Ritter and others at Yverdun.

the lines pointed out by Pestalozzi. To him they were directed by their philosopher Fichte, who in his Addresses to the German Nation (delivered at Berlin 1807-8) declared that education was the only means of raising a nation, and that all sound reform of public instruction must be based on the principles of Pestalozzi.

To bring these principles to bear on popular education, the Prussian Government sent seventeen young men for a three years' course to Pestalozzi's Institute, "where,” as the Minister said in a letter to Pestalozzi, "they will be prepared not only in mind and judgment, but also in heart, for the noble vocation which they are to follow, and will be filled with a sense of the holiness of their task, and with new zeal for the work to which you have devoted your life."

§ 67. Among the eminent men who were drawn to Yverdun were some who afterwards did great things in education, as e.g., Karl Ritter, Karl von Raumer the historian of education, the philosopher Herbart, and a man who was destined to have more influence than anyone, except perhaps Pestalozzi himself—I mean Friedrich Froebel. Ritter's testimony is especially striking. "I have seen," says he, "more than the Paradise of Switzerland, for I have seen Pestalozzi, and recognised how great his heart is, and how great his genius; never have I been so filled with a sense of the sacredness of my vocation and the dignity of human nature as in the days I spent with this noble man.

Pestalozzi knew less geography than a child in one of our primary schools, yet it was from him that I gained my chief knowledge of this science; for it was in listening to him that I first conceived the idea of the natural method. It was he who opened the way to me, and I take

Causes of failure at Yverdun.

pleasure in attributing whatever value my work may have entirely to him.”

§ 68. At this time we read glowing accounts of the healthy and happy life of the children; and throughout Pestalozzi never lost a single pupil by illness. With a body of very able assistants, instruction was carried on for ten hours out of the twenty-four; but in these hours there was reckoned the time spent in drill, gymnastics, hand-work, and singing. The monotony of school-life was also broken by frequent "festivals."

§ 69. And yet the Institute had taken into it the seeds of its own ruin. There were several causes of failure, though these were not visible till the house was divided against itself.

§ 70. First, Pestalozzi based the morality and discipline of the school on the relations of family life. He would be the "father" of all the children. At Burgdorf this relation seemed a reality, but it completely failed at Yverdun when the Institute became, from the number of the pupils and their differences in language, habits, and antecedents, a little world. The pupils still called him "Father Pestalozzi," but he could no longer know them as a father should know his children. Thus the discipline of affection slowly disappeared, and there was no school discipline to take its place.

§ 71. Next, we can see that even at Burgdorf, and still more at Yverdun, Pestalozzi was attempting to do impossibilities. According to his system, the faculties of the child were to be developed in a natural unbroken order, and the first exercises were to give the child the power of surmounting later difficulties by its own exertions. But this education could not be started at any age, and yet children of every age and every country were received into the

Report made by Father Girard.

Institution. It was not likely that the fresh comers could be made to understand that they "knew nothing," and must start over again on a totally different road. The teachers might take such pupils to the water of "sense-impressions," but they could not inspire the inclination to drink, nor induce the lad to learn what he supposed himself to know already. (Cfr. supra p. 64, § 4.)

was

§ 72. But there was a greater mischief at work than either of these. In his discourse to the members of the Institution on New Year's Day, 1808, Pestalozzi surprised them all by his gloom. He had had a coffin brought in, and he stood beside it. "This work," said he, 66 founded by love, but love has disappeared from our midst." This was only too true, and the discord was more deeply rooted than at first appeared. Among the brood of Pestalozzians there was a Catholic shepherd lad from Tyrol, Joseph Schmid by name, and he, in the end, proved a veritable cuckoo. As he shewed very marked ability in mathematics, he became one of the assistant masters; and a good deal of the fame of the Institution rested on the performances of his pupils. But his ideas differed totally from those of his colleagues, especially from those of Niederer, a clergyman with a turn for philosophy, who had become Pestalozzi's chief exponent.

§ 73. After Pestalozzi's gloomy speech, the masters, with the exception of Schmid, urged Pestalozzi to apply for a Government inquiry into the state of the Institution. This Pestalozzi did, and Commissioners were appointed, among them an educationist, Père Girard of Freiburg, by whom the Report was drawn up. The Report was not favourable. Père Girard was by no means inclined to sit at the feet of Pestalozzi, as he had principles of his own. Pestalozzi, he

Girard's mistake.

Schmid in flight.

thought, laid far too much stress on mathematics, and he drew from him a statement that everything taught to a child should seem as certain as that two and two made four. "Then," said Girard, "if I had thirty children I would not intrust you with one of them. You could not teach him that I was his father." Thus the Report, though very

friendly in tone, was by no means friendly in spirit. The Commissioners simply compared the performances of the scholars with what pupils of the same age could do in good schools of the ordinary type, and Père Girard stated, though not in the Report, that the Institution was inferior to the Cantonal School of Aargau. But the comparison of these incommensurables only shews that Girard was not capable of understanding what was going on at Yverdun. Indeed, he asserts "not only that the mother-tongue was neglected," but also that the children, "though they had reached a high pitch of excellence in abstract mathematics, were inconceivably weak in all ordinary practical calculations." This is absurd. In Pestalozzian teaching the abstract never went before ordinary practical calculations. The good Father evidently blunders, and takes "head-reckoning" for abstract, and pen or pencil arithmetic for practical work. Reckoning with slate or paper is no doubt "ordinary," but a distinction has often to be drawn between what is ordinary and what is practical.

$74. Soon after this the disputes between Schmid and his colleagues waxed so fierce that Schmid was virtually driven away. In 1810 he left Yverdun, and declared the Institution "a disgrace to humanity." Great was the disorder into which the Institution now fell from having over it only a genius with "an unrivalled incapacity to govern." The days which "remind us of the early Church were no

more, and financial difficulties naturally followed them. For the next five years things went from bad to worse, and the masters were then driven to the desperate, and, as it proved, the fatal step of inviting the able and strong-willed Schmid back again. He came in 1815, he acquired entire control over Pestalozzi, and drove from him all his most faithful adherents, among them not only Niederer, who had invited the return of his rival, but even Kruesi and the faithful servant, Elizabeth Naef, now Mrs. Kruesi, the widow of Kruesi's brother. Pestalozzi's grandson married Schmid's sister, and thus united with him by family ties, Schmid took entire possession of the old man and kept it till the end. His former colleagues seem to have been deceived in their estimate both of Schmid's integrity and ability. He completed the ruin of the Institution, and he was finally expelled from Yverdun by the Magistrates.

In

§ 75. But while Pestalozzi seemed falling lower and lower to the eyes of the inhabitants of Yverdun, and so had little honour in his own country, his fame was spreading all over Europe. Of this Yverdun was to reap the benefit. 1813-14, Austrian troops marched across Switzerland to invade France. In January, 1814, the Castle and other buildings in Yverdun were "requisitioned " for a military hospital, many of the Austrian soldiers being down with typhus fever. In a great fright the Municipality sent off two deputies to headquarters, then at Basel, to petition that this order might be withdrawn. As the order threatened the destruction of his Institution, Pestalozzi went with them, and it was entirely to him they owed their success. On their return they reported that "no military hospital would be established at Yverdun, and that M. Pestalozzi had been received with most extraordinary favour."