinction, visited Yverdun. ''As many hundred times 
 in the course of the year," says Ramsauer, " as foreigners visited the 
 Pestalozzian Institution, so many hundred times did Pestalozzi allow 
 himself, in his enthusiasm, to be deceived by them. On the arrival of 
 every fresh visiter, he would go to the teachers in whom he placed most 
 confidence and say to them : * This is an important personage, who 
 wants to become acquainted with all we are doing. Take your best 
 pupils and their analysis-books (copy-books in which the lessons were 
 written out), and show him what w^e can do and what we wish to do.' 
 Hundreds and hundreds of times there came to the institution, silly, 
 curious, and often totally uneducated persons, who came because it was 
 the * fashion.' On their account, w^e usually had to interrupt the class 
 instruction and hold a kind of examination. In 1814, the aged Prince 
 Esterhazy came. Pestalozzi ran all over the house, calling out : 
 ' Ramsauer, Ramsauer, where are you ? Come directly with your best 
 pupils to the Red House (the hotel at which the Prince had alighted). 
 He is a person of the highest importance and of infinite wealth ; he 
 has thousands of bond-slaves in Hungary and Austria. He is certain 
 to build schools and set free his slaves, if he is made to take an interest 
 in the matter.' I took about fifteen pupils to the hotel. Pestalozzi 
 presented me to the Prince with these words : ' This is the teacher of 
 these scholars, a young man who fifteen years ago migrated with other 
 poor children from the canton of Appenzell and came to me. But he 
 received an elementary education, according to his individual aptitudes, 
 without let or hindrance. Now he is himself a teacher. Thus you 
 see that there is as much ability in the poor as in the richest, frequently 
 more ; but in the former it is seldom developed, and even then, not 
 methodically. It is for this reason that the improvement of the 
 popular schools is so highly important. But he will show you 
 every thing that we do better than I could. I will, therefore, leave 
 him with you for the present.' I now examined the pupils, taught, 
 explained, and bawled, in my zeal, till I was quite hoarse, believing 
 that the Prince was thoroughly convinced about everything. At the 
 end of an hour, Pestalozzi returned. The Prince expressed his 
 pleasure at what he had seen. He then took leave, and Pestalozzi, 
 standing on the steps of the hotel, said : ' He is quite convinced, 
 quite convinced, and will certainly establish schools on his Hungarian 
 estates.' When we had descended the stairs, Pestalozzi said : ' What- 
 ever ails my arm ? It is so painful. Why, see ! it is quite swollen, 
 I can't bend it ' And in truth his wide sleeve was now too small for 
 his arm. I looked at the key of the house-door of the Maison rouge 
 and said to Pestalozzi : ' Look here, you struck yourself against this 
 key when we were going to the Prince an hour ago.' On closer 
 observation it appeared that Pestalozzi had actually bent the key by 
 hitting his elbow against it. In the first hour afterwards he had not 
 noticed the pain, for the excess of his zeal and his joy. So ardent and 
 
48 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OP PESTALOZZI. 
 
 zealous was the good old man, already nnmbering seventy years, when 
 he thought he had an opportunity of doing good. I could adduce 
 many such instances. It was nothing rare in summer for strangers to 
 come to the castle four or five times in the same day, and for us to have 
 to interrupt the instruction on their account two, three, or four times." 
 
 After this highly characteristic account, I ask the reader whether 
 he will cast a stone at the amiable and enthusiastic old man ? I 
 certainly will not, though I could heartily have wished that, faitliful in 
 small things and mindful of the grain of mustard seed,vhe had planted 
 his work in stillness, and that it had been slow and sound in its growth, 
 even if it had been observed by only a few. 
 
 The source of the internal contradiction which runs through the life of 
 Pestalozzi, was, as we saw from his own confessions, the fact that, in 
 spite of his grand ideal, which comprehended the whole human race, 
 he did not possess the ability and skill requisite for conducting even 
 the smallest village school. His highly active imagination led him to 
 consider and describe as actually existing in the institution whatever 
 he hoped sooner or later to see realized. His hopeful spirit foresaw 
 future development in what was already accomplished, and expected 
 that others would benevolently do the same. This bold assumption 
 had an effect on many, especially on the teachers of the institution. 
 This appears to explain how, in the report on the institution, so much 
 could be said bond fide which a sober spectator was forced to pronounce 
 untrue. 
 
 But this self-delusion is never of long duration ; the period of over- 
 strung enthusiasm is followed by one of hopelessness and dejection. 
 The heart of man is indeed an alternately proud and dejected thing! 
 Such an ebb and flow of lofty enthusiasm and utter despair pervades 
 the entire life of Pestalozzi. The address which he delivered to his 
 teachers in 1808 appears almost as the ca'pid mortuum of the report : 
 the truth at last makes itself heard in tones of bitter remorse. 
 Pestalozzi makes a more tranquil confession concerning the earlier 
 times of Yverdun, at a later period of his life, in his autobiography. 
 More than sixteen years had elapsed, and passion had cooled down. 
 He states soberly what he had enthusiastically wished to accomplish 
 in those earlier days ; he acknowledges that he had deceived himself; 
 and he can now therefore relate the history of the institution clearly 
 and truthfully. But the times less removed from him are still too 
 present to his feelings, too near to his impassioned gaze, for him to 
 be able to delineate them with the same historical clearness in that 
 work. 
 
 The report speaks of the instruction imparted in the institution in 
 a way which cannot have failed to give offence to persons who were 
 not enthusiastically prejudiced in favor of Pestalozzi. Listen to these 
 remarks : — 
 
 " With regard to the subjects of the instruction generally, the fol- 
 lowing is what may be stated. The child learns to know and exercise 
 himself, that is, his physical, intellectual, moral, and religious faculties. 
 With this instruction to the child about himself, instruction about na- 
 ture keeps pace. Commencing with the child in his domestic relations, 
 the latter instruction gradually embraces human nature in all the 
 above-mentioned aspects. And, in the same way, commencing with 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF TESTALOZZI. 
 
 49 
 
 the circle of the child's observation, it gradually embraces the whole 
 of external nature. From the first starting-point, the child is led to 
 an insight into the essential relations of mankind and society; from 
 the second, to an insight into the relations in which the human race N 
 stands to external nature, and external nature to the human race. Man 
 and nature, and their mutual relation, constitute, therefore, the primary 
 matter of the instruction ; and from these subjects the knowledge of 
 all separate branches of study is developed. It must here be remarked, 
 however, that the aim of the instruction is not to make the pupils 
 comprehend man and nature merely externally, that is, merely in so 
 far as they present isolated empirical characteristics, capable of being 
 arranged either in a logical sequence of separate units, or in any other 
 order that nuay be convenient. The aim is rather to make the pupils ^ 
 observe things as a living and organic whole, harmoniously bound ) 
 together by necessary and eternal laws, and developing itself from 
 something simple and original, so that we may thus bring them to see 
 how one thing is linked in another. The instruction, as a whole, does . 
 not proceed from any theory, but from the very life and substance of 
 nature ; and every theory appears only as the expression and represen- 
 tation of this observed life and substance." 
 
 I am relieved from the necessity of offering any criticism on this 
 passage by a note which Pestalozzi added to it fifteen years later* 
 
 In this and several other passages," says the venerable old man, 
 ^' I express, not so much my own peculiar views on education in their 
 original simplicity, as certain immature philosophical views, with 
 which, at that time, notwithstanding all our good intentions, most of 
 the inmates of our house, myself among the rest, must needs perplex 
 our heads, and which brought me personally to a standstill in my en- 
 deavours. These views caused the house and the institution, both of 
 which attained at this period a seeming flourishing condition, to go 
 rotten at the roots ; and they are to be looked upon as the hidden 
 source of all the misfortunes which have since come upon me." 
 j It would take too long to follow the report in the accounts which it 
 /gives of the instruction in the separate branches of knowledge. In 
 v^erything Pestalozzi wants to be entirely novel, and just for this 
 reason he falls into mistakes. Take, as a specimen, the following on 
 the instruction in geography : — 
 
 " The instruction in this subject begins with the observation of the 
 district in which we live, as a type of what the surface of the earth ^ 
 presents. It is then separated into elementary instruction, which in- 
 cludes physical, mathematical, and political geography, and (2) the 
 topographical part, in which each of the departments of the subject 
 suggested by the observation of the surrounding district is prose- 
 cuted In a graduated course, and their reciprocal bearings brought ^ 
 out. By this foundation, the pupils are prepared for forming a 
 clear and comprehensive view of the earth and man, and their mutual 
 influence on each other, of the condition of states and peoples, of the 
 progress of the human race in intellectual culture, and lastly of physical 
 science in its broader outlines and more general relations. The chil- 
 dren are made acquainted with the statistical portion of the subjectj 
 that is, the natural productions, the number of inhabitants, form of 
 government, &c., by means of tabular views. 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 After this, need we wonder when we find Pestalozzi, in his memoirs, 
 speaking of the earlier days of Yverdun in the following manner? 
 " The desire of governing, in itself unnatural, was called forth among 
 us at this period, on the one hand, by the reputation of our modes of 
 instruction, which continued to increase after our return to Yverdun, 
 and the intoxicating good fortune that streamed to nearly every fool 
 . who hung out the sign-board of an elementary method which, in 
 reality, did not as yet exist ; i)n the other, by the audacity of our 
 behaviour towards the whole world, and towards everything that was 
 done in education and was not cast in our mould. The thing is 
 melancholy ; but it is true. We poor weak birds presumed to take 
 our little nestlings, ere they were fairly out of their shells, on flights 
 which even the strongest birds do not attempt until their young ones 
 have gained strength in many previous trials. We announced publicly 
 things which we had neither the strength nor the means to accomplish. 
 There are hundreds and hundreds of these vain boastings of which 
 I^>^ot like to speak." 
 V^^o wonder that, in this state of things, there arose a determined 
 opposition to the institution. In Switzerland especially, Pestalozzi 
 says, the public journals began "to speak decidedly against our pre- 
 tensions, asserting that what we did was by no means what we con- 
 sidered and represented ourselves to be doing. But (he continues) 
 instead of penitently returning to modesty, we sturdily resisted this 
 opposition. While participating in this temerity, which is now incom- 
 prehensible to me, I began to be sensible that we were treading in 
 paths which might lead us astray, and that, in truth, many things in the 
 midst of us were not as they should have been, and as we endeavoured 
 to make them appear in the eyes of the world." 
 
 Other members of the institution thought quite differently; full 
 of self-confidence, they pressed for a formal examination; and, in the 
 month of May, 1809, an application to that effect was made to the 
 Swiss Diet, then assembled at Freiburg. The request was granted, 
 and Merian, member of the executive council of Basel ; Trechsel, pro- 
 fessor of mathematics, at Bern ; and Pere Girard, of Freiburg, were 
 commissioned by Governor D'Affry to examine the institution. 
 
 In November, 1809, just after I had arrived in Yverdun, this com- 
 mission of inquiry came down and remained five days. They were 
 five sultry days for Pestalozzi and his teachers ; it was felt that the 
 commission, which confined itself strictly to actual results, would make 
 no very enthusiastic report. Pere Girard wrote the report in French, 
 Professor Trechsel translated it into German ; on the 12th of Ma}'', 
 1810, it was presented to the Diet, then assembled at Solothurn. Jn thft 
 following year, the thanks of the country were accorded, to Pestalftaaiy-^ 
 by the Diet ; and there the matter was allowed to rest. 
 
 I believe that the commission pronounced an impartial judgment ; 
 the conclusion of the report speaks for the whole. " The educational 
 methods of the institution (say the commissioners) stand only in very im- 
 perfect connexion with our establishments for public instruction. The 
 institution has in noway aimed at coming into harmony with these public 
 schools. Determined at any price to interest all the faculties of 
 -A children, in order to guide their development according to its own 
 principles, it has taken counsel of its own views only, and betrays an 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 irresistible desire to open for itself new paths, even at the cost of never 
 treading in those which usage has now established. This was perhaps the 
 right means for arriving at useful discoveries, but it was also a design 
 which rendered harmony impossible. The institution pursues its own 
 way ; the public institutions pursue theirs ; and there is no probability 
 that both ways will very soon meet. It is a pity that the force of cir- 
 cumstances has always driven Mr. Pestalozzi beyond the career which 
 his pure zeal and his fervent charity had marked out for him. A good 
 intention, noble endeavours, indefatigable perseverance, should and will 
 always meet with justice. Let us profit by the excellent ideas which lie 
 at the foundation of the whole undertaking ; let us follow its instructive 
 examples ; but let us also lament that an adverse fate must hang over 
 a man, who, by the force of circumstances, is constantly hindered from 
 doing what he would wish to do." 
 
 After the publication of the report, there arose a long and violent 
 literary warfare, which did anything but add to the credit of the insti- 
 tution.* With this war against external foes, was unfortunately 
 associated an internal feud, which ended in the departure of Schmid 
 and others of the teachers. 
 
 I One of Pestalozzi's biographers states, that Schmid's pride and pre- 
 V^'t^^ had grown to such an extent, that he had acted with the greatest 
 Taar^ness towards Pestalozzi, Niederer, and Kriisi. "This was 
 caused," continues the biographer, " by some ideas which he had par- 
 tially caught up from two scientific men who were then stopping with 
 Pestalozzi (one of them is now a man of note in Silesia). Perhaps at 
 that time these ideas were not very clearly defined in the minds of 
 those men themselves."f 
 
 The biographer means me and my friend; J I shall therefore not be 
 misunderstood, if I relate briefly the matter to which he refers. 
 
 I had come to learn and to render service. On this account, I took 
 up my quarters entirely in the old building of the institution, slept in 
 one of the large dormitories, took my meals with the children, attended 
 the lessons, morning and evening prayers, and the conferences of the 
 teachers. I listened and observed attentively in silence ; but I was far 
 from thinking of commencing myself to teach. My opinion upon all the 
 things that I saw and heard was formed very much with reference to 
 the boy of eight years intrusted to my care, accordingly as they con- 
 tributed to his comfort or otherwise. Several weeks had passed on in 
 this way, when I was one evening with Pestalozzi and the rest of the 
 teachers at the hotel of the Wild Man, where they used to meet 
 I think once a fortnight. After supper, Pestalozzi called me into an 
 
 * The well-known K. L, von Haller noticed the report of the commispion in 
 terms of high praise, in the Gbttingen Literary Advertiser of the 13th of April, 1811, 
 and at the same time accused the Pestalozzian Institution of inspiring its pupils 
 with an aversion from religion, the constituted authorities, and the aristocracy. In 
 reply to this, Niederer wrote " The Pestalozzian Institution to the Public." This 
 pamphlet appeared in a new form in 1812, under the title, " Pestalozzi's Educa- 
 tional Undertaking in relation to the Civilization of the Present Time." Bremi, of 
 Zurich, wrote in reply to the former pamphlet ; Pestalozzi and Niederer wrote fig lin 
 in reply to Bremi. Niederer professes to have convicted Bremi of ninety-two hcs, 
 thirty-six falsifications, and twenty calunmies. 
 
 I Henning, in the Schulrath (an educational periodical). 
 
 % Rudolph vou Przystanowski, who is now (184G) in Mexico. 
 
52 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF TESTALOZZI. 
 
 adjoining room ; we were quite alone. " My teachers are afraid of 
 you," he said, because you only listen and look on in silence ; why 
 do you not teach?" I answered that before teaching, I wished to 
 learn — to learn in silence. After the conversation had touched on 
 one thing and another, he frankly told me things about several of his 
 teachers which put me into a state of astonishment, and which stood 
 in direct contradiction with what I had read in the report, bat not witli 
 what I had myself already observed or expected. Pestalozzi followed 
 up these disclosures with the proposal, that I and my friend, in com- 
 pany with Schmid, whom he highly praised, especially for his practical 
 ability and his activity, should set to work to renovate the institution. 
 
 The proposal came upon me so unexpectedly, that I begged for time 
 to think of it, and discussed the matter with my friend, who was just 
 as much surprised as I was. We were both naturally brought by this 
 means into a closer relation with Schmid, became in a short time 
 acquainted with the arcana imperii, and honestly considered what 
 obstacles stood in the way of the prosperity of the institution, and what 
 could be done to remove them. 
 
 Foremost of these was the intermixture of German and French boys, 
 which doubly pained me, as I had come from Paris. The parents 
 thought otherwise : they perceived in this very intermixture a fortu- 
 nate means of training their children in the easiest way to speak both 
 languages : whereas the result was, tliQ t the chihir pp ^?r>iil<^ appplr 
 neit^fir. --^^ith such a medley of children/the institution was devoid of 
 a predominant mother-tongue, and assumed the mongrel character of 
 border-provinces. Pestalozzi read the prayers every morning and even- 
 ing, first in German, then in French ! At the lessons in the German 
 language, intended for German children, I found French children 
 who did not understand the most common German word. This, and 
 much more that was to be said against this intermixture, was now dis- 
 cussed with Pestalozzi, and the proposal was made to him, to separate 
 the institution into two departments, one for German, the other for 
 French children. Only in this way, it was represented to him, could the 
 education of each class of children be successfully conducted. 
 
 The proposal was not accepted, chiefly on account of external 
 obstacles, which might however have been overcome. A passage in 
 Pestalozzi's ''Fortunes" shows that he afterwards thoroughly agreed 
 with us. In this passage he calls it an unnatural circumstance, that the 
 institution was transplanted from Burgdorfto Yverdun, "from German 
 to French soil." When we first come here," he continues, " our 
 pupils were nearly all Germans ; but there was very soon added to them 
 an almost equal number of French children. Most of the German 
 children were now intrusted to us, not with any particular reference to 
 an elementary or other education, but simply in order that they might 
 learn to speak French in a German house, and this was the very thing 
 that we were least able to teach them ; so also most of the French parents 
 intrusted their children to us, in order that they might learn German 
 in our German house : and here we stood between these two claims, 
 equally unable to satisfy either the one or the other. At the same 
 time, the persons on either side, who committed their children to our 
 care, saw with as little distinctness what they really wished of us, as we 
 did the extent of our inability to satisfy their real wishes. But it had 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 53 
 
 now become tlie fasliion to send us children from all sides ; and so, in 
 respect to pecuniary resources and eulogistic prattle, things went on 
 for a considerable time in their old glittering but deceptive path." 
 
 The second evil was this. Much as is said in the report about the 
 life in the institution having quite the character of that in a family, 
 and even excelling it in many respects, still nothing could be less 
 domestic than this life was. Leaving out of consideration Pestalozzi's 
 residence, there were indeed in the old castle class rooms, dining 
 rooms, and bed rooms, but the parlour, so justly esteemed by Pesta- 
 lozzi, was altogether wanting. Older boys who, as the expression is, 
 had arrived at years of indiscretion, may have felt this want less ; but 
 so much the more was it felt by the youngest — by children of six to 
 ten years. I felt deeply on this account for my little Freddy, who, until 
 he came to the institution, had grown up under the care of a tender 
 mother in a lovely family circle. His present uncomfortable and even 
 desolate existence grieved me much, and troubled my conscience. For 
 his sake, and at the same time, for the sake of the rest of the little 
 boys, we begged Festal ozzi to rent a beautiful dwelling-house in the 
 vicinity of Yverdun, where the children might find a friendly com- 
 pensation for the life of the family circle which they had lost. We 
 offered to take up our abode with them. 
 
 This proposal also was declined. It may easily be supposed that in 
 the consultation upon it, the weak side of the institution, the want of a 
 parlour, and the impossibility even of supplying the place of the family 
 life, was very fully discussed.^- 
 
 Many of the conversations I had with Pestalozzi I shall never forget. 
 One of them concerned the teachers of the institution, in particular the 
 mider-teachers. I saw that many of them labored with the greatest 
 fidelity and conscientiousness, even sacrificing themselves for the good 
 of the institution. I need only refer the reader to the autobiography 
 of honest, manful Ramsauer, for evidence of this fact. But still 
 there was something wanting in most of the teachers ; this Pestalozzi 
 himself could not help feeling. In his new year's address of 1811, he 
 said to them : " Do not attach a higher value to the ability to teach 
 well, than that which it really has in relation to education as a whole. 
 You have, perhaps, too early in your lives had to bear burdens which 
 may have diminished somewhat the lovely bloom of your youth ; but 
 to you, as educators, that bloom is indispensable. You must seek to 
 restore it. I am not ignorant of your ability, your worth ; but just 
 because I know them, I would wish to set upon them the crown of an 
 amiable disposition, which will increase your worth and make even 
 your ability a blessing." 
 
 In what then were the teachers deficient ? Pestalozzi points out one 
 thing : many who had grown up in the institution had too early borne 
 burdens, and had been kept in uninterrupted exertion. "Those 
 teachers who had been pupils of Pestalozzi," says Ramsauer, ''were 
 
 * We made a third proposal, because it appeared to us to be impossible that 
 Pestalozzi's ideas could be realized in Yverdun under the then existing circum- 
 stances. We asked him to establish in the canton of Argovia the long -promised 
 poor school, and offered to engage in the work ourselves to the best of our ability. 
 As lie declined this proposal also, I thought it my duty, especially on account of 
 the boy confided to me, to leave the institution. 
 
51 
 
 LIFE A>:D system of rESl'ALOZZI. 
 
 particularly hard worked, for he at all times required much more from 
 them, than he did from the other teachers ; he expected them to live 
 entirely for the house, — to be day and night concerned for the welfare of 
 the house and the pupils. They were to help to bear every burden, 
 every unpleasantness, every domestic care, and to be responsible for 
 everything. Thus, for example, in tlieir leisure hours (that is when 
 they had no lessons to give) they were required at one time to work 
 some hours every day in the garden, at another, to chop wood for the 
 fires, and, for some time, even to light them early in the morning, or 
 transcribe, &c. There were some years in which no one of us was 
 found in bed after three o'clock in the morning ; and we had to work 
 summer and winter, from three in the morning till six in the evening."* 
 Nearly all the work consisted in the direct performance of school 
 duties ; the teachers had no time to think of their own improvement. 
 
 There was another thing. Most of the teachers of the institution 
 might be regarded as so many separate and independent teachers, who 
 had indeed received their first instruction there, but who had passed 
 much too soon from learning to teaching, and wished to see how they 
 could fight their way through. There was never any such thing 
 as a real pedagogical lecture. Under such a course of training, it could 
 not happen otherwise tlian that some of the teachers should strike into 
 peculiar paths; of this Schmid gave an example. But it was an 
 equally necessary consequence, that the usual characteristic of such 
 teachers should make itself apparent : namely, a great want of self- 
 knowledge and of a proper modest estimate of their own labors. 
 " Man only learns to know himself in man." 
 
 I must know what others have done in my department of science, in 
 order that I may assign the i^roper place and rank to my own labors. 
 It is incredible, how many of the mistaken views and practices of 
 Pestalozzi and his teachers sprang from this source. 
 
 But there was a third thing that I brought against Pestalozzi : his 
 view of the teachers, and their relation to the methods and the methodi- 
 cal compendiums. As already mentioned, the compendiums were to 
 render all peculiar talent and skill in teaching as good as unnecessary. 
 These methodical compendiums were like dressing machines, which did 
 not, unfortunately, quite supply the place of the teachers, but still left the 
 services of a man necessary; just as in the most perfect printing 
 presses, a man must always be appointed, though indeed he scarcely 
 requires the most ordinary degree of intelligence. 
 
 Pestalozzi' s idea of a teacher was not much better than this ; 
 according to his views, such a one had nothing to do, but to >take his 
 scholars through the compendium, with pedantic accuracy, according 
 to the directions how to use it, without adding thereto, or diminishing 
 therefrom. He was never required to be more than just a step in advance 
 of the scholars. Just as if a guide with a lantern were to be given 
 to a man travelling in the night, and the guide had not only to light 
 the traveller, but first to find out the way himself with the aid of the 
 lantern. The real teacher must have the destination and the road to 
 it, so clear before his mind, that he shall be able to guide the scholars 
 
 * Ramsauer's time-table shows that, from two or three o'clock in the morning till 
 nine in the evening; he was almost constantly occupied with official duties. • 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 55 
 
 without a lantern — without a book of method. He must be able to 
 
 say, La methode c'est moL* 
 
 But can any one imagine a more miserable piece of slave-work than 
 that of a teacher who is strictly tied to a Pestalozzian compendium? 
 Is not all peculiar teaching power thereby fettered, — all disposition 
 to sprightliness and decision in teaching and acting kept down, — all 
 affectionate relation between teacher and scholar rendered impossible ?"|" 
 
 At that time the institution appeared to me, in moments of sadness, 
 as a great noisy education-factory ; many mistook the dull noise of 
 the machines for an expression of youthful joyousness on the part of 
 the pupils, w^hile engaged in learning. 
 
 Pestalozzi's view of the task of the teachers Avas too intimately con- 
 nected with his general view^s on education, and had been too much 
 realized in the institution to allow me to entertain the idea of his 
 changing it, although the good old man bitterly felt that my observa- 
 tion was not without foundation. 
 
 At a later period, when the brilliancy of the reputation of the insti- 
 tution was decreasing more and more, Pestalozzi saw his under- 
 teachers in the year 1817, as he relates, '^suddenly combine, like 
 English factory work-people, desist by common consent from the per- 
 formance of their duties, and declare in a body that they would give 
 no more lessons, but w^ould remain in a state of complete strike- 
 idleness, until the salary of every one of them should be doubled." 
 
 Pestalozzi pressed me to teach mineralogy, and in doing so to make 
 use of a small collection of minerals which the institution possessed. 
 I replied that, if I did do so, I must entirely depart from the methods 
 of instruction pursued in the institution. How so ? asked Pestalozzi. 
 According to that method, I replied, I should have to do nothing but 
 to hold up before the boys one specimen of the collection after another, 
 to give the name of each, for example, " that is chalk," and thereupon 
 to make the class repeat in unison three times, " that is chalk." It was 
 thought that in this way the observation of actual objects and 
 instruction in language were provided for at the same time.J 
 
 I endeavoured to explain that such a mode of instruction made 
 a mere show, giving the children w^ords before they had formed an idea 
 of the images of the minerals ; that moreover this process of perception 
 and conception was only disturbed by the talking of the teacher and 
 the repetition of the scholars, and was therefore best done in silence. 
 On Pestalozzi's opposing this view, I asked him why children are born 
 speechless, and do not begin to learn to speak until they are about 
 three years old ; why we should in vain hold a light before a child 
 eight days old, and say "light" three times, or even a hundred times, 
 
 * "Every teacher," says ■Herder, " must have his own method; he must have 
 created it with intelligence for himself, otherwise he will not be successful." 
 
 f On leaving Yverdun in 1810 and going to Berlin, I attended an examination 
 at Plamann's institution. How the free, independent, and untrammelled teaching 
 of Friesen and Hamisch contrasted with the cold, methodical, and constrained 
 teaching of many Pestalozzian teachers! 
 
 % This reminds me of an American lady, said to be a distinguished teacher, who 
 lately came over to this country, and propounded it as a new and important dis- 
 covery, that the subject matter of a reading lesson might be taught at the same time 
 wilh the mere reading. — Tr. 
 
56 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF lESTALOZZI. 
 
 as the child would certainly not try to repeat the word ; whether this 
 was not an indication to us from a higher hand, that time is necessary 
 for the external perception of the senses to become internally appro- 
 priated, so that the word shall only come forth as the matured fruit of 
 the inward conception now fu.lly formed. What I said about the 
 silence of children struck Pestalozzi.* 
 
 * The instruction given at the present day by many English teachers in 
 their so-called object lessons, is very much the same as that to which Raumer 
 refers, and from which it was indeed in the first instance copied. Professor 
 Moseley gives the following grapliic description of the general characteristics of 
 these lessons in his last report on training schools : — 
 
 " A teacher proposing to give an oral lesson on coal, for instance, holds a piece of 
 it up before his class, and having secured their attention, he probably asks them to 
 which kingdom it belongs: animal, vegetable, or mineral — a question in no case of 
 much importance, and to be answered, in the case of coal, doubtfully. Having, 
 however, extracted that answer which he intends to get from the children, he 
 induces them by many ingenious devices, much circumlocution, and an extravagant 
 expenditure of the time of the school, to say that it is a solid, that it is heavy, that 
 it is opaque, that it is black, that it is f riable, and that it is combustible. And then the 
 time has probably expired, and the lesson on the science of common things, assumed 
 to be so useful to a child, is completed. 
 
 " In such a lesson, the teacher affords evidence of no other knowledge of the 
 particular thing which was the subject of it, than the children might be supposed to 
 have known before the lesson began. He gives it easily, because the form 
 is the same for eveiy lesson ; the blanks having only to be differently filled 
 up every time it is repeated. All that it is adapted for, is to teach them the 
 meanings of some unusual words, — words useless to them, because they apply 
 to abstract ideas, and which, as the type of all such lessons is the same, he has 
 probably often taught them before. 
 
 " He has shown some knowledge of words, but none of things. Of the particular 
 thing called coal, as distinguished from any other thing, he knows nothing more 
 than the child; but only of certain properties common to it, and almost everything 
 else, and of certain words useless to poor children, which describe those properties : 
 coal is a common thing to a child, one with w^hich its daily observation is familiar, 
 intimately connected with the uses of its life — a substance about which it might be 
 taught many things which would probably be of great use to it in after life — things 
 which it would not be likely ever to know, unless it were so taught them. But 
 they are not these things ; and if the science of common things is to be so taught, 
 . als to be of any future use to the child, it must not be this science." 
 
 It may be proper to remark that the original Pestalozzian object lessons are not 
 fairly chargeable with the folly of teaching children long adjectives of foreign 
 extraction, as the names of the qualities of the objects. This is an additional 
 error, into which English teachers have been led by the mixed character of our 
 language. In the German, which is a primitive language, the words denoting the 
 qualities of the objects are either simple words in the language or are formed from 
 such, and are therefore readily understood by the German children. We will make 
 this apparent by giving the German equivalents of some of the words commonly 
 used in the object lessons of English teachers : — 
 
 " Transparent" is durchsichtig (seethroughable) ; " semi-transparent" is halb- 
 durchsichtig (halfseethroughable) ; "opaque" is wnc/wrcAszcAfe^ (notseethroughable) ; 
 " sonorous" is Mingend (sounding) ; " sapid" is schmackhaft (tasty) ; " odorous" is 
 riechend (smelling) ; " inodorous" is geruchlos (smeUless) ; " amorphous" is gestaltlos 
 (shapeless) ; " absorbent" is einsaugend (insucking) ; &c. 
 
 However much Pestalozzi's object lessons may have been abused by his own 
 immediate pupils and by his English followers, still it must not be forgotten that to 
 him belongs the meiit of having been the first to direct attention in any prominent 
 j manner to the importance of the aim which this species of instruction is intended 
 Of primarily to attain, namely, the development of the perceptive faculties of the 
 young, ^estalozzi is the real originator of lessons on the science of common 
 ^ things ; and, unfortunately, such lessons have made very little progress since his 
 time.— Tr. 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF TESTALOZZI. 
 
 57 
 
 As far as my recollection extends, I have now related the most 
 important matters that were discussed between Pestalozzi, Schmid, and 
 myself. I should at -the present day still uphold the views which 
 I entertained at that time ; but, taught by so much experience, I should 
 perhaps be able to do so with greater "clearness" than I could then 
 have done. 
 
 But here I will by no means represent myself as blam.eless, and accuse 
 others. Altliough I believe that my opinions were right, I know 
 that my conduct was wrong in several respects ; but this the un- 
 happy circumstances of the institution will perhaps in some measure 
 excuse. I will only mention one thing. Unfortunately, Niederer and 
 Schmid were already placed in complete opposition to each other by 
 their different capabilities, labors, and aims ; in spite of my best 
 endeavours, I found it impossible to effect a mediation between them, 
 there was nothing left me but to side with one or the other. Pesta- 
 lozzi himself allied me with Schmid, whose resolute and restless activity 
 was a pledge to me that he would render powerful assistance in 
 introducing reforms. I was thus brought almost involuntarily into 
 opposition with Niederer. Even though I did not altogether agree 
 with his views, I ought to have emphatically acknowledged his self- 
 sacrificing enthusiasm. I felt myself drawn to Kriisi by his mild dis- 
 position, but he too was against Schmid. 
 
 My silent observation was distasteful to the younger teachers ; can 
 I blame them for it? While they were toiling with unheard-of 
 exertion from morning till night, and had been toiling in the same 
 manner for years pre\dously, I looked on at their toilsome life with 
 a critical eye. I appeared to them as a strange, quizzing, inactive 
 intruder, and it was inevitable that I should so appear to them. They 
 did not know that I had come with so high an opinion of the insti- 
 tution, that I wished at first only to look on, only to learn, in order to 
 be able afterwards to teach and to assist wherever I could. 
 
 That high opinion I had imbibed chiefly from the report. The 
 report led me to form an over-estimate of the excellence of the institution 
 before I went to Yverdun, and this over-estimate led me when there to 
 think too lightly of its labors. I ought to have acknowledged then, the 
 honest, conscientious, toilsome industry of several of the teachers, for 
 instance, Eamsauer, even though they did not always bring to light 
 discoveries that were entirely new ; misled by the report, I had hoped, 
 it is true, to find there nothing else but new discoveries. 
 
 But, notwithstanding all these evils, I should certainly have remained 
 longer at Yverdun, and should have wrought in patient and per- 
 severing hope, had I not held it to be my duty to take away the boy 
 intrusted to my care. I quitted Yverdun with him in May, 1810. 
 Soon after my departure, the long restrained enmity there broke 
 out into an open feud. Schmid left the institution, and wrote 
 against it. 
 
 Yverdun. From 1810 to 1815. 
 I should like best to say nothing of these years, which were saddened 
 by the most disgraceful disputes and lawsuits. The existing accounts 
 of the events of this period, having been written by adherents of two 
 parties diametrically opposed to each other, are often directly contra^ 
 dictory. I will relate only a few incidents of importance. 
 
58 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF TESTALOZZI. 
 
 In the summer of 1811, Monsieur JuUien, Napoleon's companion 
 in arms in Egypt, and Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, visited 
 Yverdun. He remained in the institution six weeks ; his observations 
 were embodied in two works.* 
 
 During the war of 1814, the hospital department of the Austrian 
 army required that the buildings of the institution should be given up 
 for a hospital. Fortunately, the Emperor Alexander was then at 
 Basel : Pestalozzi immediately went to him, and was received in the 
 most friendly manner ; in consequence of the interposition of the 
 emperor, the hospital was not established at Yverdun at all, and 
 in November of the same year Pestalozzi received the order of 
 St. Vladimir, fourth class. 
 
 Schmid's departure from the institution caused a very sensible void, 
 the existence of which was painfully felt. Letters which Pestalozzi 
 wrote to Niederer at that time, bear witness to the evil plight in which 
 the institution was placed. *' 0 Niederer," he writes, " without strength 
 and purity of purpose in those who surround us, all our endeavours 
 after what is great and high are lost ; the sublime and good cannot 
 easily unfold themselves where weakness and worthlessness peer forth 
 from all corners — our greatest enemies are under our own roof, and eat 
 from the same dish with us — it is better to be alone than to accept 
 delusive aid from baseness." 
 
 In a second letter, Pestalozzi writes : The internal weakness of our 
 house has opened the mouth of the weakest among us, for them to give 
 us monkey's advice and hold public conferences about us among them- 
 selves. The great evil of our house comes from boys who here play 
 the part of men, but who at every other place would be schoolboy s."| 
 
 In this period falls also the visit of the Prussian Chancellor of 
 State, von Beyme, who entered the institution " with a great predis- 
 position in favor of Pestalozzi," and before he left it expressed himself 
 to the effect, that if the institution held together for another year, he 
 should look upon it as the greatest wonder, for that, in the instruction 
 which he had seen given there, things were wanting which teachers in 
 the lowest village schools would be ashamed to have neglected. 
 
 Niederer felt more than any one else the void created by the 
 departure of Schmid. As early as the end of the year 1813, he wrote 
 to Schmid in the most conciliatory manner, and writing on the 10th of 
 February, 1815, he says : " With Pestalozzi, I stake everything I have 
 upon bringing you back. Alone I can do nothing. You know 
 wherein I am deficient, but with you and a few other distinguished 
 and noble-minded men, I do not doubt of the realization of an educa- 
 tional heaven on earth." 
 
 Pestalozzi adduces these passages as certain proofs of Schmid's 
 ability, and the high value of his services to the institution : but they 
 also testify to an honorable mind on the part of Niederer, who did not 
 attempt to conceal his own practical incompetency, and who repressed 
 a deep-seated antipathy to Schmid, in order to realize his educational 
 ideal. 
 
 * Precis sur Vinstitut d' Yverdun en Suisse, 1812; and Fsprit de la m^thode 
 d' education de M. Pestalozzi. 
 t Biber, 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 59 
 
 Schmid was tlien at the head of a school m Bregenz. At Niederer*s 
 pressing invitation, he returned to Yverdun in the Easter of 1815, and 
 now commenced a comprehensive reform of the institution, especially 
 in an economical point of view. There soon arose a silent but general 
 antipathy to him. 
 
 On the 11th of the following December, Madame Pestalozzi died, 
 aged nearly eighty years, having been the faithful and patient partner 
 of her husband during forty-five years, through times of severe 
 suffering. At her funeral, after a hymn had been simg, Pestalozzi, 
 turning towards the coffin, said : " We were shunned and contemned 
 by all, sickness and poverty bowed us down, and we ate dry bread 
 with tears ; what was it that, in those days of severe trial, gave you 
 and me strength to persevere and not cast aw^ay our hope ?" There- 
 upon he took up a Bible, which was lying near at hand, pressed it on 
 the breast of the corpse, and said : " From this source you and I drew 
 courage, and strength, and peace." Her grave is under two tall 
 walnut trees in the garden of the castle. 
 
 On this sorrowful day, the antipathy of many of the teachers towanls 
 Schmid first broke out into open enmity, which was never again 
 appeased, and which positively poisoned the last twelve years of the 
 poor old man's life. From that time every blessing seemed to forsake 
 the institution, and every new undertaking in which Pestalozzi 
 engaged. 
 
 Most of the teachers were against Schmid. Blochmann, now (1846) 
 director of a flourishing educational establishment at Dresden, drew up 
 a formal complaint against him, which was signed by Kriisi, Ramsauer, 
 Stern, Ackermann, and others, in all twelve teachers. 
 
 In the year 1816, these men left the institution, among them even 
 Kriisi, so many years the fellow-laborer of Pestalozzi. "Father," he wrote 
 to Pestalozzi, *' my time of enjoying your presence is past. I must leave 
 your institution, as it is now conducted, if I am not for ever to lose my 
 courage and strength to live for you and your work. For all that 
 you were to me and all that I was able to be to you, I thank God ; for 
 all my shortcomings, I pray God and yourself to forgive me. 
 
 At length, in 1817, Niederer also separated from the institution ;^ 
 Pestalozzi tried in vain the following year to reconcile him with 
 Schmid. Both of them acknowledged Pestalozzi as their master, and 
 yet the reconciliation was impossible. They were too much opposed 
 to each other, not merely in natural endowments, but in their aim and 
 object, in the educational ideal which each endeavoured to realize in the 
 institution. 
 
 Niederer saw in Pestalozzi a man who had grasped with instinctive 
 profundity the subject of human culture, but had given only 
 a fragmentary view of it, and who could not control the ideas which, 
 as it were, possessed him. Niederer felt himself called to control them 
 philosophically — to build up out of those mighty educational fragments 
 a complete systematic theory. 
 
 At first, Pestalozzi could not comprehend him, not understanding his 
 philosophical language. At a later period, Pestalozzi saw in him the 
 
 * Ho announced his departure in a sermon whicli he preached at Whitsuntide ou 
 the occafiion of a confirmation which he had to hold ! 
 
GO 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 one man in tlie institution, who, standing on the pinnacle of German 
 culture, was fitted to assign to the new method its proper place in 
 the region of human culture generally. Only by such a man, he 
 thought, could the educated world, especially Germany, be won over 
 to his educational plans; by such a man must his ^wiss idiom be 
 translated into an intelligible high German. Nay, for some time 
 he even thought that Niederer understood him better than he 
 understood himself. 
 
 Niederer was deficient in the practical skill requisite for carrying 
 out his educational theory, as he himself frequently acknowledged. 
 His intention in the institution was more to observe the results of the 
 practical talent at work there, and in this manner to learn what he 
 could, but at the same time to see that all the teachers wrought 
 together with one mind towards one and the same object — the realiza- 
 tion of the educational theory. 
 
 No wonder that Pestalozzi, as he again and again affirmed, did 
 not feel himself attracted by Niederer's peculiar character, even at 
 times when the two men stood in a very friendly relation towards each 
 other ; and just as little need we wonder that the old man subsequently 
 dissolved a connection, which had been formed by his will rather than 
 his inclination. 
 
 But how entirely different was his relation to Schmid ! "Inexpli- 
 cable feelings," he says, "drew me towards him from the moment 
 of his appearance in our circle, as I have never yet felt myself drawn 
 towards any other pupil." Pestalozzi writes characteristically : 
 " I must trace from its origin the strenyth which alone appeared 
 capable of holding us together in this unhappy state." This personified 
 strength was no other than the shepherd boy, Schmid, who had 
 migrated from the Tyrolese mountains to Burgdorf. Pestalozzi says 
 that he soon left his teachers behind him. " By his practical talent 
 and incessant activity," continues Pestalozzi, "he soared above the 
 influence of every other person in the house. I did not conceal that 
 I looked upon the strength of this pupil, though still so young, as the 
 main stay of my house." Pestalozzi characterizes Schmid in the same 
 way in an address which he delivered in the year 1818. " I will not," 
 he says, " make more of him than he is to me. I know him. He has 
 a natural power which, in its artlessness, penetrates where much art has 
 often before my own eyes failed to enter. Schmid threw a hard shell 
 about the kernel of my vanishing labors, and saved me." 
 
 Niederer also acknowledged in the fullest measure the ability and 
 activity of Schmid. Like Pestalozzi, Niederer saw in him a most 
 indefatigable teacher of mathematics and drawing, who, by his example, 
 as well as by severe censure, could incite the remaining teachers to con- 
 scientious activity ; he also saw in him a man who, being a pupil of 
 Pestalozzi, was regarded as one of the fruits of the method, and who 
 consequently impressed foreign visitors with a favorable idea of it. 
 Thus it came that, in the year 1814, he hoped everything from a recon- 
 ciliation with Schmid. But how deceived he found himself, when 
 Pestalozzi gave into Schmid's hands the sceptre over the entire 
 institution. 
 
 Blochmann, too, in his complaint, acknowledges Schmid's " activity, 
 perseverance, endurance, punctuality, administrative ability, his merito- 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM pF rESTALOZZI. 
 
 61 
 
 rious services in establishing greater order in the institution, his skill 
 in teaching the elementary branches of mathematics — a rare talent." 
 All these were qualities which neither Pestalozzi nor Niederer pos- 
 sessed, and which, therefore, marked out Schmid as an indispensable 
 member of the staff of teachers. But, if Blochmann and the other 
 teachers who signed the complaint acknowledged this, why did they 
 press for Schmid's removal ? Because, they answer, in that document, 
 "the source of all that Schmid does is complete selfishness, ability 
 without humility, without love, without self-denial, sounding brass, 
 a tinkling cymbal, and Schmid himself is wise as the serpent, but 
 not harmless as the dove." 
 
 In a letter to Pestalozzi, Niederer reproaches him with having over- 
 rated the abihty of Schmid, and ability generally.* " Ruin," he says, 
 entered your institution, when, dazzled and led away by individual 
 instances of brilliant talents and results, you ceased to bestow any 
 particular attention on that which by its nature can w^ork only in 
 silence, although it stands higher than talent, and alone can render 
 the development of talent possible ; when you began so to act 
 as if you ow^ed everything to that with wdiich you could make a dis- 
 play, and nothing to that which was not suited to this purpose. Under 
 this fundamental error, I say more, under this fundamental injustice, 
 the mathematical side of the method and the institution was made 
 prominent, as if that singly and solely were the essence of the method 
 and the salvation of humanity. Low and one-sided qualities were 
 honored at the expense of the higher ones. The qualities of good 
 temper, fidelity, love, if they were not joined with those external 
 qualities, were slighted and depreciated in the persons in whom they 
 existed. In the kind of praise which you gave to the manual dexterity 
 of utterly inexperienced youths in particular departments, you placed 
 this dexterity above intelligence, knowledge, and experience." 
 
 Let us now return to the history of the institution. 
 
 In the Easter of 1816, M. Jullien, already mentioned, came to 
 Yverdun, bringing twenty-four pupils with him from France ; but, 
 annoyed, it is said, by Schmid, he quitted the institution the very 
 next year. 
 
 As already stated, Niederer separated from the institution in 1817, 
 from which time he conducted the girls' school only, in company with 
 his wife. In the same year, a most ignominious and lamentable law- 
 suit, which lasted seven years, arose concerning the pecuniary affairs 
 of this school, between Pestalozzi and Schmid, on one side, and 
 Niederer, on the other. *'It was in July, 1817," says Pestalozzi, " that 
 a letter referring to that quarrel suddenly threw me into a state of 
 inward rage, which was accompanied by an outbreak of real delirium, 
 and placed me in danger of completely losing my reason, and sinking 
 into utter insensibility." Schmid took the old man to Biilet, on the 
 Jura, w^hose cooling heights acted wholesomely on the endangered state 
 of his nerves. There he poured out his sufferings in poems, in 
 which his soul, now caught in the trammels of the most painful and 
 ignoble relations, utters with wailing, its aspirations after heavenly 
 freedom. Here is one of those poems : — 
 
 * The letter is dated the 19th March, 1818. 
 
C2 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF lESTALOZZI. 
 
 Fair bow, that smil'st amid the stonii, 
 Thou tcUest of the bliss of God ! 
 With those soft beams of many hues, 
 O shine in this afflicted lieart 
 Amid its wild and life-long storm ! 
 Tell me of brighter morn to come, 
 
 0 tell me of a better day, 
 
 Fair bow, that joinest earth to heav'ii ! 
 
 Through all the dark and stoj-my days, 
 The Lord hath been a rock to me. 
 My soul shall praise His holy name : 
 Must I be call'd from this fair earth, 
 Ere thou appearest in my heart, 
 And bringest with thee heavenly joys 
 And that long wished for better day : 
 Must I drink out the bitter cup — 
 The cup of fierce contending strife 
 And enmity not reconciled — 
 Till I have drained the deepest dregs : 
 Must I from hence depart, 
 Ere peace, the peace I seek, is found ? 
 
 1 own my burthen of offence, 
 My many weaknesses I own. 
 And with affection and with tears 
 All my offenders I forgive ; 
 
 But death will bring me peace. 
 
 And after death's long night of rest, 
 
 A better day will dawn for me ! 
 
 Thou herald of that better day. 
 
 How lovely tlicn wilt thou appear 
 
 Above my still and lonesome gi'ave : 
 
 Fair bow, that shin'st like Hope through tears. 
 
 Like snow new fallen on the ground, 
 Like those bright flakes of winter-tide 
 Which, beaming lovely in the sun, 
 Sank into that new-open'd grave, 
 Where lay the partner of my days : 
 Fair bow, that shin'st with heaven's light, 
 Thus lovely, in the hour of death. 
 Do thou appear once more to me. 
 Through all the dark and stormy days. 
 The Lord hath been a rock to me ! 
 My soul shall praise his holy name ! 
 
 An attempt, wliicb. Pestalozzi made in 1817, to enter into connexion 
 with Fellenberg, was unsnccessful. In 1818, Schmid made an arrange- 
 ment with Ootta (the great Leipsig pnblisher) for the publication of 
 a complete edition of Pestalozzi's works ; subscriptions to a con- 
 siderable amount soon flowed in. The emperor of Russia subscribed 
 5,000 roubles ; the king of Prussia, 400 dollars ; the king of Bavaria, 
 700 guilders. Thereupon, Pestalozzi's hopes revived. In a remarkable 
 address, already mentioned, which he delivered on his seventy-third 
 birth-day, the 12th of January, 1818, he stated that he should appro- 
 priate to educational purposes, 50,000 French livres, which the sub- 
 scription would yield. 
 
 In the same address, Pestalozzi speaks freely on the subject of his 
 relations to Niederer and Schmid, and justifies himself for having 
 separated from the former and joined with the latter. He hits off 
 Niederer admirably when he says : " I am conscious of a high and 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 63 
 
 fervent love for liim. Only he should not require me to value in him 
 what I do not understand : he should ascribe it to the weakness of my 
 head, not to the hardness of my heart, if I fail to do so, and should not 
 on that account pronounce me ungrateful. But what shall I say? 
 Here lies the very ground of complaint against me, namely, that I am 
 no longer capable of following the spirit of my endeavours, and that 
 through my incapacity, I cripple and destroy the strength of those who 
 are further advanced in that spirit than myself. It is an old complaint, 
 that my spirit has left me ; that I have outlived myself, and that 
 the truth and the right of my labors have passed from mine into other 
 hands. I know well, also, and I feel it deeply, that I do not possess, in 
 the least degree, some qualifications which are essential to the 
 furtherance of my views ; on the other hand, I know just as certainly, 
 that all those qualifications which I formerly possessed, I still feel 
 myself to possess in some vitality, and with an impulse to apply them 
 to use." 
 
 Of this the address affords sufficient proof ; I will quote some 
 passages. 
 
 " Man has a conscience. The voice of God speaks in every man, 
 and leaves no one unconvinced as to what is good, and what bad; 
 what is right, and what wrong." * 
 
 Contemplate man in the entire range of his development. See, he 
 grows, he is educated, he is trained. He grows by the strength of his 
 own self ; he grows by the strength of his very being. He is educated 
 by accident, by the accidental that lies in his condition, in his circum- 
 stances, and in his relations. He is trained by art and by the will of 
 man. The growth of man and his powers is God's doing. It proceeds 
 according to eternal and divine laws. The education of man is acci- 
 dental and dependent on the varying circumstances in which a man 
 finds himself placed. The training of man is moral.f Only by the 
 accordance of the influences of education and training with the eternal 
 laws of human growth is man really educated and trained ; by contra- 
 diction between the means of his education and training and those 
 eternal laws, man is mis-educated and mis-trained." 
 
 Pestalozzi gives a striking delineation of the contrast between the 
 old time and the new. " The time in which we live," he says, is 
 really a time of excessive artificial refinement, in contradistinction to a 
 high and pure sense of innocence, love, and faith, and that powerful 
 attachment to truth and right which springs from these virtues. Who 
 among us, if he be not an alien that neither knows the present time 
 and its spirit nor has searched into the time of our fathers and its 
 spirit, but must acknowledge that the time of our fathers was a better 
 time, their spirit a better spirit ; that their sincerity of purpose had its 
 foundations laid immeasurably deeper, in the religion of the heart, in 
 strong earnestness in domestic and civil life, and in the daily exercise 
 of industry in the good works of a simple and satisfying professional 
 life, than can possibly be the case in our paralysing refinement of the 
 powers of body and soul. Our fathers were cheerful, reasonable, and 
 
 * T quote these words only hocause tliey stand in fortunate contradiction with 
 Bome that were adduced from Pestalozzi's "Researches," 
 
 ■j" Compare with tliis what Rousseau says on t he threcfokl education of the child. 
 
64 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF TESTALOZZI. 
 
 benevolent, in all simplicity." Their circumstances were peculiarly 
 fitted to lead them daily and hourly in all innocence, in faith, and in 
 love, to be good-tempered, reflective, and industrious ; but our artificial 
 refinement has rendered us disgusted with our fathers' mode of life, 
 and with the sources of their moral, domestic, and political elevation. 
 We have almost entirely departed from their spirit and their mode of 
 life. But it is for this reason that we have sunk so low in respect 
 to the education of the people. We liave the semblance of faith, 
 love, and wisdom, but not the qualities themselves ; and we live in a 
 delusion, really without the virtues of our fathers, while they, though 
 possessing those virtues, were by no means satisfied with themselves, 
 as we are. The good and pious foundation which our fathers had in 
 their mode of life itself for their views, feelings, opinions, and usages 
 generally, and particularly in respect to the training of children and 
 the relief of the poor, has sunk under our feet through the deception 
 of our present artificial and frivolous mode of life. We are no longer 
 what we were, and we have even lost the feeling that we ought to 
 become again in spirit and in truth what we were. While we praise 
 our fathers with our mouths, we are in heart far from them, and in 
 our doings we stand at the very antipodes of them. We have substituted 
 for their ability to do what was necessary, and their ignorance of what 
 was useless, a large acquaintance with what is useless and an inability 
 to do what is necessary. Instead of their healthy spirit, well exercised 
 in mother-wit, we have forms, not so much of thinking as of verbal 
 expressions about what has been thought, which suck the blood out of 
 good sense, like a marten that fixes itself upon the neck of a poor dove. 
 We no longer know our neighbours, our fellow-citizens, or even our 
 poor relations ; but we make up for it by reading the newspapers and 
 periodicals, by learning the genealogical register of the kings of the 
 world, the anecdotes of courts, of the theatre, and of capital cities, and 
 we raise ourselves to a daily change in our political and religious 
 opinions, as in our clothes, running, on one side, from infidelity to 
 capucinade, and from capucinade to infidelity, just as, on the other 
 side, we run from sans-culottism to tight-lacing and leading-strings. 
 Our fathers cultivated a general, simple, and powerful intellect ; 
 but few of them troubled themselves with researches into higher 
 truths, which are difficult to fathom : we do very little indeed towards 
 rendering ourselves capable of cultivating a general and profound 
 spirit of thought and research ; but we all learn to talk a great deal 
 about sublime and almost imfathomable truths, and strive very zealously 
 to get to read the results of the profoundest thinking in the popular 
 descriptions of almanacs and daily pamphlets, and to put th,em into 
 the mouth of John Bull^ generally. Among our fathers, every honest 
 man sought to do one thing well at least, namely, the work of his 
 calling, and every man might with honor learn every trade ; now our 
 notables are mostly born to their callings. Numberless individuals are 
 ashamed of the rank and profession of their fathers, and believe them- 
 selves to be called to pry into and carp at the professional knowledge 
 of all ranks ; and the habit of prating about all professions and dis- 
 
 * Pestalozzi here uses the favorite appellation of an Englishman for the per- 
 sonified vox populi of any country. — Tk. 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 OS 
 
 charging one's own imperfectly is becoming more general every day, 
 among both the notable and unnotable men of our time. All spirit of 
 political strength has fled from amongst us. In the present state of 
 society we no longer ask what we really are, but what we possess and 
 what we Imow, and how we may set out all our possessions and 
 knowledge for show, put them up for sale, and barter them for the 
 means of feasting ourselves, so that we may tickle our palates with the 
 refined enjoyments of all the five divisions of the globe, whose appe- 
 tites must by such conduct be almost inevitably engendered in us. 
 And when we have in this way succeeded in rendering ourselves 
 powerless and degraded in body and soul, in respect to the pure 
 claims of the humanity of our nature and of the eternal and divine 
 essence which lies at its foundation, — then, in the state of debility 
 and giddiness into which the fever has thrown us, we further seek to 
 force up the appearance of a character whose truth and purity we 
 entirely lack. In this state, we seek to cover over the outward 
 appearances of our debility and desolation by a violent employment 
 of the means of adjustment and concealment, which kill heart and 
 spirit and humanity ; and verily we have sunk to the employment of 
 such means in many matters connected with the education of the 
 people and the relief of the poor. Thus it is that we kill, in our- 
 selves, the very essence of the powers of the soul, those human gifts 
 divine ; and then, when a shadow of the powers which we have killed 
 flutters in us, we ornament the works of its fluttering with golden 
 frames, and hang them up in splendid apartments, whose shining 
 floors are unable to bear any of the good works of the ordinary life 
 of man." 
 
 In another place, Pestalozzi says : " The gardener plants and waters, 
 but God giveth the increase." It is not the educator that implants any 
 faculty in man ; it is not the educator that gives breath and life to any 
 faculty : he only takes care that no external influence shall fetter and 
 disturb the natural course of the development of man's individual 
 faculties. " The moral, the spiritual, and the artistic capabilities of 
 our nature must grow out of themselves, and by no means out of the 
 results produced by art, which has been mixed up with their education. 
 Faith must be called forth again by faith, and not by the knowledge of 
 what is believed; thinking must be called forth again by thinking, and 
 not by the knowledge of what is thought, or of the laws of thinking; love 
 must be called forth again by loving, and not by the knowledge of what 
 is lovable or of love itself ; and art must be called forth again by 
 ability, and not by endless talk about ability." 
 
 The reader can judge from the passages just cited whether any de- 
 gree of youthful freshness still lingered in the mind and heart of the 
 old man of seventy-three.* 
 
 But his " unrivalled incapacity to govern," as he himself calls it, 
 did not forsake him.f He established a poor school in 1818 at Clindy, 
 
 * I shall cite two more passages from this address further on, for the elucidation 
 of Pestalozzi's religious views. 
 
 t '* I was to represent tlie abbot in a monastery (says Pestalozzi), and really, in 
 certain respects, I was more fitted for the donkey, or at least the sheep, of the 
 monastery, than for the abbot. My friends, 1 speak out plainly." 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 in the vicinity of Yverdun ; a commencement was made with twelve 
 boys. " They were to be brought up as poor boys," says Pestalozzi, 
 and receive that kind of instruction and training which is suitable for 
 the poor." But after a short time, children were admitted to board in 
 the establishment, at a fee of twelve louis d'or per annum ; and in a 
 few months the number of these pupils rose to thirty. • It may be 
 easily imagined that the presence of paying boarders would of itself 
 destroy the character of the place as a school for the poor. But this 
 result was occasioned in a still higher degree by some remarkably 
 stupid experiments in teaching. An Englishman,* of the name of 
 Greaves, visited Yverdun in 1819 ; he offered to teach these poor Swiss 
 children English witliout remuneration, and his offer was accepted. 
 On this step Pestalozzi himself remarks : This created an impression, 
 which, considering the original destination of these children, led us 
 very far astray." To the instruction in English was added soon after 
 instruction in French and Latin. Pestalozzi says, the poor children 
 had made extraordinary progress in the elementary subjects. He adds, 
 nevertheless, I had no longer an establishment for the poor ; but, on 
 the contrary, two scientific ones, which I could not now allow to 
 remain separated. Thus the so-called poor school at Clindy was 
 amalgamated with the institution at Yverdun." According to Pesta- 
 lozzi's account, the poor scholars were models worthy of imitation" 
 to the pupils of the institution, especially in their acquirements. Many 
 of them were employed as teachers. " The instruction which was 
 given by the pupils of our poor school (says he) was preferred, on 
 account of its solid and natural character, to that of the most accom- 
 plished among the elder teachers of our house." (I) They threw their 
 strength chiefly into arithmetic and geometry. Is it to be wondered 
 at, that these poor children soon began to place themselves on a level 
 with the children of the institution, and liked playing with them out 
 of school hours better than chopping wood and carting manure ; — that, 
 instructed in three foreign languages, they did not like the idea of 
 becoming masters of poor schools, and of having learnt Latin to no 
 purpose ? 
 
 Pestalozzi acknowledged, when it was too late, " that the establish- 
 ment had taken such a direction that it was no longer to be looked upon 
 as a poor school, but as a school for imparting the elements of a scien- 
 tific education." The particular reason of the failure had been " that 
 these children were led into acquirements, habits, pretensions, dreams, 
 and appetites, which did not suit the character of their original desti- 
 nation, and even tended to unfit them for it." 
 
 Pestalozzi's unhappy disputes with Niederer and others went on 
 uninterruptedly during this time. At last a reconciliation was brought 
 about through the noble exertions of deputy governor Du Thou On 
 the 31st of December, 1823, Niederer wrote an apology to Schmid in 
 the name of Kriisi and himself, in which, at the same time, it was said 
 that any future dispute should be settled by an arbiter. 
 
 Unfortunately, newspapers and controversial writings of those years 
 
 * A second Englishman entered the establishment the same year, as the religious 
 instructor of the English pupils who had been admitted. Later, " above half a 
 dozen poor children" were even sent from England to the school! 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 07 
 
 have made the public only too well acquainted with this dispute. 
 Pestalozzi's worst enemies could not have conceived anything that would 
 have been more calculated to damp the public enthusiasm for him. 
 
 Who would like to undertake the task of placing before readers the 
 details of these unfortunate occurrences, especially when it is considered 
 that they almost exclusively concerned private interests ? On February 
 1st, 1823, Pestalozzi wrote to Niederer a conciliatory letter, which 
 shines forth in the midst of this lawsuit like a brilliant gem out of the 
 mire. I give the following passage from this letter with pleasure : — 
 
 " Dear Mr. Niederer,* — Call to mind what we once hoped from each 
 other and what we were to each other. I would again hope from you what 
 I formerly hoped, and I would again be to you what I formerly was. But 
 we must make the way to this possible for each other ; we must help each 
 other to clear the way to it, each from the point on which he stands. Let us 
 do this. Above all, let us, without circumlocution and without condition, 
 forgive each other, and unite with a pure intention in true love, in true 
 friendship, and in an undertaking which will be for our mutual happiness. 
 Niederer, become again as far as you can my old Niederer — such as you were 
 twenty years ago. Madame Niederer, be also to me again something of 
 what you were then. I will readily be to both of you again, as far as I can, 
 what I then was. How I long for the time when our hearts shall bring us to 
 ourselves again, and when, in the path of real self-knowledge, we shall 
 attain to love, which is equally our duty as Christians, and the pressing- 
 need of our condition. Oh ! Niederer, how 1 long for the time when, 
 strengthened and sanctified by this renewed love, we shall be able to go once 
 more to the Holy Sacrament, when the festival comes round, without having 
 to fear that the entire commune in which we live, scandalized by our conduct, 
 will shudder at our coming to the Lord's table, and will cast upon us looks of 
 indignation as well as pity. Oh ! Niederer, the path of this renewed love is 
 the only one which will lead to true honor, as it is also the only one which 
 will lead to the restoration of a lost semblance of honor. Oh ! Niederer, 
 think not that the tricks and chicanery of law can ever bring us to the pin- 
 nacle of honor to which we can raise ourselves by the restoration of our love. 
 My old friend, let us make clean the inside of the platter, before we trouble 
 ourselves about the false glitter of the outside." 
 
 These lamentable lawsuits had naturally the worst influence on the 
 hybrid institution. Pestalozzi felt this most painfully, and thought that 
 his poor school would succeed, if he could only transfer it from unlucky 
 Yverdun to Neuhof, in the canton of Argovia — the same Neuhof where, 
 many years before, he had made his first important educational 
 experiments. He had a new house built there for the purpose. 
 
 Each of the poor children who had been admitted into the school 
 had bound himself to remain in it five years, from 1818 till 1823. The 
 five years ran out. Pestalozzi confidently hoped that many of these 
 children would follow him to Neuhof, and form the nucleus of the new 
 establishment. But not one remained. As I have already remarked, 
 they had imbibed grander ideas from the instruction which they had 
 enjoyed, and they sought to make their fortune in other ways. " They 
 considered it," says Pestalozzi, " beneath their dignity to be appointed 
 teachers in a Pestalozzian poor school at Neuhof." When at last even a 
 favorite pupil of his rejected all his offers, and went away clandestinely 
 
 * In November, 1824, the lawsuit which has been mentioned was terminated 
 by arbitration. 
 
68 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF TESTALOZZI. 
 
 from Yverdun, the old man's heart was full. " The illusion, in my 
 mind," he says, ''as to the possibility of transplanting to Neuhof an 
 establishment in Yverdun of which not an inch was in reality any longer 
 mine, was now entirely dispelled. To resign myself to this conviction, 
 required me to do no less than abandon all my hopes and aims in 
 regard to this project, as for me completely unattainable. I did so 
 at last, and on March 17th, 1824, I announced my total inability further 
 to fulfil the expectations and hopes which I had excited, by my projected 
 poor school, in the hearts of so many philanthropists and friends of 
 education." 
 
 At length, in the year 1825, Pestalozzi also broke up the institution, 
 after it had stood for a quarter of a century ; and he returned, an old 
 man of eighty years, and tired of life, to Neuhof, where, exactly half 
 a century before, he had begun his first poor school. " Verily," he says, 
 
 it was as if I were putting an end to my life itself by this return, so 
 much pain did it give me." 
 
 10. Pestalozzi's Last Years.— 1825 to 1827. 
 
 Pestalozzi had but one child, a son, who was born in 1770, and died 
 at the early age of twenty-four, leaving a son himself.* This grandson 
 of Pestalozzi was in possession of the estate of Neuhof ; to him the old 
 man went. 
 
 In these last years of his life, he wrote the " Song of the Dying 
 Swan" and the " Fortunes of my Life." He looked back with deep 
 pain on so many shipwrecked enterprises; and acknowledged that the 
 blame was his, as the wreck had been brought on by his incompetency 
 to manage the helm. He speaks, as we have seen, with equal candor of 
 his fellow-workers. 
 
 These last writings of Pestalozzi have been regarded by many as 
 the melancholy and languid outpourings of the heart of a dying old 
 man. As far as concerns the old man's judgments on the institution, as 
 it was at the time of my stay at Yverdun, I have already remarked that 
 I consider them for the most part highly truthful, and as affording evi- 
 dence that he was not deficient in manly clearness and penetration even 
 in his old age. 
 
 In May of the year 1825, he was elected President of the Helvetian 
 Society of Shinznach, of which he was the oldest member. The fol- 
 lowing year he delivered a lecture before the Education Society of 
 Brugg, on " The simplest means which art can employ to educate the 
 child, from the cradle to the sixth year, in the domestic circle." Thus 
 the gentle influence of home education remained to the last the object 
 of his love, as it had been fifty-six years before, when "he wrote 
 Leonard and Gertrude." 
 
 On the 21st of July, 1826, Pestalozzi, in company with Schmid, 
 visited the establishment of the excellent Zeller in Bruggen. The 
 children received him with singing. An oak wreath was handed to 
 him, but he did not accept it : " Not to me," he said, " but to Inno- 
 cence belongs the WTcath." The children sang to him the song by 
 Goethe which he has introduced into Leonard and Gertrude." 
 
 * The widow, an excellent woman, subsequently married a Mr. Kuster, and 
 remain<,'d attached to Pe.stalo/./i with true affection. 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 69 
 
 [The Translator subjoins this song, with the simple and beautiful 
 music, as printed in " Leonard and Gertrude."] 
 
 A. 
 
 :=l: 
 
 Thou that art from high - est skies, 
 
 Ev' - ry storm and 
 I I 
 
 row still-ing j Hearts that dou - bled an - guish tries 
 
 Dou - bly with thy sweet - ness fill - ing : On the waves of 
 
 
 
 -1 
 
 
 pas - sion dri - ven. 
 
 Oh, how longs my soul 
 
 -f- 
 
 for 
 
 rest ! 
 
 
 
 
 
 Tears choked the voice of the old man. 
 
 From his youth, Pestalozzi had been weakly in constitution, and he 
 had repeatedly suffered severe attacks of illness. In the year 1806, he 
 was suddenly knocked down in the street by the pole of a carriage, 
 and trampled under foot by the horses. It is a great wonder," he 
 said in an address on New Year's Day, 1808, " that I was saved from 
 under the horses' feet. See, they tore the clothes from off my back, 
 but did not touch my body." 
 
 In the year 1812, he suffered very severely for a long time from 
 accidentally running a knitting needle into his ear. 
 
 But, notwithstanding slight ailments and dangerous accidents, his 
 life was prolonged to a very advanced age. 
 
70 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 At length he approached the end of his earthly existence. Some 
 time before his death, he said : " I forgive my enemies ; may they find 
 peace now that I go to eternal rest. I should like to have lived another 
 month, to have completed my last labors ; but I again thank God, who 
 in His Providence calls me away from this earthly scene. And you, 
 my children, remain in quiet attachment to one another, and seek for 
 happiness in the domestic circle." Soon after, he breathed his last. 
 He had lain ill only a few days. On the 15th of February, 1827, he 
 had been removed from his country house to the town of Brugg, in 
 order that he might be nearer to his physician ; on the morning of the 
 17th he died, after violent paroxysms of fever; and on the 19th he was 
 buried. His corpse was carried past the new poor school which he had 
 begun to build but could not complete, and was interred with a quiet 
 and modest funeral service at the village of Birr. Few strangers 
 attended his funeral, for the snow lay thick on the ground, and his in- 
 terment took place sooner than might have been expected ; the news 
 of his death had scarcely been received in the canton of Argovia. 
 Schoolmasters and children from the surrounding villages sang their 
 thanks to the departed in artless strains over his grave.* 
 
 11. Pestalozzi and Christianity. 
 
 Pestalozzi rests from the labors of his toilsome life. 
 
 At the grave, a sabbath stillness sets in ; we look back upon the past, 
 but, at the same time, we look forwards into the eternal life of the 
 departed, and ask whether, in time, he seriously prepared himself for 
 eternity — whether ail the labors of his life were done in the Lord, and 
 whether he died in the Lord. 
 
 Not as severe judges do we ask, but in all the humility of co-redeemed 
 sinful fellow-men ; we ask with the fond wish that he may be blessed 
 eternally. 
 
 In a letter written in the year 1793, Pestalozzi says, Wavering 
 between feelings, which drew me towards religion, and opinions, which 
 led me away from it, I went the dead way of my time; I let the essen- 
 tial part of religion grow cold in my inmost heart, without really 
 deciding against religion." 
 
 That is the judgment which he pronounced upon himself in his forty- 
 eighth year ; at the time of Robespierre, when the earthy political 
 element reigned to such a degree in the minds of men, that no quiet 
 abode remained for the religious element. 
 
 The " Evening Hour of a Hermit," written thirteen years earlier, when 
 the world w^as more tranquil, and as yet not off its hinges, contains 
 passages which are penetrated with true Christian unction. -To these 
 belongs especially the concluding passage of the whole, already quoted, 
 in which Pestalozzi speaks of Christ as " the Son of God, who with 
 suffering and death has restored to mankind the universally lost feeling 
 of filial love towards God — the Redeemer of the World — the sacrificed 
 Priest of the Lord — the Mediator between God and sinful mankind; " 
 and of his doctrine as " the revelation of God the Father to the lost 
 race of his children." 
 
 But other passages of this paper, enticing as they sound, are at va- 
 
 * Heusslcr. 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 71 
 
 riance with essential doctrines of Christianity. Thus the one in which 
 Pestalozzi says, " Faith in God, thou art the pure sense of Simplicity 
 — the ear of Innocence listening to the voice of Nature, which proclaims 
 that God is father." 
 
 Where is the ear of Innocence to be found ? The Scripture saith : 
 " There is none righteous, no, not one : There is none that under- 
 standeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out 
 of the way, they are together become unprofitable ; there is none that 
 doeth good, no, not one." (Romans iii., 10, 11, 12.) 
 
 Where is the ear of Innocence ? If it were to be found among men, 
 then it might certainly hear a voice of Nature, proclaiming that God 
 is father. In that case, the heathen also might have prayed, " Our 
 father." But nowhere do we find the slightest evidence that the ancients 
 loved their gods, not to say God, with filial love. 
 
 And, could man by nature love God, to what purpose were Christ 
 the restorer of the lost filial love of mankind ? But this very expres- 
 sion itself appears to me to be almost a euphemism for " The Lord 
 hath laid on him the iniquity of ns all." (Isaiah liii., 6.) 
 
 We saw, in considering the book, " How Gertrude teaches her chil- 
 dren," how deep an influence Pestalozzi's notion of the innocence of 
 children exercised upon his educational theory ; like Rousseau, he 
 wanted to gather figs of thistles. Did he retain this notion to the end 
 of his life ? We shall answer this question in the negative. 
 
 In " Leonard and Gertrude," all the stress is laid upon active Chris- 
 tianity, love is occasionally placed almost in opposition to faith ; a 
 dead, hypocritical faith not being always distinguished with sufficient 
 exactitude from true faith, which is active in love. The clergyman in 
 Leonard and Gertrude is an honest man, but strongly inclined to mere 
 moralizing ; his care of his flock is more that of a faithful personal 
 friend, than of one acting in the spirit and strength of a church. 
 
 In the " Researches," Christianity is styled a religion of morality — 
 an effort to make the spirit subdue the flesh. If, according to the 
 letter cited, Pestalozzi wavered between feelings, which drew him 
 towards religion, and opinions, which led him away from it, both feel- 
 ing and Christianity give place, in the work just mentioned, to this 
 belabored product of the intellect. 
 
 In the book, " How Gertrude teaches her children," the educational 
 theory is, as we have seen, extremely weak on the religious side ; it is 
 more a rhetorical theory of intellectual development, estranged from 
 Christ. 
 
 But in this book, also, Pestalozzi's feeling repeatedly glances through; 
 there stand forth the aim and yearning desire of his toilsome life, the 
 depth of a love which brought upon the poor helpless man countless 
 sorrows, and almost drove him to despair. From the depths of his 
 necessity, he then cries to God, praying, hoping, offering up his thanks : 
 " Friend," he writes to Gesner, " let me now for a moment forget my 
 aim and my labors, and abandon myself entirely to the feeling of 
 melancholy which comes over me, when I remember that I still live, 
 though I am no longer myself. I have lost everything, I have lost 
 myself; nevertheless, thou, O Lord, hast preserved in me the desires 
 of my life, and hast not shattered to pieces before my eyes the aim of 
 my sufferings, as thou hast shattered the aim of thousands of men, who 
 
72 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZl. 
 
 corrupted themselves in their own ways. Thou hast preserved to mc 
 the work of my life, in the midst of my own ruin, and hast caused 
 to arise upon me, in my hopeless declining age, an evening brightness, 
 the sight of whose loveliness outweighs the sufferings of my life. 
 Lord, I am not worthy of the mercy and faithfulness which thou hant 
 shown towards me. Thou, thou alone, hast had mercy on the trampled 
 worm ; thou alone hast not broken the bruised reed ; thou alone hast 
 not quenched the smoking flax; and hast not, to the latest period of my 
 life, turned away thy face from the offering, which from childhood 
 I have desired to bring to the forsaken in the land, but have never been 
 able to bring." 
 
 Before I consider the religious character of Pestalozzi's later works, 
 I will first look at that of his institution. It is best delineated by 
 Eamsauer. He entered the institution at Burgdorf in 1800, as a boy 
 of ten years; he left it at the age of twenty-six, as head teacher, when 
 he went from Y verdun to Wiirzburg. Thus he had, both as a learner 
 and as a teacher, become acquainted with the religious tendency of the 
 institution. When, in later years, the deep truth and solemn sanctity 
 of Christianity dawned upon his awakened conscience, which impelled 
 him to self-knowledge, then first did he learn to form a just estimate of 
 that religious tendency. He narrates as follows : — 
 
 " In Burgdorf, an active and entirely new mode of life opened to 
 me ; there reigned so much love and simplicity in the institution, the 
 life was so genial — I could almost say patriarchal ; not much was 
 learned, it is true, but Pestalozzi was the father, and the teachers were 
 the friends of the pupils ; Pestalozzi's morning and evening prayers 
 had such a fervor and simplicity, that they carried away every one 
 who took part in them; he prayed fervently, read and explained 
 Gellert's hymns impressively, exhorted each of the pupils indivi- 
 dually to private prayer, and saw that some pupils said aloud in the 
 bedrooms, every evening, the prayers which they had learned at home, 
 while he explained, at the same time, that the mere repeating of 
 prayers by rote was worthless, and that every one should rather pray 
 from his own heart. Such exhortations became more and more rare at 
 Yverdun,and the praying aloud ceased altogether, like so much else that 
 had a genial character. We all felt that more must be learned than at 
 Burgdorf ; but we all fell, in consequence, into a restless pushing and 
 driving, and the individual teachers into a scramble after distinction. 
 Pestalozzi, indeed, remained the same noble-hearted old man, wholly 
 forgetting himself, and living only for the welfare of others, and infusing 
 his own spirit into the entire household : but, as it arose not so much 
 from the religious arrangements and from Pestalozzi's principles, as from 
 his personal character, that so genial a life had prevailed at Burgdorf, 
 that spirit could not last long, it could not gain strength and elevate 
 itself into a Christian spirit. On the other hand, so long as the insti- 
 tution was small, Pestalozzi could, by his thoroughly amiable personal 
 character, adjust at once every slight discordance ; he stood in much 
 closer relation with every individual member of the circle, and could 
 thus observe every peculiarity of disposition, and influence it according 
 to necessity. This ceased when the family life was transformed in the 
 institution into a constitutional state existence. Now the individual 
 was more easily lost in the crowd : thus there arose a desire, on the part 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF I'ESTALOZZI. 
 
 73 
 
 of each, to make himself felt and noticed. Egotism made its appearance 
 every day in more pointed forms. Envy and jealousy rankled in the 
 breasts of many. The instruction, calculated only for the development 
 of the mind, nourished feelings of selfishness and pride ; and the 
 counterpoise, which only the fear of God could have given, was not 
 known. Instead of being told that only that teacher could labor 
 with God's blessing who had attained to the knowledge and the belief 
 of the highest truths, and had thus come to see that he was nothing of 
 himself, but that he had to thank God for whatever he was enabled to 
 be or to do, and that every Christian, but especially the educator, had 
 daily cause to pray to God for patience, love, and humility, and for 
 wisdom in doing and avoiding ; instead of this, we heard day after 
 day that man could do every thing that he wished, that he could do 
 every thing of himself, and that he alone could help himself. Had the 
 otherwise so noble Pestalozzi made the Bible the foundation of all 
 moral and religious education, I verily believe that the institution 
 would still have been in existence, even as those institutions are still 
 in existence and working with success which were founded by Franke, 
 upwards of one hundred years ago, with small means, but in full 
 reliance on God. But, instead of making the pupils familiar with the 
 Bible, Pestalozzi, and those of his assistants who gave the so-called 
 religious instruction, or conducted the so-called morning and evening 
 prayers, fell more and more in each succeeding year into a mere empty 
 moralizing ; and hence it may be understood how it could happen that 
 I grew up in this institution, was confirmed there, and for sixteen years 
 led a very active and morally good life, without acquiring even the 
 slightest acquaintance with the word of God. I did, indeed, many a 
 time hear the Bible named, and even heard Pestalozzi complain that 
 nobody read it, and say that in his youth things had been better in this 
 respect; at the domestic worship on Sundays, and during my confirm- 
 ation instruction, I also frequently heard individual texts read and 
 arbitrarily explained ; but neither I nor any other of the young men 
 obtained any idea of the sacredness and connexion of God's word. 
 Just as Pestalozzi, by the force of his personal characte r, attached most 
 of his assistants to himself for years, so that they forgot themselves as 
 he forgot himself, when good was to be done, so also, and much more, 
 might he have inspired them for the Gospel, and the blessing of God 
 would then have rested on him and them, and the institution would 
 have become a Christian seminary. It would not have been necessary 
 on this account to hang out a sign-board with the words " Christian 
 Educational Institution " displayed upon it : on the contrary, the more 
 quietly and modestly Pestalozzi and his assistants had conducted them- 
 selves, the more effectively would they have worked, and even the 
 most noisy blusterer would soon have come to perceive how very 
 little he could be and do of himself, and thus would have become 
 capable of learning something from strangers. Perhaps some person 
 or other may be disposed to reproach me with one-sidedness, injustice, 
 or even ingratitude, towards Pestalozzi, and to oppose to my testimony 
 the fact that at Yverdun Pestalozzi employed every Friday morning 
 principally in representing Jesus to us as the great exemplar of love 
 and self-sacrifice ; or I may be asked whether I have quite forgotten 
 the zeal witli which Nicderer often gave the confimation instruction. 
 
74 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 But, in reply to this, I can only refer to the facts which I have just 
 detailed." 
 
 I could add hut little to this statement of Ramsauer. When I was 
 in the institution, the religious instruction was given by Niederer, but 
 no stranger was allowed to be present at it. We may form a tolerably 
 correct notion, however, of the manner in which he gave it, from what 
 is said on the subject in the Report to the Parents."* 
 
 " All the elder pupils (says the report) receive positive religious 
 instruction twice a week. The guiding thread that is used for this 
 purpose is the course of the religious development of the human race, 
 as described in the Holy Scriptures, from the Mosaic records down- 
 wards, and, based on this, the pure doctrines of Jesus Christ, as he 
 announced them in his Gospel. We base the teaching of moral duties 
 chiefly on Christ's sermon on the mount, and the teaching of doctrines 
 chiefly on St. John's Gospel. The latter is read connectedly, and ex- 
 plained from itself and from Christ's eternal fundamental view of God and 
 of himself, as the visible image and representative of the godhead and 
 the godlike, of the relation of mankind to God, and of the life in God. 
 We seek, by the example of Christ, and by the manner in which he 
 viewed and treated men and things and their relations, to awaken in 
 the children an intuitive leaning towards the life and conduct, the 
 belief and hope, which are founded in the unchangeable nature of 
 religion, and to render these things habitual to them, and, by the 
 development of those graces through which the Father shone in Him, 
 to raise them to such a mind and mode of life, that God may shine in 
 them also. We do not combat religious error, but endeavor to impart 
 only religious truth. We seek the ground of all dogmas and the 
 source of all religious views in the nature of religion, in the nature of 
 man, and in his propensities, powers, wants, and relations, in order 
 that the child may learn to distinguish the truth in every garb and the 
 substance in every form. The course pursued for the attainment of the 
 last-named object, or the elementary religious instruction, preparatory 
 to the positive doctrines of revelation, is based specially on the solution 
 of the following questions : 1. What is the original religious capability 
 in human nature, or what are the elements of all religious development 
 and education, in so far as they exist in man himself, and proceed 
 from him as something implanted in him by God ? These elements 
 are perceptions and feelings. 2. By what means and in what manner 
 must these primitive religious perceptions and feelings necessarily be 
 excited and brought to consciousness in him ? Here it is especially 
 the relation to father and mother, to nature, and to society^ that is 
 regarded as a means of religious excitation and education. 3. By what 
 means and in what manner does man originally and necessarily express 
 the religious perceptions and feelings excited in him ? And to what 
 does all this lead man ? We find here principally the expression of 
 the religious disposition as a gesture ; the expression of the religious 
 notion as a word; the expression of the religious contemplation as an 
 image. The first develops itself as ceremony, the second as instruction 
 and doctrine, the last as symbol and image-worship. With the course 
 of this development is connected the development of what utters itself 
 
 * There is no doubt that this passage is tVoiri Niedcrei's pen. 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 75 
 
 unchangeably in human nature as veritable and eternal religion, every- 
 where operative, and of what, as sensual degeneracy, errors of the 
 passions, and personal depravity, leads to superstition and infidelity, to 
 idolatry and image-worship, to hypocritical self-delusion and deception 
 of others, and lastly, to the contemptuous rejection of all that is divine 
 and sacred. The pupil finds the key to the clear comprehension of 
 this in the intuitive consciousness of the awaking and course of his own 
 feelings, in the impressions which things make on his own mind, and 
 in the religious arrangements by which he is surrounded. As matter 
 of fact, the whole is exemplified in the history of the religious culture 
 of mankind. The indication thereof, or the thread to which the ex- 
 planation must be attached, in giving the instruction, exists in the 
 language of every nation. The most important results to be accom- 
 plished by the instruction are : That the pupil shall lay hold of the 
 true and the eternal in their origin ; that he shall look upon the 
 human race as essentially religious, and as an organic whole, developing 
 itself according to necessary and divine laws ; that, understanding also 
 in its origin and in its consequences the fall from God and the god- 
 like, he shall all the more earnestly and faithfully follow the way of 
 return to God and to the life in Him, so that, being thus prepared, he 
 may comprehend the worship of God in spirit and in truth, the sig- 
 nificance of the eternal Gospel ; so that he may attain to an inward 
 godly existence, as he lives outwardly in an intelligent existence." 
 
 I have quoted the whole of this passage, because it shows how far 
 the religious instruction was removed from all believing fervor and 
 childlike simplicity, from Christian simplicity, as we meet with it in 
 Luther's small catechism. But this passage characterizes only the 
 religious instruction in the institution, and by no means Pestalozzi's 
 religious views and practice. 
 
 Still it is clear that at Yverdun he also had in view much less moral 
 education than intellectual. He wished, by means of the latter, to lay 
 before the world striking results of the method ; but how shall he show 
 passing strangers the results of moral education, a humble mind and 
 a loving heart, or shall he even expose them rudely to public gaze by 
 an examination ? To which was added, that in the multitude of boys 
 he despaired of being able to take each one individually to his heart 
 as a father would do, who never loves his children only en masse. 
 
 I now return to Pestalozzi's writings, and come to those which he 
 wrote in his old age. 
 
 In several of his addresses to the inmates of his house, there are 
 passages which bear witness that even during the years which he 
 passed at Yverdun, Christianity still lived in his inmost soul ; peaceful 
 sabbath and festival tones soar above the restless and noisy week-day 
 work. So in his Christmas address of 1810.* 
 
 " I have been told by old people (he said), and I have partly seen 
 myself, that Christmas Eve used to be a night like no other. The 
 day of the highest earthly joy was not its shadow. The anniversary 
 of the deliverance of the country from slavery, the anniversary of free- 
 dom, was not to be compared to it. It was quite a heavenly night, 
 a night of heavenly joy. In its still service dedicated to God, resounded 
 
 * I heard this address myself. 
 
76 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 the words : ' Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good 
 will toward men.' When the angels still assembled, as it were, over 
 the heads of men, at this hour, and praised God that the Saviour of 
 the world was born, — what a night was Christmas Eve ! Who can 
 describe its joy ? Who can tell its bliss ? The earth was, on that 
 night, transformed into a heaven. On that night, God was celebrated 
 on high, peace was on earth, and men showed a cheerful good will. 
 Brothers, friends, children, could I but carry you back into the old 
 Christian world, and show you the celebration of this hour in the days 
 of innocence and faith, when half the world still accounted it a small 
 thing to die for the faith in Christ Jesus I Could I but show you the 
 joy of Christmas Eve in the picture of those days ! The heart full of 
 the Holy Ghost, and the hand full of human gifts — thus stood the 
 Christian at this hour in the circle of his brethren. Thus stood the 
 mother in the circle of her children. Thus stood the master in the 
 circle of his workmen — tlie gentleman in the circle of his own people. 
 Thus stood the commune before their pastor — thus went the rich 
 man into the chamber of the poor. At this hour, enemy held out to 
 enemy the hand of reconciliation. The sinner knelt down and wept 
 over his transgressions, and rejoiced in the Saviour, who forgave him 
 his sins. The hour of heavenly joy was the hour of heavenly sanctifi- 
 cation. The earth was a heavenly earth, and the abode of mortal men 
 emitted odors of immortal life." ** May the joy of this hour, may 
 the joy at the birth of our Eedeemer, so elevate us, that Jesus Christ 
 may now appear to us as the visible divine love, as he sacrificed him- 
 self and gave himself up to death for us. May we rejoice in the hour 
 in which he became man, because he brought into the world for us the 
 great gift of his life, and laid it upon the altar of divine love. From 
 this hour, he was the priest of the Lord, sacrificed for us. Friends, 
 brothers, sisters, let us pray : 0 God, give us them again, those fair 
 days of the world, in which the human race truly rejoiced in the birth 
 of Jesus Christ, the Redeemer. Give us again the times in which the 
 hearts of men were, at this hour, full of the Holy Ghost, and their 
 hands full of human gifts for their brethren. Father in heaven, thou 
 wilt give us them again, if we but truly desire them." 
 
 In the address already mentioned, which Pestalozzi delivered in 
 1818, when he was seventy-two years old, occur passages which make 
 a profound impression on the mind. He there declares that happiness is 
 to be expected from Christianity alone. " The artificial spirit of our 
 times (he says) has also annihilated the influence which the religious 
 feeling of our fathers exercised upon this centre of human happiness. 
 This religious spirit, which caused the happiness of the qiiiet and 
 circumscribed domestic relations, has sunk down amongst us into an 
 insolent spirit of reasoning upon all that is sacred and divine ; still we 
 must also acknowledge that the prime source of the real poison of our 
 artificiality, namely, the irreligious feeling of the present age, seems to 
 be shaken in the very depths of its destructive powers ; the blessed 
 spirit of the true Christian doctrine appears to strike deeper root again 
 in the midst of the corruption of our race, and to preserve inward 
 purity of life in thousands and thousands of men, and, indeed, with 
 regard to popular education, it is from this quarter alone that we can 
 derive the expectation, that we shall ever attain to measures really calcu- 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 77 
 
 lated to reach with sufficient efficacy the views, dispositions, appetites, 
 and habits of our present mode of life, which we must look upon as 
 the original source of our popular depravity and the misfortunes of our 
 times." 
 
 The conclusion of the address is particularly important : — " Friends, 
 brothers, become renovators of my house, restorers of its old spirit, and 
 witnesses that the, spirit of my youth, which is seen blossoming in 
 ' Leonard and Gertrude,' and nearer maturity in ' How Gertrude 
 teaches her children,' still lives in me. In that spirit, become joint 
 founders of the present result of the old original, philanthropic and 
 beneficent purpose of my institution. In that spirit, and in no other, 
 I call you all, who are members of my institution, to a sacred union in 
 and through love. Love one another, as Jesus Christ loved us. 
 * Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not 
 itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its 
 own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, 
 but rejoiceth in the truth ; beareth all things, believeth all things, 
 hopeth all things, endureth all things.' Friends, brothers, bless them 
 that curse you, do good to them that hate you. Heap coals of fire on 
 the heads of your enemies. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath. 
 If thou l)ring thy gift to the altar, first be reconciled to thy brother, 
 and then come and offer thy gift. All unrelenting severity, even to- 
 w\ards those who do us wrong, be far from our house. Let all human 
 severity be lost in the gentleness of our faith. Let no one among you 
 attempt to excuse his severity towards those who are in the wrong. 
 Let no one say that Jesus Christ did not love those who did wrong. 
 He did love them. He loved them with divine love. He died for 
 them. He came not to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance. 
 He did not find sinners faithful, but made them faithful. He did not 
 find them humble, but made them humble, by his own humility. 
 Verily, verily, it was with the high and holy service of his humility 
 that he conquered the pride of sinners, and chained them by faith to 
 the heart of his divine love. Friends, brothers, if we do this, if we 
 love one another, as Jesus Christ loved us, we shall overcome all the 
 obstacles which stand in the way of our life's purpose, and be able to 
 ground the welfare of our institution upon the everlasting rock, on 
 which God himself has built the welfare of the human race, through 
 Jesus Christ. Amen." 
 
 At the grave, I have asked after Pestalozzi's confession of faith ; 
 I have sought it in his writings, as well as in his life, and communicated 
 to the reader what he himself confessed in 1793 about his Christianity 
 at that period of his life, when, perhaps, he had separated himself fur- 
 thest from Christ, and lived only in a speculative and political element. 
 " Wavering (so went the confession) between feelings which drew me 
 towards religion, and opinions which led me away from it, I went the 
 dead way of my time." This confession we have found confirmed in 
 his writings, as in his life ; but in his earliest, and again in his latest 
 writings, religious feeling has been seen soaring above a sceptical 
 intellect. And throughout his long life how high soars a love which 
 would not despair under any suffering, any ingratitude ; how high it 
 soars above all doubts, in the pure air of heaven I Men are seduced 
 into infidelity by superficial reflection, which, misapprehending and 
 
78 
 
 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PE8TAL0ZZI. 
 
 over-estimating the measure of insight possible to man, fails to judge 
 aright where a clear self-knowledge believes with intelligent resigna- 
 tion. But Christ, who takes the strong for his spoil, reigns ever in the 
 inmost heart of Christians as episcopus in parti/ms injidelmm ; even 
 in times, when their faith wavers, he remains faithful to them. This 
 we see in Pestalozzi, both in his words and in his works. 
 
 12. Retrospect. 
 
 Who shall dare cast a stone at him, who shall dare condemn him ? 
 To him shall much be forgiven, for he loved much. Aye, the whole 
 of his toilsome life is pervaded by love — by a yearning desire to 
 alleviate the condition of the poor suffering people. That love was 
 the passion of his heart ; it kindled in him a burning anger against all 
 who stood in the way of the attainment of its object. 
 
 It is true, that the chief obstacle in his way was himself. With 
 God, counsel and action go together ; with men, they are only too 
 often separated. Thus we have seen that Pestalozzi, with the clearest 
 knowledge of men, was incapable of managing and governing them ; 
 with the most amiable ideals, he was blind when he had to show the way 
 to those ideals. Nay, in endeavouring to realize his great conceptions, 
 he frequently took the course most opposed to them. 
 
 No one was farther than he was from a cleanly domestic existence ; 
 yet no one desired such an existence more earnestly, or understood its 
 value better, than he did. The delineations of Gertrude's house- 
 keeping prove that a poet can truthfully depict not only what he pos- 
 sesses in full degree, but what he longs for with his whole heart 
 because he lacks it altogether. 
 
 He passed the greater part of his life in»pressing want; thus he 
 could scarcely fail to feel a true and spontaneous sympathy with the 
 poor and abandoned. 
 
 If he was cynical in evil days from necessity ; in better days, he was 
 so on principle. Corresponding to the bodily cynicism, there was in 
 the character of his mind, something which I would call, not spiritual 
 poverty, but intellectual cynicism : an aversion to the aristocracy of 
 education. And yet, as one of the contradictions of w^hich his character 
 is full, he felt himself called to lay new foundations under the lofty 
 structure of this education, instead of the old pernicious ones. He 
 wanted to support the upper storey of the building, without troubling 
 himself about that storey itself. On one occasion, he even made it the 
 subject of a boast, that he had not read a book for thirty years. 
 
 Hence it came, as I have already said, that he committed so many 
 mistakes usual with self-taught men. He wants the historical basis ; 
 things which others had discovered long before appear to him to be 
 quite new when thought of by himself or any one of his teachers. He 
 also torments himself to invent things which had been invented and 
 brought to perfection long before, and might have been used by him, 
 if he had only known of them. For example, how^ useful an ac- 
 quaintance with the excellent Werner's treatment of the mineralogical 
 characters of rocks would have been to him, especially in the definition 
 of the ideas, observation, naming, description, (fee. As a self-taught 
 
LIFE AND SYSTEM OF FESTALOZZl. 
 
 79 
 
 man, he every day collected heaps of stones in his walks. If he had 
 been under the discipline of the Freiberg school, the observation of 
 a single stone would have profited him more, than large heaps of 
 stones, laboriously brought together, could do, in the absence of any 
 such discipline. 
 
 Self-taught men, I say, want the discipline of the school. It is not 
 simply that, in the province of the intellectual, they often find only 
 after long wanderings what they might easily have attained by a direct 
 and beaten path ; they want also the ethical discipline, which restrains 
 us from running according to caprice after intellectual enjoyments, 
 and wholesomely compels us to deny ourselves and follow the path 
 indicated to us by the teacher. 
 
 Many, it is true, fear that the oracular instinct of the self-taught 
 might suffer from the school. But, if the school is of the right sort, 
 this instinct, if genuine, will be strengthened by it ; deepfelt, dreamy, 
 and passive presentiments are transfigured into sound, w^aking, and 
 active observation. 
 
 This self-taught character of Pestalozzi's mind showed itself in his 
 treatment of several branches of instruction. What are his names of 
 towns, which he takes in alphabetical order from the index of 
 a geography book, without possessing any knowledge of the subject ; 
 what are the heaps of words transcribed from Scheller's Lexicon : what 
 else are they but the trials of an undisciplined mind, to find out new 
 ways of writing schoolbooks ? 
 
 But, when the self-taught man forsakes the old highways, he finds, 
 in spite of much going astray, many short by-ways, the knowledge of 
 which is welcome to the students of the subject, and induces them to 
 make new experiments themselves. In this manner, Pestalozzi ex- 
 ercised an influence even upon his adversaries. 
 
 Generally, Pestalozzi's personal influence on the methods of teaching 
 particular subjects was small ; but, on the other hand, he compelled 
 the scholastic world to revise the whole of their task, to reflect on the 
 nature and destiny of man, as also on the proper way of leading him 
 from his youth towards that destiny. And this was done, not in the 
 superficial rationalistic manner of Basedow^' and his school, but so 
 profoundly, that even a man like Fichte anticipated very great things 
 from it. 
 
 But it is to be lamented, that the actual attempts made by Pestalozzi 
 and his fellow-laborers to set up new methods of teaching various sub- 
 jects, have met with such especial approbation and imitation. An 
 examination of Pestalozzi's profound principles, and an insight into 
 
 * Basedow founded an educational institution called the " Philanthropin," at 
 Dessau, in 1774. In this institution, the educational views of Rousseau, as expounded 
 in his " Emile," were exclusively followed, and every effort made to realize them. 
 Rousseau was at that time the pharos of many educationists in Germany and Switzer- 
 land, as he was the pharos of the men of the revolution in France. The Philan- 
 thropin excited a good deal of attention at the time. The name of the Philanthropin 
 still survives, but it has almost become a term of reproach to signify any shallow 
 educational enterprise. It appears, however, that, together with much that was 
 whimsical and even foolish, the institution presented many honest and unselfish 
 efforts on the part of faithful workers, and produced many wholesome fruits.— /See 
 Raumer^s account of the Philanihropin. 
 
80 LIFE AND SYSTEM OF PESTALOZZI. 
 
 the contradiction between these principles and his practice, would 
 have conduced much more to the discovery of new methods, really- 
 answering to the principles. This is applicable, for instance, to what 
 I have said upon the exercises in observation, falsely so called. Most 
 of the imitators of the great man have fallen in love with his dark side, 
 
 » the endeavor to mechanise education. 'VSHien those purely" external 
 appliances and artifices which he employed for mechanising education 
 shall have been so modified as to be no longer recognizable, or shall 
 have been entirely laid aside and forgotten — then Pestalozzi's " Leonard 
 and Gertrude," the "Evening Hour of a Hermit," and "How Gertrude 
 
 * teaches her Children," will still live on and exercise an influence, 
 though even these works, like everything else that is human, are not 
 altogether free from spot or blemish. Profound thoughts, born of a 
 holy love under severe pains, they are thoughts of eternal life, and, 
 like love, shall never cease. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 ( 
 
I