Death. New aim: develop organism.

§ 81. On 17th February, 1827, at the age of eighty-one, Pestalozzi fell asleep.

§ 82. "The reform needed," said Pestalozzi," is not that the school-coach should be better horsed, but that it should be turned right round and started on a new track.” This may seem a violent metaphor, but perhaps it is not more violent than the change that was (and in this country still is) necessary. Let us try to ascertain what is the right road according to Pestalozzi, and then see on what road the school-coach is now travelling.

§ 83. The grand change advocated by Pestalozzi was a change of object. The main object of the school should not be to teach but to develop.

§ 84. This change of object naturally brings many changes with it. Measured by their capacity for acquiring school knowledge and skill young children may be considered, as one of H.M. Inspectors considered them, “the fag-end of the school." But if the school exists not to teach but to develop, young children, instead of being the "fag-end," become the most important part of all. In the development of all organisms more depends on the earlier than on the later stages; and there is no reason to doubt that this law holds in the case of human beings. On this account, from the days of Pestalozzi educational science has been greatly, I may say mainly, concerned with young children. For the dominating thought has been that the young human being is an undeveloped organism, and that in education that organism is developed. So the essence of Pestalozzianism lies not so much in its method as in its aim, not more in what it does than in what it endeavours to do.

True dignity of man.

§ 85. And thus it was that Pestalozzi (in Raumer's words) "compelled the scholastic world to revise the whole of their task, to reflect on the nature and destiny of man, and also on the proper way of leading him from his youth towards that destiny." And it was his love of his fellowcreatures that raised him to this standpoint. He was moved by "the enthusiasm of humanity." Consumed with grief for the degradation of the Swiss peasantry, he never lost faith in their true dignity as men, and in the possibility of raising them to a condition worthy of it. He cast about for the best means of thus raising them, and decided that it could be effected, not by any improvement in their outward circumstances, but by an education which should make them what their Creator intended them to be, and should give them the use and the consciousness of all their inborn faculties. "From my youth up," he says, "I felt what a high and indispensable human duty it is to labour for the poor and miserable; that he may attain to a consciousness of his own dignity through his feeling of the universal powers and endowments which he possesses awakened within him; that he may not only learn to gabble over by rote the religious maxim that 'man is created in the image of God, and is bound to live and die as a child of God,' but may himself experience its truth by virtue of the Divine power within him, so that he may be raised, not only above the ploughing oxen, but also above the man in purple and silk who lives unworthily of his high destiny (Quoted in Barnard, p. 13).

Again he says (and I quote at length on the point, as it is indeed the key to Pestalozzianism), "Why have I insisted so strongly on attention to early physical and intellectual education? Because I consider these as merely leading to

Education for all. Mothers' part. Jacob's Ladder.

a higher aim, to qualify the human being for the free and full use of all the faculties implanted by the Creator, and to direct all these faculties towards the perfection of the whole being of man, that he may be enabled to act in his peculiar station as an instrument of that All-wise and Almighty Power that has called him into life" (To Greaves, p. 160).

§ 86. Believing in this high aim of education, Pestalozzi required a proper early training for all alike. "Every human being," said he, “has a claim to a judicious development of his faculties by those to whom the care of his infancy is confided” (Ib. p. 163).

§ 87. Pestalozzi therefore most earnestly addressed himself to mothers, to convince them of the power placed in their hands, and to teach them how to use it. "The mother is qualified, and qualified by the Creator Himself, to become the principal agent in the development of her and what is demanded of her is—a thinking

child;

love.

God has given to thy child all the faculties of our nature, but the grand point remains undecided—how shall this heart, this head, these hands, be employed? to whose service shall they be dedicated? A question the answer to which involves a futurity of happiness or misery to a life so dear to thee.

It is recorded that God patriarch of old, and showed him This ladder is let down to every is offered to thy child. But he

opened the heavens to the a ladder leading thither. descendant of Adam; it must be taught to climb it. the cold calculations of the the heart; but let all these powers combine, and the noble enterprise will be crowned with success. These powers are

And let him not attempt it by head, or the mere impulse of

already bestowed on him, but to thee it is given to assist in

Educator only superintends.

"Maternal love

calling them forth" (To Greaves, p. 21). is the first agent in education. child is led to love and trust his Creator and his Redeemer."

Through it the

§ 88. From the theory of development which lay at the root of Pestalozzi's views of education, it followed that the imparting of knowledge and the training for special pursuits held only a subordinate position in his scheme. "Education, instead of merely considering what is to be imparted to children, ought to consider first what they may be said already to possess, if not as a developed, at least as an involved faculty capable of development. Or if, instead of speaking thus in the abstract, we will but recollect that it is to the great Author of life that man owes the possession, and is responsible for the use, of his innate faculties, education should not simply decide what is to be made of a child, but rather inquire what it was intended that he should become. What is his destiny as a created and responsible being? What are his faculties as a rational and moral being? What are the means for their perfection, and the end held out as the highest object of their efforts by the Almighty Father of all, both in creation and in the page of revelation ?"

§ 89. Education, then, must consist "in a continual benevolent superintendence, with the object of calling forth all the faculties which Providence has implanted; and its province, thus enlarged, will yet be with less difficulty surveyed from one point of view, and will have more of a systematic and truly philosophical character, than an incoherent mass of 'lessons-arranged without unity of principle, and gone through without interest-which too often usurps its name."

The educator's task then is to superintend and promote

First, moral development,

the child's development, morally, intellectually, and physi

cally.

§ 90. "The essential principle of education is not teaching," said Pestalozzi; "it is love" (R.'s G., 289). Again he says, "The child loves and believes before it thinks and acts" (Ib. 378). And in a very striking passage (Ib. 329), where he compares the development of the various powers of a human being to the development of a tree, he says, "These forces of the heart-faith and loveare in the formation of immortal man what the root is for the tree." So, according to Pestalozzi, a child without faith and love can no more grow up to be what he should be than a tree can grow without a root. Apart from this vital truth there can be no such thing as Pestalozzianism.

"Ah yet when all is thought and said

The heart still overrules the head."

It is our hearts and affections that lead us right or wrong far more than our intellects. In advocating the training of the minds of the people, Lord Derby once remarked that as Chairman of Quarter Sessions he had found most of the culprits brought before him were stupid and ignorant. It certainly cannot be denied that the commonest kind of criminal is bad in every way. He has his body ruined by debauchery, his intellect almost in abeyance, and his heart and affections set on what is vile and degrading. If you could cultivate his intellect you would certainly raise him out of the lowest and by far the largest of the criminal classes. But he might become a criminal of a type less disgusting in externals, but in reality far more dangerous. The most atrocious miscreant of our time, if not of all time, was a man who contrived a machine to sink ships in midocean, his only object being to gain a sum of money on a