P.'s "Fables.”

which Pestalozzi published in the same year, "Figures to my A B C Book," or according to its later title, "Fables," a series of apologues as witty and wise as those of Lessing.*

§ 41. As I have said already (supra p. 239) there seems a marked distinction between thinkers and doers, at least in education, and we seldom find a man great in both. But with all his weakness as a practical man Pestalozzi proved great both as a thinker and a doer. He not only thought out what should be done, but he also made splendid efforts to do it. His first attempt at Neuhof was, as we have seen, all his own; so was the next at Stanz; but afterwards he had to work with others, and the work would have come to a standstill if he had not gained the co-operation of the magistrates, the parents of the children, and his own

* One of these I have already given (supra p. 292). I will give another, not as by any means one of the best, but as a fit companion to Rousseau's". two dogs."

"26. THE TWO COLTS.

One was

"Two colts as like as two eggs, fell into different hands. bought by a peasant whose only thought was to harness it to his plough as soon as possible: this one turned out a bad horse. The other fell to the lot of a man who by looking after it well and training it carefully, made a noble steed of it, strong and mettlesome. Fathers and mothers, if your children's faculties are not carefully trained and directed right, they will become not only useless, but hurtful; and the greater the faculties the greater the danger."

Compare Rousseau: "Just look at those two dogs; they are or the same litter, they have been brought up and treated precisely alike, they have never been separated; and yet one of them is sharp, lively, affectionate, and very intelligent: the other is dull, lumpish, surly, and nobody could ever teach him anything. Simply a difference of temperament has produced in them a difference of character, just as a simple difference of our interior organisation produces in us a difference of mind." N. Héloise. 5me P. Lettre iii.

P.'s own principles.

assistants. So he never again had the free hand, or at least the free thought which bore such good fruit in his enforced cessation from practice in the years between 1780 and 1798. It is well then to ask, as his biographer Guimps has asked, what was the main outcome of Pestalozzi's thought before he plunged into action a second time in 1798.

§ 42. Pestalozzi set himself to find a means of rescuing the people from their poverty and degradation. This he held would last as long as their moral and intellectual poverty lasted; so there was no hope except in an education that should make them better and more intelligent. In studying the children even of the most degraded parents he found the seeds, as it were, of a wealth of faculties, sentiments, tastes, and capabilities, which, if developed, might make them reasonable and upright human beings. But what was called education did nothing of the kind. Instead of developing the noblest part of the child's nature it neglected this entirely, and bringing to the child the knowledge, ideas, and feelings of others, it tried to make him "learn" them. So "education" did little beyond stifling the child's individuality under a mass of borrowed ideas. The schoolmaster worked, as it were, from without to within. This Pestalozzi would change, and make education begin in the child and work from within outwards. Acting on this principle he sought for some means of developing the child's inborn faculties, and he found as he says: "Nature develops all the powers of humanity by exercising them; they increase with use." (Evening Hour, Aph. 22.) No means can be found of exercising the higher faculties which can be compared with the actual relations of daily life; so Pestalozzi declares: "The pure sentiment of truth and wisdom is formed in the narrow circle of the relationships

P.'s return to action.

which affect us, the circumstances which suggest our actions, and the common knowledge which we cannot do without." And taking as his starting-point the needs, desires, and connexions of actual life he was naturally led to associate the work of the body with that of the mind, to develop industry and study side by side, to combine the workshop and the school. With regard to instruction he was never tired of insisting on the importance of thorough mastery in the first elements, and there was to be no advance till this mastery was attained. (See what "Harry" says, supra p. 306.) "The schools," he says (E. H., No. 28), "hastily substitute an artificial method of words for the truer method of Nature which knows no hurry but waits.”

§ 43. In this account of Pestalozzi's doctrine before 1798 I have as usual followed M. Guimps. According to him Pestalozzi had discovered “a principle which settles the law of man's development, and is the fundamental principle of education.” This principle M. Guimps briefly states as follows: "All the real knowledge, useful powers, and noble sentiments that a man can acquire are but the extension of his individuality by the development of the powers and faculties that God has put in him, and by their assimilation of the elements supplied by the outer world. There exists for this development and the work of assimilation a natural and necessary order, an order which the school mostly sets at nought."

§ 44. Now we come to the period of Pestalozzi's practical activity. In 1798 Switzerland was overrun by the French. Everything was remodelled after the French pattern; and in conformity with the existing phase in the model country the government of Switzerland was declared to be in the hands of five "Directors." Pestalozzi was a Radical, and

his pen.

The French at Stanz.

he at once set to work to serve the new government with The Directors gladly welcomed such an ally as the author of Leonard and Gertrude, and they made him editor of a newspaper intended to diffuse the revolutionary principles among the people. Naturally enough they supposed that he, like other people, "wanted" something; but when asked what he wanted he replied simply that he wished to be a schoolmaster. The Directors, especially Le Grand, took a genuine interest in education, and were quite willing that Pestalozzi should be allowed a free hand in his "new departure." They therefore agreed to find the funds with which Pestalozzi might open a new Institution in Aargau.

$45. But the editorship and the plans for the new Institution came to an abrupt ending. The Catholic cantons did not acquiesce in giving up their local liberties and being subjected to a new government in the hands of men whom they regarded as heretics and even atheists. Consequently those missionaries of enlightenment, the French troops, at once fell upon them and slaughtered many without distinction of age or sex. The French, we are told, did not expect to meet with resistance; so their light became lightning and struck dead the stupid people who could not or would not see. "Our soldiers" (it is Michelet who speaks) "were ferocious at Stanz." (Nos Fils, 217). This ferocity at Stanz in September, 1798, was in secret disapproved of by the Directors, who were nominally respor.sible for it. But all they could do was to provide in a measure for the " III infirm old people, the 169 orphans, and 237 other children," who were left totally destitute. Le Grand proposed to Pestalozzi that he should, for the present, give up his other plans and go to Stanz (which is on

Pestalozzi at Stanz.

the Lake of Lucerne) to take charge of the orphan and destitute children. Pestalozzi was not the man to refuse such a task as this. He at once set out. Some buildings connected with an Ursuline convent were, without the consent of the nuns, made over to hin. Workmen were employed upon them, and as soon as a single room could be inhabited Pestalozzi received forty children into it. This was in January, 1799, in the middle of a remarkably cold winter.

§ 46. Thus under circumstances perhaps less unfavourable than they seemed began the five months' trial of pure Pestalozzianism. The physical difficulties were imAt first Pestalozzi and all the children were shut

mense.

up day and night in a single room. He had throughout no helper of any kind but one female servant, and he had to do everything for the children, even what was most menial and disgusting. As soon as possible the number was increased, and before long was nearly eighty, some of the children having to go out to sleep. But great as were the material difficulties, those arising from the opposition and hatred of the people he came to succour were still worse. To them he seemed no philanthropist, but only a servant of the devil, an agent of the wicked government which had sent its ferocious soldiers and slaughtered the parents of these poor children, a Protestant who came to complete the work by destroying their souls. Pestalozzi, who was making heroic efforts in their behalf, seems to have wondered at the animosity shown him by the people of Stanz; but on looking back we must admit that in the circumstances it was only natural.

§ 47. And yet in spite of enormous difficulties of every kind Pestalozzi triumphed. Within the five months he