DEVELOPMENT OF THE FACULTIES.

187

the Creator Himself, to become the principal agent in the development of her child; . . . and what is demanded of her is-a thinking 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 opened the heavens to the patriarch of old, and showed him a ladder leading thither. This ladder is let down to every descendant of Adam; it is offered to thy child. But he must be taught to climb it. And let him not attempt it by the cold calculations of the head, or the mere impulse of the heart; but let all these powers combine, and the noble enterprise will be crowned with success. These powers are already bestowed on him, but to thee it is given to assist in calling them forth.'* 'Maternal love is the first agent in education. . . . Through it the child is led to love and trust his Creator and his Redeemer.'

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

* Letters on Early Education, v. p. 21.

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 only decide what is to be made of a child, but rather enquire, 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 '?

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 exercises-arranged without unity of principle, and gone through without interest-which too often usurps its name.'

An education of the latter description he denounced with the zeal of a Luther.

6

The present race of schoolmasters,' he writes, 'sacrifice the essence of true teaching to separate and disconnected teaching in a complete jumble of subjects. By dishing up fragments of all kinds of truths, they destroy the spirit of truth itself, and extinguish the power of self-dependance which, without that spirit, cannot exist.'*

* Quoted by Carl Schmidt. Gesch. d. Päd. vol. iv. p. 87.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE AFFECTIONS.

189

With Pestalozzi teaching was not so much to be thought of as training. Training must be found for the child's heart, head, and hand, and the capacities of the heart and head must be developed by practice no less than those of the hand. The heart, as we have seen, is first influenced by the mother. At a later period Pestalozzi would have the charities of the family circle introduced into the school-room (rather ignoring the difference which the altered ratio of the young to the adults makes in the conditions of the problem), and would have the child taught virtue by his affections being exercised and his benevolence guided to action. There is an interesting instance on record of the way in which he himself applied this principle. When he was at Stanz, news arrived of the destruction of Altdorf. Pestalozzi depicted to his scholars the misery of the children there. Hundreds,' said he, are at this moment wandering about as you were last year, without a home, perhaps without food or clothing.' He then asked them if they would not wish to receive some of these children among them? This, of course, they were eager to do. Pestalozzi then pointed out the sacrifices it would involve on their part, that they would have to share everything with the new comers, and to eat less and work more than before. Only when they promised to make these sacrifices ungrudgingly, he undertook to apply to Government that the children's wish might be granted. It was thus that Pestalozzi endeavoured to develope the moral and religious life of the children, which is based on trust and love.

The child's thinking faculty is capable, according

to Pestalozzi, of being exercised almost from the commencement of consciousness. Indeed, it has been objected against Pestalozzi's system that he cultivated the mere intellectual powers at the expense of the poetical and imaginative. All knowledge, he taught, is acquired by sensation and observation : sometimes it has been thought that he traces everything originally to the senses; but he seems to extend the word Anschauung to every experience of which the mind becomes conscious.*

The child, then, must be made to observe accurately, and to reflect on its observations. The best subject-matter for the lessons will be the most ordinary things that can be found. 'Not only is there not one of the little incidents in the life of a child, in his amusements and recreations, in his relation to his parents, and friends, and playfellows; but there is actually not anything within the reach of a child's attention, whether it belong to nature or to the employments and arts of life, that may not be made the object of a lesson by which some useful knowledge may be imparted, and, what is still more important, by which the child may not be familiarised with the habit of thinking on what he sees, and speaking after he has thought. The mode of doing this is not

* I dare say I am not the only English reader of German books who has been perplexed by the words Anschauung and anschaulich. Schelling's definition is as follows: Anschauung ist jene Handlung des Geistes in welcher er aus Thätigkeit und Leiden, aus unbeschränkter und beschränkter Thätigkeit, in sich selbst ein gemeinschaftliches Produkt schafft.' The word seems used, in fact, for the mind's becoming conscious of any fact immediately by experience, in contradistinction to inferences from symbols. To rake instruction anschaulich, therefore, is to make the learner acquir knowledge by his direct experiences.

by any means to talk much to a child, but to enter into conversation with a child; not to address to him many words, however familiar and well chosen, but to bring him to express himself on the subject; not to exhaust the subject, but to question the child about it, and to let him find out and correct the answers It would be ridiculous to expect that the volatile spirits of a child could be brought to follow any lengthy explanations. The attention is deadened by long expositions, but roused by animated questions. Let these questions be short, clear, and intelligible. Let them not merely lead the child to repeat in the same, or in varied terms, what he has heard just before. Let them excite him to observe what is before him, to recollect what he has learned, and to muster his little stock of knowledge for materials for an answer. Show him a certain quality in one thing, and let him find out the same in others. Tell him that the shape of a ball is called round, and if, accordingly, you bring him to point out other objects to which the same property belongs, you have employed him more usefully than by the most perfect discourse on rotundity. In the one instance he would have had to listen and to recollect, in the other he has to observe and to think.'* 'From observation and memory there is only one step to reflection. Though imperfect, this operation is often found among the early exercises of the infant mind. The powerful stimulus of inquisitiveness prompts to exertions which, if successful or encouraged by others, will lead to a habit of thought.'†

* Letters on Early Education, xxxix. p. 147. + Ibid. xx. p. 92.