[520. Analytical Summary.—1. Inveniam viam aut faciam. To know the end is to find the way; and to be possessed of an impulse to reach an end is to make a way. There are thus two categories of educational reformers. Some see a goal by the light of reason and reflection, and then lay out a logical route to it which they may or may not traverse, but which some one will ultimately traverse. Others are dominated by an intense feeling, and grope their uncertain way towards a goal whose outline and position are only dimly discerned through the mists of emotion. With some, the motive is intellectual, with others, it is emotional; and in their higher manifestations these endowments are mutually exclusive.
2. Pestalozzi belongs pre-eminently to the emotional reformers. He felt intensely, but he saw vaguely. His impulses were the highest and the noblest that can animate the human soul, but at every stage in his career his success was compromised by his inability to see things in their normal relations and proportions. Conscious of his inability to frame a rational defence of his system, he was glad to borrow philosophic insight from abroad; but he could not live with colleagues who would test the logic of his methods.
3. Tested by the simplest rules of order, symmetry, and economy, the schools organized by Pestalozzi were failures; but tested by the exalted humanity, the heroic devotion, and self-sacrifice of their founder, and by the new life which, through his example, was henceforth to animate the teaching profession, his schools were successful beyond all precedent. Judged by modern standards, Pestalozzi was a poor teacher, but an unsurpassed educator.
4. The conception which the humanitarian warmth of Pestalozzi’s nature converted into a motive, was that true education is a growth, the outward evolution of an inward life. The conception itself was as old as David and Socrates, but it had ceased to have the power of a living truth.
5. The history of human thought shows that there has ever been a tendency to separate form from content, or letter from spirit, and as constant a predilection for form or letter, as distinguished from content or spirit; and the essential work of reform has consisted in reanimation. This illustrates and defines Pestalozzi’s mission as an educator. The story of his devotion and suffering is the most pathetic in the history of education, and it should be unnecessary to repeat the lesson that was taught at such cost.]
FOOTNOTES:
[216] Besides Basedow, there should be mentioned among the educators who have become noted in Germany under the name of Philanthropists, Salzman (1744-1811) and Campe (1746-1818).
[217] What a painstaking soul to be so exact in his accounts! Doubtless he had an eye to the future publication of his record as a maître de fouet! This account is rather too exact to be trustworthy. (P.)