Thus, then, we are on the highway towards the doctrine long ago enunciated by Pestalozzi, that alike in its order and its methods, education must conform to the natural process of mental evolution—that there is a certain sequence in which the faculties spontaneously develop, and a certain kind of knowledge which each requires during its development; and that it is for us to ascertain this sequence, and supply this knowledge. All the improvements above alluded to are partial applications of this general principle. A nebulous perception of it now prevails among teachers; and it is daily more insisted on in educational works. "The method of nature is the archetype of all methods," says M. Marcel. "The vital principle in the pursuit is to enable the pupil rightly to instruct himself," writes Mr. Wyse. The more science familiarises us with the constitution of things, the more do we see in them an inherent self-sufficingness. A higher knowledge tends continually to limit our interference with the processes of life. As in medicine the old "heroic treatment" has given place to mild treatment, and often no treatment save a normal regimen—as we have found that it is not needful to mould the bodies of babes by bandaging them in papoose-fashion or otherwise—as in gaols it is being discovered that no cunningly-devised discipline of ours is so efficient in producing reformation as the natural discipline of self-maintenance by productive labour; so in education, we are finding that success is to be achieved only by making our measures subservient to that spontaneous unfolding which all minds go through in their progress to maturity.
Of course, this fundamental principle of tuition, that the arrangement of matter and method must correspond with the order of evolution and mode of activity of the faculties—a principle so obviously true, that once stated it seems almost self-evident—has never been wholly disregarded. Teachers have unavoidably made their school-courses coincide with it in some degree, for the simple reason that education is possible only on that condition. Boys were never taught the rule-of-three until after they had learnt addition. They were not set to write exercises before they had got into their copybooks. Conic sections have always been preceded by Euclid. But the error of the old methods consists in this, that they do not recognise in detail what they are obliged to recognise in general. Yet the principle applies throughout. If from the time when a child is able to conceive two things as related in position, years must elapse before it can form a true concept of the Earth, as a sphere made up of land and sea, covered with mountains, forests, rivers, and cities, revolving on its axis, and sweeping round the Sun—if it gets from the one concept to the other by degrees—if the intermediate concepts which it forms are consecutively larger and more complicated; is it not manifest that there is a general succession through which alone it can pass; that each larger concept is made by the combination of smaller ones, and presupposes them; and that to present any of these compound concepts before the child is in possession of its constituent ones, is only less absurd than to present the final concept of the series before the initial one? In the mastering of every subject some course of increasingly complex ideas has to be gone through. The evolution of the corresponding faculties consists in the assimilation of these; which, in any true sense, is impossible without they are put into the mind in the normal order. And when this order is not followed, the result is, that they are received with apathy or disgust; and that unless the pupil is intelligent enough eventually to fill up the gaps himself, they lie in his memory as dead facts, capable of being turned to little or no use.
"But why trouble ourselves about any curriculum at all?" it may be asked. "If it be true that the mind like the body has a predetermined course of evolution—if it unfolds spontaneously—if its successive desires for this or that kind of information arise when these are severally required for its nutrition—if there thus exists in itself a prompter to the right species of activity at the right time; why interfere in any way? Why not leave children wholly to the discipline of nature?—why not remain quite passive and let them get knowledge as they best can?—why not be consistent throughout?" This is an awkward-looking question. Plausibly implying as it does, that a system of complete laissez-faire is the logical outcome of the doctrines set forth, it seems to furnish a disproof of them by reductio ad absurdum. In truth, however, they do not, when rightly understood, commit us to any such untenable position. A glance at the physical analogies will clearly show this. It is a general law of life that the more complex the organism to be produced, the longer the period during which it is dependent on a parent organism for food and protection. The difference between the minute, rapidly-formed, and self-moving spore of a conferva, and the slowly-developed seed of a tree, with its multiplied envelopes and large stock of nutriment laid by to nourish the germ during its first stages of growth, illustrates this law in its application to the vegetal world. Among animals we may trace it in a series of contrasts from the monad whose spontaneously-divided halves are as self-sufficing the moment after their separation as was the original whole; up to man, whose offspring not only passes through a protracted gestation, and subsequently long depends on the breast for sustenance; but after that must have its food artificially administered; must, when it has learned to feed itself, continue to have bread, clothing, and shelter provided; and does not acquire the power of complete self-support until a time varying from fifteen to twenty years after its birth. Now this law applies to the mind as to the body. For mental pabulum also, every higher creature, and especially man, is at first dependent on adult aid. Lacking the ability to move about, the babe is almost as powerless to get materials on which to exercise its perceptions as it is to get supplies for its stomach. Unable to prepare its own food, it is in like manner unable to reduce many kinds of knowledge to a fit form for assimilation. The language through which all higher truths are to be gained, it wholly derives from those surrounding it. And we see in such an example as the Wild Boy of Aveyron, the arrest of development that results when no help is received from parents and nurses. Thus, in providing from day to day the right kind of facts, prepared in the right manner, and giving them in due abundance at appropriate intervals, there is as much scope for active ministration to a child's mind as to its body. In either case, it is the chief function of parents to see that the conditions requisite to growth are maintained. And as, in supplying aliment, and clothing, and shelter, they may fulfil this function without at all interfering with the spontaneous development of the limbs and viscera, either in their order or mode; so, they may supply sounds for imitation, objects for examination, books for reading, problems for solution, and, if they use neither direct nor indirect coercion, may do this without in any way disturbing the normal process of mental evolution; or rather, may greatly facilitate that process. Hence the admission of the doctrines enunciated does not, as some might argue, involve the abandonment of teaching; but leaves ample room for an active and elaborate course of culture.
Passing from generalities to special considerations, it is to be remarked that in practice the Pestalozzian system seems scarcely to have fulfilled the promise of its theory. We hear of children not at all interested in its lessons,—disgusted with them rather; and, so far as we can gather, the Pestalozzian school have not turned out any unusual proportion of distinguished men: if even they have reached the average. We are not surprised at this. The success of every appliance depends mainly upon the intelligence with which it is used. It is a trite remark that, having the choicest tools, an unskilful artisan will botch his work; and bad teachers will fail even with the best methods. Indeed, the goodness of the method becomes in such case a cause of failure; as, to continue the simile, the perfection of the tool becomes in undisciplined hands a source of imperfection in results. A simple, unchanging, almost mechanical routine of tuition, may be carried out by the commonest intellects, with such small beneficial effect as it is capable of producing; but a complete system—a system as heterogeneous in its appliances as the mind in its faculties—a system proposing a special means for each special end, demands for its right employment powers such as few teachers possess. The mistress of a dame-school can hear spelling-lessons; and any hedge-schoolmaster can drill boys in the multiplication-table. But to teach spelling rightly by using the powers of the letters instead of their names, or to instruct in numerical combinations by experimental synthesis, a modicum of understanding is needful; and to pursue a like rational course throughout the entire range of studies, asks an amount of judgment, of invention, of intellectual sympathy, of analytical faculty, which we shall never see applied to it while the tutorial official is held in such small esteem. True education is practicable only by a true philosopher. Judge, then, what prospect a philosophical method now has of being acted out! Knowing so little as we yet do of psychology, and ignorant as our teachers are of that little, what chance has a system which requires psychology for its basis?
Further hindrance and discouragement has arisen from confounding the Pestalozzian principle with the forms in which it has been embodied. Because particular plans have not answered expectation, discredit has been cast upon the doctrine associated with them: no inquiry being made whether these plans truly conform to the doctrine. Judging as usual by the concrete rather than the abstract, men have blamed the theory for the bunglings of the practice. It is as though the first futile attempt to construct a steam-engine had been held to prove that steam could not be used as a motive power. Let it be constantly borne in mind that while right in his fundamental ideas, Pestalozzi was not therefore right in all his applications of them. As described even by his admirers, Pestalozzi was a man of partial intuitions—a man who had occasional flashes of insight rather than a man of systematic thought. His first great success at Stantz was achieved when he had no books or appliances of ordinary teaching, and when "the only object of his attention was to find out at each moment what instruction his children stood peculiarly in need of, and what was the best manner of connecting it with the knowledge they already possessed." Much of his power was due, not to calmly reasoned-out plans of culture, but to his profound sympathy, which gave him a quick perception of childish needs and difficulties. He lacked the ability logically to co-ordinate and develop the truths which he thus from time to time laid hold of; and had in great measure to leave this to his assistants, Kruesi, Tobler, Buss, Niederer, and Schmid. The result is, that in their details his own plans, and those vicariously devised, contain numerous crudities and inconsistencies. His nursery-method, described in The Mother's Manual, beginning as it does with a nomenclature of the different parts of the body, and proceeding next to specify their relative positions, and next their connections, may be proved not at all in accordance with the initial stages of mental evolution. His process of teaching the mother-tongue by formal exercises in the meanings of words and in the construction of sentences, is quite needless, and must entail on the pupil loss of time, labour, and happiness. His proposed lessons in geography are utterly unpestalozzian. And often where his plans are essentially sound, they are either incomplete or vitiated by some remnant of the old regime. While, therefore, we would defend in its entire extent the general doctrine which Pestalozzi inaugurated, we think great evil likely to result from an uncritical reception of his specific methods. That tendency, constantly exhibited by mankind, to canonise the forms and practices along with which any great truth has been bequeathed to them—their liability to prostrate their intellects before the prophet, and swear by his every word—their proneness to mistake the clothing of the idea for the idea itself; renders it needful to insist strongly upon the distinction between the fundamental principle of the Pestalozzian system, and the set of expedients devised for its practice; and to suggest that while the one may be considered as established, the other is probably nothing but an adumbration of the normal course. Indeed, on looking at the state of our knowledge, we may be quite sure that is the case. Before educational methods can be made to harmonise in character and arrangement with the faculties in their mode and order of unfolding, it is first needful that we ascertain with some completeness how the faculties do unfold. At present we have acquired, on this point, only a few general notions. These general notions must be developed in detail—must be transformed into a multitude of specific propositions, before we can be said to possess that science on which the art of education must be based. And then, when we have definitely made out in what succession and in what combinations the mental powers become active, it remains to choose out of the many possible ways of exercising each of them, that which best conforms to its natural mode of action. Evidently, therefore, it is not to be supposed that even our most advanced modes of teaching are the right ones, or nearly the right ones.
Bearing in mind then this distinction between the principle and the practice of Pestalozzi, and inferring from the grounds assigned that the last must necessarily be very defective, the reader will rate at its true worth the dissatisfaction with the system which some have expressed; and will see that the realisation of the Pestalozzian idea remains to be achieved. Should he argue, however, from what has just been said, that no such realisation is at present practicable, and that all effort ought to be devoted to the preliminary inquiry; we reply, that though it is not possible for a scheme of culture to be perfected either in matter or form until a rational psychology has been established, it is possible, with the aid of certain guiding principles, to make empirical approximations towards a perfect scheme. To prepare the way for further research we will now specify these principles. Some of them have been more or less distinctly implied in the foregoing pages; but it will be well here to state them all in logical order.
1. That in education we should proceed from the simple to the complex, is a truth which has always been to some extent acted upon: not professedly, indeed, nor by any means consistently. The mind develops. Like all things that develop it progresses from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous; and a normal training system, being an objective counterpart of this subjective process, must exhibit a like progression. Moreover, thus interpreting it, we may see that this formula has much wider application than at first appears. For its rationale involves, not only that we should proceed from the single to the combined in the teaching of each branch of knowledge; but that we should do the like with knowledge as a whole. As the mind, consisting at first of but few active faculties, has its later-completed faculties successively brought into play, and ultimately comes to have all its faculties in simultaneous action; it follows that our teaching should begin with but few subjects at once, and successively adding to these, should finally carry on all subjects abreast. Not only in its details should education proceed from the simple to the complex, but in its ensemble also.
2. The development of the mind, as all other development, is an advance from the indefinite to the definite. In common with the rest of the organism, the brain reaches its finished structure only at maturity; and in proportion as its structure is unfinished, its actions are wanting in precision. Hence like the first movements and the first attempts at speech, the first perceptions and thoughts are extremely vague. As from a rudimentary eye, discerning only the difference between light and darkness, the progress is to an eye that distinguishes kinds and gradations of colour, and details of form, with the greatest exactness; so, the intellect as a whole and in each faculty, beginning with the rudest discriminations among objects and actions, advances towards discriminations of increasing nicety and distinctness. To this general law our educational course and methods must conform. It is not practicable, nor would it be desirable if practicable, to put precise ideas into the undeveloped mind. We may indeed at an early age communicate the verbal forms in which such ideas are wrapped up; and teachers, who habitually do this, suppose that when the verbal forms have been correctly learnt, the ideas which should fill them have been acquired. But a brief cross-examination of the pupil proves the contrary. It turns out either that the words have been committed to memory with little or no thought about their meaning, or else that the perception of their meaning which has been gained is a very cloudy one. Only as the multiplication of experiences gives materials for definite conceptions—only as observation year by year discloses the less conspicuous attributes which distinguish things and processes previously confounded together—only as each class of co-existences and sequences becomes familiar through the recurrence of cases coming under it—only as the various classes of relations get accurately marked off from each other by mutual limitation, can the exact definitions of advanced knowledge become truly comprehensible. Thus in education we must be content to set out with crude notions. These we must aim to make gradually clearer by facilitating the acquisition of experiences such as will correct, first their greatest errors, and afterwards their successively less marked errors. And the scientific formulæ must be given only as fast as the conceptions are perfected.
3. To say that our lessons ought to start from the concrete and end in the abstract, may be considered as in part a repetition of the first of the foregoing principles. Nevertheless it is a maxim that must be stated: if with no other view, then with the view of showing in certain cases what are truly the simple and the complex. For unfortunately there has been much misunderstanding on this point. General formulas which men have devised to express groups of details, and which have severally simplified their conceptions by uniting many facts into one fact, they have supposed must simplify the conceptions of a child also. They have forgotten that a generalisation is simple only in comparison with the whole mass of particular truths it comprehends—that it is more complex than any one of these truths taken singly—that only after many of these single truths have been acquired does the generalisation ease the memory and help the reason—and that to a mind not possessing these single truths it is necessarily a mystery. Thus confounding two kinds of simplification, teachers have constantly erred by setting out with "first principles": a proceeding essentially, though not apparently, at variance with the primary rule; which implies that the mind should be introduced to principles through the medium of examples, and so should be led from the particular to the general—from the concrete to the abstract.