Part 23

§ 40. The world might be pardoned for neglecting an _Inquiry_ which even a biographer finds “prolix and obscure.” But why could it see nothing in another book which Pestalozzi published in the same year, “Figures to my ABC Book,” or according to its later title, “Fables,” a series of apologues as witty and wise as those of Lessing.[155]

§ 41. As I have said already (_supra_ p. 239) there seems a marked distinction between thinkers and doers, at least in education, and we seldom find a man great in both. But with all his weakness as a practical man Pestalozzi proved great both as a thinker and a doer. He not only thought out what should be done, but he also made splendid efforts to do it. His first attempt at Neuhof was, as we have seen, all his own; so was the next at Stanz; but afterwards he had to work with others, and the work would have come to a standstill if he had not gained the co-operation of the magistrates, the parents of the children, and his own assistants. So he never again had the free hand, or at least the free thought which bore such good fruit in his enforced cessation from practice in the years between 1780 and 1798. It is well then to ask, as his biographer Guimps has asked, what was the main outcome of Pestalozzi’s thought before he plunged into action a second time in 1798.

§ 42. Pestalozzi set himself to find a means of rescuing the people from their poverty and degradation. This he held would last as long as their moral and intellectual poverty lasted; so there was no hope except in an education that should make them better and more intelligent. In studying the children even of the most degraded parents he found the seeds, as it were, of a wealth of faculties, sentiments, tastes, and capabilities, which, if developed, might make them reasonable and upright human beings. But what was called education did nothing of the kind. Instead of developing the noblest part of the child’s nature it neglected this entirely, and bringing to the child the knowledge, ideas, and feelings of others, it tried to make him “learn” them. So “education” did little beyond stifling the child’s individuality under a mass of borrowed ideas. The schoolmaster worked, as it were, from without to within. This Pestalozzi would change, and make education begin in the child and work from within outwards. Acting on this principle he sought for some means of developing the child’s inborn faculties, and he found as he says: “Nature develops all the powers of humanity by exercising them; they increase with use.” (_Evening Hour_, Aph. 22.) No means can be found of exercising the higher faculties which can be compared with the actual relations of daily life; so Pestalozzi declares: “The pure sentiment of truth and wisdom is formed in the narrow circle of the relationships which affect us, the circumstances which suggest our actions, and the common knowledge which we cannot do without.” And taking as his starting-point the needs, desires, and connexions of actual life he was naturally led to associate the work of the body with that of the mind, to develop industry and study side by side, to combine the workshop and the school. With regard to instruction he was never tired of insisting on the importance of thorough mastery in the first elements, and there was to be no advance till this mastery was attained. (See what “Harry” says, _supra_ p. 306.) “The schools,” he says (_E. H._, No. 28), “hastily substitute an artificial method of words for the truer method of Nature which knows no hurry but waits.”

§ 43. In this account of Pestalozzi’s doctrine before 1798 I have as usual followed M. Guimps. According to him Pestalozzi had discovered “a principle which settles the law of man’s development, and is the fundamental principle of education.” This principle M. Guimps briefly states as follows: “All the real knowledge, useful powers, and noble sentiments that a man can acquire are but the extension of his individuality by the development of the powers and faculties that God has put in him, and by their assimilation of the elements supplied by the outer world. There exists for this development and the work of assimilation a natural and necessary order, an order which the school mostly sets at nought.”

§ 44. Now we come to the period of Pestalozzi’s practical activity. In 1798 Switzerland was overrun by the French. Everything was remodelled after the French pattern; and in conformity with the existing phase in the model country the government of Switzerland was declared to be in the hands of five “Directors.” Pestalozzi was a Radical, and he at once set to work to serve the new government with his pen. The Directors gladly welcomed such an ally as the author of _Leonard and Gertrude_, and they made him editor of a newspaper intended to diffuse the revolutionary principles among the people. Naturally enough they supposed that he, like other people, “wanted” something; but when asked what he wanted he replied simply that he wished to be a schoolmaster. The Directors, especially Le Grand, took a genuine interest in education, and were quite willing that Pestalozzi should be allowed a free hand in his “new departure.” They therefore agreed to find the funds with which Pestalozzi might open a new Institution in Aargau.

§ 45. But the editorship and the plans for the new Institution came to an abrupt ending. The Catholic cantons did not acquiesce in giving up their local liberties and being subjected to a new government in the hands of men whom they regarded as heretics and even atheists. Consequently those missionaries of enlightenment, the French troops, at once fell upon them and slaughtered many without distinction of age or sex. The French, we are told, did not expect to meet with resistance; so their light became lightning and struck dead the stupid people who could not or would not see. “Our soldiers” (it is Michelet who speaks) “were ferocious at Stanz.” (_Nos Fils_, 217). This ferocity at Stanz in September, 1798, was in secret disapproved of by the Directors, who were nominally responsible for it. But all they could do was to provide in a measure for the “111 infirm old people, the 169 orphans, and 237 other children,” who were left totally destitute. Le Grand proposed to Pestalozzi that he should, for the present, give up his other plans and go to Stanz (which is on the Lake of Lucerne) to take charge of the orphan and destitute children. Pestalozzi was not the man to refuse such a task as this. He at once set out. Some buildings connected with an Ursuline convent were, without the consent of the nuns, made over to him. Workmen were employed upon them, and as soon as a single room could be inhabited Pestalozzi received forty children into it. This was in January, 1799, in the middle of a remarkably cold winter.

§ 46. Thus under circumstances perhaps less unfavourable than they seemed began the five months’ trial of pure Pestalozzianism. The physical difficulties were immense. At first Pestalozzi and all the children were shut up day and night in a single room. He had throughout no helper of any kind but one female servant, and he had to do everything for the children, even what was most menial and disgusting. As soon as possible the number was increased, and before long was nearly eighty, some of the children having to go out to sleep. But great as were the material difficulties, those arising from the opposition and hatred of the people he came to succour were still worse. To them he seemed no philanthropist, but only a servant of the devil, an agent of the wicked government which had sent its ferocious soldiers and slaughtered the parents of these poor children, a Protestant who came to complete the work by destroying their souls. Pestalozzi, who was making heroic efforts in their behalf, seems to have wondered at the animosity shown him by the people of Stanz; but on looking back we must admit that in the circumstances it was only natural.

§ 47. And yet in spite of enormous difficulties of every kind Pestalozzi triumphed. Within the five months he spent with them he attached to him the hearts of the children, and produced in them a marvellous physical, intellectual, and moral change. “If ever there was a miracle,” says Michelet, “it was here. It was the reward of a strong faith, of a wonderful expansion of heart. He believed, he willed, he succeeded.” (_Nos Fils_ 223.)

What was the great act of faith by which Pestalozzi triumphed? According to M. Michelet he stood before these vicious and degraded children and said, “Man is good.” Pestalozzi does not tell us this himself; and as a benighted believer in Christianity, I venture to differ from the enlightened Michelet. As far as I can judge from Pestalozzi’s own teaching the source of his strength was his belief in the goodness not of Man but of God.

§ 48. But encouraged and rewarded as he was by the result, Pestalozzi could not long have maintained this fearful exertion. He was over fifty years of age, and he must soon have succumbed; indeed he was already spitting blood when in June, 1799, the French soldiers, whose action had brought him to Stanz, drove him away again. Falling back before the Austrians they had need of a hospital in Stanz, and demanded the buildings occupied by Pestalozzi and the children. So almost all the children had to be sent away, and then at last Pestalozzi took thought for his own health and retired to some baths in the mountains. But most of his peculiarities in teaching may be said to date from the experience at Stanz; and I will therefore give this experience in his own words.

§ 49. The following is the account given in his letter to his friend Gessner. (I have in part availed myself of Mr. Russell’s translation of Guimps, pp. 149 _ff._)

“My friend, once more I awake from a dream; once more I see my work destroyed, and my failing strength wasted.

“But, however weak and unfortunate my attempt, a friend of humanity will not grudge a few moments to consider the reasons which convince me that some day a more fortunate posterity will certainly take up the thread of my hopes at the place where it is now broken....

“I once more made known, as well as I could, my old wishes for the education of the people. In particular, I laid my whole scheme before Legrand (then one of the Directors), who not only took a warm interest in it, but agreed with me that the Republic stood in urgent need of a reform of public education. He also agreed with me that much might be done for the regeneration of the people by giving a certain number of the poorest children an education which should be complete, but which, far from lifting them out of their proper sphere, would but attach them the more strongly to it.

“I limited my desires to this one point, Legrand helping me in every possible way. He even thought my views so important that he once said to me: ‘I shall not willingly give up my present post till you have begun your work.’ ...

“It was my intention to try to find near Zurich or in Aargau a place where I should be able to join industry and agriculture to the other means of instruction, and so give my establishment all the development necessary to its complete success. But the Unterwalden disaster (September, 1798) left me no further choice in the matter. The Government felt the urgent need of sending help to this unfortunate district, and begged me for this once to make an attempt to put my plans into execution in a place where almost everything that could have made it a success was wanting.

“I went there gladly. I felt that the innocence of the people would make up for what was wanting, and that their distress would, at any rate, make them grateful.

“My eagerness to realise at last the great dream of my life would have led me to work on the very highest peaks of the Alps, and, so to speak, without fire or water.

“For a house, the Government made over to me the new part of the Ursuline convent at Stanz, but when I arrived it was still uncompleted, and not in any way fitted to receive a large number of children. Before anything else could be done, then, the house itself had to be got ready. The Government gave the necessary orders, and Rengger pushed on the work with much zeal and useful activity. I was never indeed allowed to want for money.

“In spite, however, of the admirable support I received, all this preparation took time, and time was precisely what we could least afford, since it was of the highest importance that a number of children, whom the war had left homeless and destitute, should be received at once.

“I was still without everything but money when the children crowded in; neither kitchen, rooms, nor beds were ready to receive them. At first this was a source of inconceivable confusion. For the first few weeks I was shut up in a very small room; the weather was bad, and the alterations, which made a great dust and filled the corridors with rubbish, rendered the air very unhealthy.

“The want of beds compelled me at first to send some of the poor children home at night; these children generally came back the next day covered with vermin. Most of them on their arrival were very degenerated specimens of humanity. Many of them had a sort of chronic skin-disease, which almost prevented their walking, or sores on their heads, or rags full of vermin; many were almost skeletons, with haggard, careworn faces, and shrinking looks; some brazen, accustomed to begging, hypocrisy, and all sorts of deceit; others broken by misfortune, patient, suspicious, timid, and entirely devoid of affection. There were also some spoilt children amongst them who had known the sweets of comfort, and were therefore full of pretensions. These kept to themselves, affected to despise the little beggars their comrades, and to suffer from this equality, and seemed to find it impossible to adapt themselves to the ways of the house, which differed too much from their old habits. But what was common to them all was a persistent idleness, resulting from their want of physical and mental activity. Out of every ten children there was hardly one who knew his A B C; as for any other knowledge, it was, of course, out of the question.

“The entire absence of school learning was what troubled me least, for I trusted in the natural powers that God bestows on even the poorest and most neglected children. I had observed for a long time that behind their coarseness, shyness, and apparent incapacity, are hidden the finest faculties, the most precious powers; and now, even amongst these poor creatures by whom I was surrounded at Stanz, marked natural abilities soon began to show themselves. I knew how useful the common needs of life are in teaching men the relations of things, in bringing out their natural intelligence, in forming their judgment, and in arousing faculties which, buried, as it were, beneath the coarser elements of their nature, cannot become active and useful till they are set free. It was my object then to set free these faculties, and bring them to bear on the pure and simple circumstances of domestic life, for I was convinced this was all that was wanting, and these natural faculties would shew themselves capable of raising the hearts and minds of my pupils to all that I could desire.

“I saw then how my wishes might be carried out; and I was persuaded that my affection would change the state of my children just as quickly as the spring sun would awake to new life the earth that winter had benumbed. I was not deceiving myself: before the spring sun melted the snow of our mountains my children were hardly to be recognised.

“But I must not anticipate. Just as in the evening I often mark the quick growth of the gourd by the side of the house, so I want you to mark the growth of my plant; and, my friend, I will not hide from you the worm which sometimes fastens on the leaves, sometimes even on the heart.

“I opened the establishment with no other helper but a woman-servant. I had not only to teach the children, but to look after their physical needs. I preferred being alone, and, unfortunately, it was the only way to reach my end. No one in the world would have cared to enter into my views for the education of children, and at that time I knew scarcely any one even capable of it.

“In proportion as the men whom I might have called to my aid were highly educated just so far they failed to understand me, and were incapable of confining themselves even in theory to the simple starting-points which I sought to come back to. All their views about the organisation and requirements of the enterprise differed entirely from mine. What they specially objected to was the notion that the enterprise might be carried out without the aid of any artificial means, and simply by the influence of nature in the environment of the children, and by the activity aroused in them by the needs of their daily life.

“And yet it was precisely upon this idea that I based all my hope of success; it was, as it were, a basis for innumerable other points of view.

“Experienced teachers, then, could not help me; still less boorish, ignorant men. I had nothing to put into the hands of assistants to guide them, nor any results or apparatus by which I could make my ideas clearer to them. Thus, whether I would or no, I had first to make my experiment alone, and collect facts to illustrate the essential features of my system before I could venture to look for outside help. Indeed, in my then position, nobody could help me. I knew that I must help myself and shaped my plans accordingly.

“I wanted to prove by my experiment that if public education is to have any real value for humanity, it must imitate the means which make the merit of domestic education; for it is my opinion that if school teaching does not take into consideration the circumstances of family life, and everything else that bears on a man’s general education, it can only lead to an artificial and methodical dwarfing of humanity.

“In any good education, the mother must be able to judge daily, nay hourly, from the child’s eyes, lips, and face, of the slightest change in his soul. The power of the educator, too, must be that of a father, quickened by the general circumstances of domestic life.

“Such was the foundation upon which I built. I determined that there should not be a minute in the day when my children should not be aware from my face and my lips that my heart was theirs, that their happiness was my happiness, and their pleasures my pleasures.

“Man readily accepts what is good, and the child readily listens to it; but it is not for you that he wants it, master and educator, but for himself. The good to which you would lead him must not depend on your capricious humour or passion; it must be a good which is good in itself and by the nature of things, and which the child can recognize as good. He must feel the necessity of your will in things which concern his comfort before he can be expected to obey it.

“Whatever he does gladly, whatever gains him credit, whatever tends to accomplish his great hopes, whatever awakens his powers and enables him truly to say _I can_, all this he _wills_.

“But this will is not aroused by words; it is aroused only by a kind of complete culture which gives feelings and powers. Words do not give the thing itself, but only an expression, a clear picture, of the thing which we already have in our minds.

“Before all things I was bound to gain the confidence and the love of the children. I was sure that if I succeeded in this all the rest would come of itself. Friend, only think how I was placed, and how great were the prejudices of the people and of the children themselves, and you will comprehend what difficulties I had to overcome.”

After narrating what we already know he goes on:

“Think, my friend, of this temper of the people, of my weakness, of my poor appearance, of the ill-will to which I was almost publicly exposed, and then judge how much I had to endure for the sake of carrying on my work.

“And yet, however painful this want of help and support was to me, it was favourable to the success of my undertaking, for it compelled me to be always everything for my children. I was alone with them from morning till night. It was from me that they received all that could do them good, soul and body. All needful help, consolation, and instruction they received direct from me. Their hands were in mine, my eyes were fixed on theirs.

“We wept and smiled together. They forgot the world and Stanz; they only knew that they were with me and I with them. We shared our food and drink. I had about me neither family, friends, nor servants; nothing but them. I was with them in sickness, and in health, and when they slept. I was the last to go to bed, and the first to get up. In the bedroom I prayed with them, and, at their own request, taught them till they fell asleep. Their clothes and bodies were intolerably filthy, but I looked after both myself, and was thus constantly exposed to the risk of contagion.

“This is how it was that these children gradually became so attached to me, some indeed so deeply that they contradicted their parents and friends when they heard evil things said about me. They felt that I was being treated unfairly, and loved me, I think, the more for it. But of what avail is it for the young nestlings to love their mother when the bird of prey that is bent on destroying them is constantly hovering near?

“However, the first results of these principles and of this line of action were not always satisfactory, nor, indeed, could they be so. The children did not always understand my love. Accustomed to idleness, unbounded liberty, and the fortuitous and lawless pleasures of an almost wild life, they had come to the convent in the expectation of being well fed, and of having nothing to do. Some of them soon discovered that they had been there long enough, and wanted to go away again; they talked of the school fever that attacks children when they are kept employed all day long. This dissatisfaction, which showed itself during the first months, resulted principally from the fact that many of them were ill, the consequence either of the sudden change of diet and habits, or of the severity of the weather and the dampness of the building in which we lived. We all coughed a great deal, and several children were seized with a peculiar sort of fever. This fever, which always began with sickness, was very general in the district. Cases of sickness, however, not followed by fever, were not at all rare, and were an almost natural consequence of the change of food. Many people attributed the fever to bad food, but the facts soon showed them to be wrong, for not a single child succumbed.

“On the return of spring it was evident to everybody that the children were all doing well, growing rapidly, and gaining colour. Certain magistrates and ecclesiastics, who saw them some time afterwards, stated that they had improved almost beyond recognition....