[146] “Je n’aime point les explications en discours; les jeunes gens y font peu d’attention et ne les retiennent guère. Les choses! les choses! Je ne répéterai jamais assez que nous donnons trop de pouvoir aux mots: avec notre éducation babillarde nous ne faisons que des babillards.” Ém. iij., 198.
[147] “Forcé d’apprendre de lui-même, il use de sa raison et non de celle d’autrui; car, pour ne rien donner à l’opinion, il ne faut rien donner à l’autorité; et la plupart de nos erreurs nous viennent bien moins de nous que des autres. De cet exercice continuel il doit résulter une vigueur d’esprit semblable à celle qu’on donne au corps par le travail et par la fatigue. Un autre avantage est qu’on n’avance qu’à proportion de ses forces. L’esprit, non plus que le corps, ne porte que ce qu’il peut porter. Quand l’entendement s’approprie les choses avant de les déposer dans la mémoire, ce qu’il en tire ensuite est à lui: au lieu qu’en surchargeant la mémoire, à son insu, on s’expose à n’en jamais rien tirer qui lui soit propre.” Ém. iij., 235.
[148] “Sans contredit on prend des notions bien plus claires et bien plus sûres des choses qu’on apprend ainsi de soi-même, que de celles qu’on tient des enseignements d’autrui; et, outre qu’on n’accoutume point sa raison à se soumettre servilement à l’autorité, l’on se rend plus ingénieux à trouver des rapports, à lier des idées, à inventer des instruments, que quand, adoptant tout cela tel qu’on nous le donne, nous laissons affaisser notre esprit dans la nonchalance, comme le corps d’un homme qui, toujours habillé, chaussé, servi par ses gens et traîné par ses chevaux, perd à la fin la force et l’usage de ses membres. Boileau se vantait d’avoir appris à Racine à rimer difficilement. Parmi tant d’admirables méthodes pour abréger l’étude des sciences, nous aurions grand besoin que quelqu’un nous en donnât une pour les apprendre avec effort.” Ém. iij., 193.
[149] I avail myself of the old substantival use of the word elementary to express its German equivalent Elementarbuch.
[150] “Who has not met with some experience such as this? A child with an active and inquiring mind accustomed to chatter about everything that interests him is sent to school. In a few weeks his vivacity is extinguished, his abundance of talk has dried up. If you ask him about his studies, if you desire him to give you a specimen of what he has learnt, he repeals to you in a sing-song voice some rule for the formation of tenses or some recipe for spelling words. Such are the results of the teaching which should be of all teaching the most fruitful and the most attractive!” Translated from Quelques Mots, &c., by M. Bréal.
[151] In these visits he observed how the children suffered from working in factories. These observations influenced him in after years.
[152] In these aphorisms Pestalozzi states the main principles at work in his own mind; but this bare statement is not well suited to communicate these principles to the minds of others. For most readers the aphorisms have as little attraction as the enunciations, say, of a book of Euclid would have for those who knew no geometry. But as his future life was guided by the principles he has formulated in this paper it seems necessary for us to bear some of these in mind.
What he mainly insists upon is that all wise guidance must proceed from a knowledge of the nature of the creature to be guided; further that there is a simple wisdom which must direct the course of all men. “The path of Nature,” says he, “which brings out the powers of men must be open and plain; and human education to true peace-giving wisdom must be simple and available for all. Nature brings out all men’s powers by practice, and their increase springs from use.” The powers of children should be strengthened by exercise on what is close at hand; and this should be done without hardness or pressure. A forced and rigid sequence in instruction is not Nature’s method, says he: this would make men one-sided, and truth would not penetrate freely and softly into their whole being. The pure feeling for truth grows in a small area; and human wisdom must be grounded on a perception of our closest relationships, and must show itself in skilled management of our nearest concerns. Everything we do against our consciousness of right weakens our perception of truth and disturbs the purity of our fundamental conceptions and experiences. On this account all wisdom of man rests in the strength of a good heart that follows after truth, and all the blessing of man in the sense of simplicity and innocence. Peace of mind must be the outcome of right training. To get out of his surroundings all he needs for life and enjoyment, to be patient, painstaking, and in every difficulty trustful in the love of the Heavenly Father, this comes of a man’s true education to wisdom. Nothing concerns the human race so closely and intimately as—God. “God as Father of thy household, as source of thy blessing—God as thy Father; in this belief thou findest rest and strength and wisdom, which no violence nor the grave itself can overthrow.” Belief in God which is a part of our nature, like the sense of right and wrong and the feeling we can never quench of what is just and unjust, must be made the foundation in educating the human race. The subject of that belief is that God is the Father of men, men are the children of God. To this divine relationship Pestalozzi refers all human relationships as those of parent and child, of ruler and subject. The priest is appointed to declare the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men.
The only text I have seen is that reprinted by Raumer (Gesch. d. Päd.). From Otto Fischer (Wichtigste Pädagogen), I learn that this is the edition of 1807, which differs, at least by omission, from the original of 1780.
[153] There are now four parts, first published respectively in 1781, 1783, 1785, and 1787 (O. Fischer). The English translation in two small vols. (1825) ends with the First Part, but Miss Eva Channing has recently sought to weld the four parts into one (Boston, U.S.—D.C. Heath & Co.), and in this form the book seems to me not only very instructive but very entertaining also. Not many readers who look into it will fail to reach the end, and few are the books connected with education of which this could prudently be asserted. “All good teachers should read it with care,” says Stanley Hall in his Introduction, and if they thus read it and catch anything of the spirit of Pestalozzi both they and their pupils will have reason to rejoice.