Now whilst for the student-beginner the discovery method of training is of the highest possible value, and an indispensable training; its chief value later on is that it enables the learner to take real advantage of other men's work and to enter into their labours, without going through all the work they had to perform. But for men who were engaged in so difficult and delicate a task as that of educating the young, and who were themselves largely untrained and undisciplined, intellectually, to refuse to make use of existing means-if they could approve them-was, to say the least of it, unwise.

Not that there was much of which Pestalozzi could approve; but the attitude of mind was, in itself, wrong; and was likely to cause much waste of time and, perhaps, undue self-satisfaction. It will be remembered that Pestalozzi-so far did he carry this idea-several times boasts that he has not read a book for nearly thirty years. One instance will suffice to show the mistake of all this: Basedow had endeavoured to carry out, at his Philanthropinum school at Dessau, the principles of Rousseau's Emile; and amidst much that was superficial and merely sensational, was doing some good work. A study of his work and writings would have taught something, of both positive and negative value, to the Pestalozzians.

Criticising this attitude, Raumer writes: "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

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been used by him, if he had only known of them. example, how useful an acquaintance 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, etc.

"As a self-taught man, he every day collected heaps of stones in his walks. If he had been under the discipline of the Fribourg 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 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; deep felt, dreamy and passive presentiments are transformed into sound, waking and active observation."

Anybody can teach. Pestalozzi's views on this point raises some very serious and important issues. Is all our modern zeal for technical education and training a mistake is the man in the street, if he be told how, as capable as the well-trained expert who knows both the why and the how in a scientific and practical way: is the school as the teacher's book, or as the teacher: is

the final efficiency of the worker to be measured by the quality and power of his mind and character, or by those of the one who simply gives him instructions to be carried out is the educator a machine minder or a mind maker? These are questions which must be settled in deciding such a point.

At the same time there are elements of truth even in the extremest view of the statement that any one can teach. In the first place, any one with ordinary intelligence and power can, by careful and thorough training, be made into an averagely good teacher. It is not necessary to be a "born teacher" to be a good practical teacher. The "born teacher"-to give the phrase real meaning-is one with at least a touch of genius for teaching, i.e., he has exceptional native capacity and disposition for the work of teaching. Any one can play five-finger exercises on the piano satisfactorily, if he be not defective in mind or deformed of hand; but one must be born with exceptional powers of mind and hand to become a really first-rate pianist, -of the type of which such men as Paderewski are the supreme examples.

Further, it is true that, without any training whatever, an intelligent person can follow a course of action laid down by another, and that certain results will be obtained according as the course itself is sound, and the worker carries it out thoroughly and accurately. But even material machines go wrong, and the best of courses do not fit every possible circumstance. What can the person who does not understand the machinery, and knows nothing of the system except that he is to follow it as laid down, do when either the one or the other fails to keep to what is ordinarily expected of

them? If this be so of material machinery, how much more is it true of living and growing things, and especially of so complex and delicate a living organism as the human being?

Again, it is even true that the exceptionally intelligent, observant and thoughtful persons will rediscover the principles of education, and do much work that is valuable and lasting. But at what cost of mistakes, and permanent and serious injuries? So far as such a one relies upon himself he is practically certain to commit most of the mistakes which have been made by the human race in its efforts to work out the best system of education. Why should this be done? What should we say of the man who turned his back on all existing medical knowledge, and the opportunities for medical training, so that he might rediscover the truths and principles of the healing arts while practising on his patients?

Of what a genius-the rarest of exceptions-can do, and can not do, without training, we can see in the case of Pestalozzi himself. Pestalozzi says: "I could neither write, sum, nor read perfectly. .. [But] I could teach writing without being able to write perfectly myself.” M. Buss says of Pestalozzi: "He could, unfortunately, neither write nor draw well, though he had brought his children, in some, to me, inconceivable manner well on in both these subjects". Karl Ritter, the great geographer, pays this high tribute to Pestalozzi's teaching (or, should we say, inspiration): "Pestalozzi knew less geography than a child in one of our primary schools; yet it was from him that I obtained my chief ideas on this science, for it was in listening to him that I first conceived the idea of the

natural method. It was he who opened up the way to me, and I take pleasure in attributing entirely to him whatever value my work may have."

M. Charles Monnard says that Pestalozzi, when he went to Burgdorf to teach, "would have had no chance whatever against even the most ordinary candidates [for a post as teacher]. He had everything against him: thick, indistinct speech, bad writing, ignorance of drawing, scorn of grammatical learning. He had studied various branches of natural history, but had paid no particular attention either to classification or nomenclature. He was acquainted with the ordinary numerical calculations, but he would have found it difficult to work out a really long sum in multiplication or division, and had probably never attempted to solve a problem in geometry. For years he had done no study, only dreamed. He could not even sing, though, when greatly excited or elated, he would hum to himself snatches of poetry; not, however, with very much tune."

What Pestalozzi did, in spite of all these drawbacks, he did because he was the genius that he was, and not because he had received no special training and preparation for his work. The roughest diamond is a diamond still; but the cut and polished stone is the best both for work and as art. When ordinary stones claim to be as diamonds, both danger and disaster will result.

Other points of view in considering this question may be suggested, viz., the efficiency of doctors as compared with that of trained nurses in dealing with the body: the efficiency of the trained nurse as compared with that of the parent, in carrying out a doctor's orders: the efficiency of the trained artisan as compared with that