to be reasonable, and make them submit to what is just and right. And that is what I must do now. If you do not willingly assist in the maintenance of order, our establishment cannot go on, you will fall back into your former condition, and your misery-now that you have been accustomed to a good home, clean clothes, and regular food-will be greater than ever. In this world, my children, necessity and conviction alone can teach a man to behave; when both fail him, he is hateful. Think for a moment what you would become if you were safe from want and cared nothing for right, justice, or goodness. At home there was always some one who looked after you, and poverty itself forced you to many a right action; but with convictions and reason to guide you, you will rise far higher than by following necessity alone.

"I often spoke to them in this way without troubling in the least whether they each understood every word, feeling quite sure that they all caught the general sense of what I said.

"Lively pictures of the condition in which they might some day find themselves, had also a very great effect upon them. I pointed out to them the result of each particular defect. I said, for instance: 'Do you not know men who are detested for their evil tongue? Would you, in your old days, care to be thus held in abomination by your neighbours and relations, perhaps even by your children?' In that way I used their own experience to put before them as striking a picture as I could of the evil results of our faults. Similarly, I pointed out the consequences of right action.

"Generally, however, I tried to make clear to them the very different effects of good and bad education. 'Do you not know men whose unhappiness is solely the result of their want of thought and application when young? Do you not know some who could earn three or four times as much if they could read and write? Will you not take advantage of your time here, and learn as much as possible, so that you may never have to live by begging, or be a burden to your children?'

"Here are a few more thoughts which produced a great impression on my children: 'Do you know anything greater or nobler than to give counsel to the poor, and comfort to the unfortunate? But if you remain ignorant and incapable,

you will be obliged, in spite of your good heart, to let things take their course; whereas, if you acquire knowledge and power, you will be able to give good advice, and save many a man from misery.'

"I have generally found that great, noble, and high thoughts are indispensable for developing wisdom and firmaness of character.

"Such an instruction must be complete in the sense that it must take account of all our aptitudes and all our circumstances; it must be conducted, too, in a truly psychological spirit, that is to say, simply, lovingly, energetically, and calmly. Then, by its very nature, it produces an enlightened and delicate feeling for everything true and good, and brings to light a number of accessory and dependent truths, which are forthwith accepted and assimilated by the human soul, even in the case of those who could not express these truths in words. This verbal expression of the truths which rule our lives is not so generally useful to humanity as it is thought to be by men who have been accustomed for centuries to hear Christian instruction conveyed by question and answer, regardless of result, and who for a generation past have seen the mania of our poor century for empty speech more and more encouraged, alas! by the very people who pretend to enlighten it.

"I believe that the first development of thought in the child is very much disturbed by a wordy system of teaching, which is not adapted either to his faculties or the circumstances of his life.

According to my experience, success depends upon whether what is taught to children commends itself to them as true, through being closely connected with their own personal observation and experience.

"Without this foundation, truth must seem to them to be little better than a plaything, which is beyond their compre hension, and therefore a burden. Truth and justice are certainly more than empty words to men, for they are the outcome of inward convictions, high views, noble aspirations, and sound judgment, to say nothing of the external signs by which their power may be made manifest.

"And what is not less true is that this sentiment of truth and justice, when it has developed simply and soberly in the depths of a man's soul, is his best safeguard against the chief

and most deadly consequences of prejudice; nor will it ever allow error, ignorance, or superstition, however bad they may be in themselves, to influence him as they do and always must influence those who, without a trace of love or justice in their hearts, are incessantly prating of religion and right. "These general principles of human instruction are like pieces of pure gold; the particular truths which depend upon them are but silver and copper. I cannot help comparing the swimmer, who loses himself in this sea, made up of so many thousand drops of truth, to a merchant who, after having amassed a fortune, penny by penny, should become so attached not only to the general principle of looking after the pence, but to each individual penny, that the loss of a single one would distress him as much as that of a golden guinea.

"When the peaceful exercise of his duty produces a harmony between a man's powers and feelings, when the charm of pure relations between men is increased and ensured by the wider recognition of certain simple and lofty truths, there is nothing to be feared from prejudices; they will disappear before the natural development of these feelings and powers like darkness before the dawn.

"Human knowledge derives its real advantages from the solidity of the foundations on which it rests. The man who knows a great deal must be stronger, and must work harder than others, if he is to bring his knowledge into harmony with his nature and with the circumstances of his life. If he does not do this, his knowledge is but a delusive will-o'the-wisp, and will often rob him of such ordinary pleasures of life as even the most ignorant man, if he have but common sense, can make quite sure of. That, my dear friend, is why I felt it to be so important that this harmony of the soul's powers, the combined effect of our nature and first impressions, should not be disturbed by the errors of human art.

"I have now put before you my views as to the family spirit which ought to prevail in an educational establishment, and I have told you of my attempts to carry them out. I have still to explain the essential principles upon which all my teaching was based.

"I knew no other order, method, or art, but that which resulted naturally from my children's conviction of my love for them, nor did I care to know any other.

"Thus I subordinated the instruction of my children to a

higher aim, which was to arouse and strengthen their best sentiments by the relations of every-day life as they existed between themselves and me.

"I had Gedicke's reading-book, but it was of no more use to me than any other school-book; for I felt that, with all these children of such different ages, I had an admirable opportunity for carrying out my own views on early educa tion. I was well aware, too, how impossible it would be to organize my teaching according to the ordinary system in use in the best schools.

"As a general rule I attached little importance to the study of words, even when explanations of the ideas they represented were given.

"I tried to connect study with manual labour, the school with the workshop, and make one thing of them. But I was the less able to do this as staff, material, and tools were all wanting. A short time only before the close of the establishment, a few children had begun to spin; and I saw clearly that, before any fusion could be effected, the two parts must be firmly established separately-study, that is, on the one hand, and labour on the other.

"But in the work of the children I was already inclined to care less for the immediate gain than for the physical training which, by developing their strength and skill, was bound to supply them later with a means of livelihood. In the same way I considered that what is generally called the instruction of children should be merely an exercise of the faculties, and I felt it important to exercise the attention, observation, and memory first, so as to strengthen these faculties before calling into play the art of judging and reasoning; this, in my opinion, was the best way to avoid turning out that sort of superficial and presumptuous talker, whose false judgments are often more fatal to the happiness and progress of humanity than the ignorance of simple people of good sense.

"Guided by these principles, I sought less at first to teach my children to spell, read, and write than to make use of these exercises for the purpose of giving their minds as full and as varied a development as possible.

"I made them spell by heart before teaching them their A B C, and the whole class could thus spell the hardest words without knowing their letters. It will be evident to every

body how great a call this made on their attention. I followed at first the order of words in Gedicke's book, but I soon found it more useful to join the five vowels successively to the different consonants, and so form a well graduated series of syllables leading from simple to compound.1

"I had gone rapidly through the scraps of geography and natural history in Gedicke's book. Before knowing their letters even, they could say properly the names of the different countries. In natural history they were very quick in corroborating what I taught them by their own personal observations on plants and animals. I am quite sure that, by continuing in this way, I should soon have been able not only to give them such a general acquaintance with the subject as would have been useful in any vocation, but also to put them in a position to carry on their education themselves by means of their daily observations and experiences; and I should have been able to do all this without going outside the very restricted sphere to which they were confined by the actual circumstances of their lives. I hold it to be extremely important that men should be encouraged to learn by themselves and allowed to develop freely. It is in this way alone that the diversity of individual talent is produced and made evident.

"I always made the children learn perfectly even the least important things, and I never allowed them to lose ground; a word once learnt, for instance, was never to be forgotten, and a letter once well written never to be written badly again. I was very patient with all who were weak or slow, but very severe with those who did anything less well than they had done it before.

"The number and inequality of my children rendered my task easier. Just as in a family the eldest and cleverest child readily shows what he knows to his younger brothers

1 We have here suppressed certain details which apply to German only, and can hardly be translated. But it is clear that the syllabaries for teaching reading, which were not employed in the schools till long afterwards, had already at this time been invented by Pestalozzi. He had already begun, too, to connect the teaching of writing with that of reading and spelling, and used to make his children read written characters before printed ones. His views on this subject are explained in his work, How to Teach Spelling and Reading. Gessner, Zurich and Berne, 1801.