Thus Kant does not tire of exalting the service which Rousseau had rendered pedagogy, in recalling educators to the confidence and respect that are due to calumniated human nature. Let us add, however, that the German philosopher is not content to repeat Rousseau. He corrects him in affirming that man, at his birth, is neither good nor evil, because he is not naturally a moral being. He does not become such till he raises his reason to the conception of duty and law. In other terms, in the infant everything is in germ. The infant is a being in preparation. The future alone, the development which he will receive from his education, will make him good or bad. At the beginning, he has but indeterminate dispositions, and evil will come, not from a definite inclination of nature, but solely from the fact that we will not have known how to direct it,—from the fact, according to Kant’s own expression, that we will not have “subjected nature to rules.”

367. Respect for the Liberty of the Child.—The psychological optimism of Kant inspires him, as it does Rousseau, with the idea of a negative education, respectful of the liberty of the child:—

“In general, it must be noted that the earliest education should be negative; that is to say, nothing should be added to the precautions taken by nature, and that the effort should be limited to the preservation of her work.... It is well to employ at first but few helps, and to leave children to learn for themselves. Much of the weakness of man is due, not to the fact that nothing is taught him, but to the fact that false impressions are communicated to him.”

Without going so far as to say with Rousseau that all dependence with respect to men is contrary to order, Kant took great care to respect the liberty of the pupil. He complains of parents who are always talking about “breaking the wills of their sons.” He maintains, not without reason, that it is not necessary to offer much resistance to children, if we have not begun by yielding too readily to their caprices, and by always responding to their cries. Nothing is more harmful to them than a discipline which is provoking and degrading. But, in his zeal for human liberty, the theorist of the autonomy of wills goes a little too far. He fears, for example, the tyranny of habits. He requires that they be prevented from being formed, and that children be accustomed to nothing. He might as well demand the suppression of all education, since education should be but the acquisition of a body of good habits.

368. Stories Interdicted.—In the education of the intellectual faculties or talents, which he calls the physical culture of the soul, as distinguished from moral culture, which is the education of the will, Kant also approaches Rousseau. He proscribes romances and stories. “Children have an extremely active imagination which has no need of being developed by stories.” It may be said in reply, that fables and fictions, at the same time that they develop the imagination, also direct it and adorn it with their own proper grace, and may even lend it moral support. Rousseau, notwithstanding the ardor of his criticisms on the Fables of La Fontaine, himself admitted the moral value of the apologue.

369. Culture of the Faculties.—That which distinguishes Kant as an educator is that he is pre-occupied with the culture of the faculties much more than with the acquisition of knowledge. He passes in review the different intellectual forces, and his reflections on each of them might be collected as the elements of an excellent system of educational psychology. He will criticise, for example, the abuse of memory:—

“Men who have nothing but memory,” he says, “are but living lexicons, and, as it were, the pack-horses of Parnassus.”

For the culture of the understanding, Kant proposes “at first to train it passively to some degree,” by requiring of the child examples which illustrate a rule, or, on the contrary, the rule which applies to particular examples.

For the exercise of the reason, he recommends the Socratic method, and, in general, for the development of all the faculties of the mind, he thinks that the best way of proceeding is to cause the pupil to be active:—