indulgence and approval granted to me, more because of my good
intentions and the fire of my zeal than for my actual performance,
spurred me on to plunge deeper into the inquiry as to the nature of true
teaching. But the whole system of a large school must have its settled
form, with its previously-appointed teaching-course arranged as to times
and subjects; and everything must fit in like a piece of clockwork. My
system, on the other hand, called only for ready senses and awakened
intellect. Set forms could only tolerate this view of education so far
as it served to enliven and quicken them. But I have unfortunately again
and again observed during my career, that even the most active life, if
its activity and its vitality be not properly understood and urged ever
onward, easily stiffens into bony rigidity. Enough, my mind, now fully
awakened, could not suffer these set forms, necessary though they were;
and I felt that I must seek out some position in which my nature could
unfold itself freely according to the needs of the development of my
life and of my mind.
This longing endeavour of life and mind, which could not submit to the
fetters of external limitations, may have been the more exaggerated at
the time by my becoming acquainted with Arndt's "Fragments on Human
Culture,"[57] which I had purchased. This book satisfied at once my
character, my resolves, and my aspirations; and what hitherto lay
isolated within me was brought into ordered connection through its
pages, while ideas which possessed me without my perceiving them took
definite form and expression as the book brought them to light. Indeed,
I thought then that Arndt's book was the bible of education.
In those days I spoke of my life and my aims in the following words: "I
desire to educate men whose feet shall stand on God's earth, rooted fast
in Nature, while their head towers up to heaven, and reads its secrets
with steady gaze, whose heart shall embrace both earth and heaven, shall
enjoy the life of earth and nature with all its wealth of forms, and at
the same time shall recognise the purity and peace of heaven, that
unites in its love God's earth with God's heaven." In these phrases I
now see my former life and aims vividly brought before me as in a
picture.
Little by little a desire gained strength within me to free myself from
my engagement at the Model School, to which I had bound myself as
teacher for at least three years. The headmaster (Gruner), whom I have
already named, was sufficiently a student of men to have perceived that
so excitable a man as I could never work harmoniously in such an
institution as that which he directed; so I was released from my
engagement, under the condition that I should provide a suitable
successor. Fate was propitious to me once more. I found a young private
tutor with whom I had long been in friendly correspondence, and who had
all those qualities which were lacking in me. He was not only thoroughly
proficient in the grammar of his mother tongue (German), but also in the
grammar of the classical tongues; and, if I am not mistaken, in French
also. He had a knowledge of geography far beyond anything I could boast,
was acquainted with history, knew arithmetic, possessed some familiarity
with botany,--much greater, indeed, than I suspected. And what was worth
more than all this, he was full of vigour in mind, heart, and life.
Therefore the school was every way the gainer by my departure, so
greatly the gainer indeed, that from that time no further change has
been necessary. That same teacher still lives and works in that same
post.[58]
Before I begin a new chapter of my career, there are yet a few things
which need mention.
To know French was at that time the order of the day, and not to know it
stamped a man at once as of a very low degree of culture. To acquire a
knowledge of French, therefore, became one of my chief aims at the
moment. It was my good fortune to obtain instruction from an unrivalled
teacher of French, M. Perrault, a Frenchman by birth, who still, even
though an old man, diligently worked at the study of his mother tongue,
and who at the same time wrote and spoke German with elegance. I pursued
the study with ardour, taking two lessons a day, because I desired to
reach a certain proficiency by a given time. Slow, however, were my
steps, for I was far from having a sufficient knowledge of my own tongue
whereon to build a bridge that might carry me into French. I never could
properly acquire what I did not fully understand in such a way that it
had a living meaning for me; and so from all the genuine zeal and
considerable cost which I spent over this study I gained by no means a
corresponding result; but I did learn a good deal, much more even than I
then knew how to turn to account. My teacher cast on one side all the
usual grammatical difficulties of French study, he aimed at imparting
the language as a living thing. But I with my ignorance of language
could not completely follow this free method of teaching; and yet,
nevertheless, I felt that the teacher had fully grasped the meaning and
the method of his work, and I always enjoyed the lessons on this
account. He was especially successful in accustoming my ear to the
French pronunciation, always separating and reducing it to its simple
sounds and tones, and never merely saying "this is pronounced like the
German _p_, or _b_, or _ä_, or _ö_," etc. The best thing resulting from
this course of study was the complete exposure of my ignorance of German
grammar. I must do myself the justice to say that I had given myself
extraordinary trouble over the works of the most celebrated German
grammarians, trying to bring life and interconnection or even a logical
consequence into German grammar; but I only confused myself the worse
thereby. One man said one thing, another quite the reverse; and not one
of all of them, as far as I could see, had educed his theories from the
life and nature of the speech itself. I turned away a second time, quite
disheartened, from the German grammarians, and once more took my own
road. But unfortunately the dry forms of grammar had, quite against my
own will, stuck like scales over my eyes, dimming my perceptions; I
could find no means to rid myself of them, and they wrought fatally upon
me now and long afterwards. The more thoroughly I knew them the more
they stiffened and crushed me.
My departure from the school was now arranged, and I could let my mind
pursue its development free and unshackled. As heretofore, so now also,
my kindly fate came lovingly to my help: I can never speak of it with
sufficient thankfulness. The three lads to whom I had hitherto given
private instruction in arithmetic and language now needed a tutor, as
their former tutor was leaving them. The confidential charge was laid
upon me, because I of all men best knew their nature and its needs, of
seeking out some fit teacher and educator for them from amongst my
acquaintance. As for myself this tutor business lay far from my own
thoughts, and I therefore looked round me in every direction, and with
all earnestness, for some one else. Amongst others I applied to my
eldest brother, telling him my views as to the necessary requirements of
a true educator.
My brother wrote back very decidedly and simply, that he could not
propose any one to me as a teacher and educator who would fulfil the
requirements I had set forth, and further, he did not think I should
ever be able to find such a person; for if one should be found
possessing ample knowledge and experience of life in its external
aspects, he would be deficient in a vigorous inner life of his own, and
in the power to recognise and foster it in himself and his pupils; and,
on the other hand, another man who might have this power would be
deficient in the first-named (practical) qualities. I reported the
result of my labours. It caused much disappointment, indeed it could not
be otherwise, because the welfare of the children was really sought, in
all love and truth, and the highest and best obtainable at that day was
desired on their behalf. The family did not venture to press the post
upon me personally, knowing my love of freedom and independence.
So stood matters for several months. At last, moved by my earnest
affection for the lads, and by my care to deserve the confidence with
which their mother had entrusted to my hands the provision for their
education, I endeavoured to look at things from the point of view of
their parents. This brought me at last to the determination to become
myself the educator and teacher of the lads. After a hard struggle with
myself, the hardest and most exhausting I had undergone for a long time,
I made known my decision. It was thankfully received, and understood
quite in the spirit which had actuated me in forming it.
I communicated my decision to Gruner, with whom I still kept in the
friendliest relation. He looked at me with downright astonishment, and
said, "You will lose all hopes of the position you have so long sought
and waited for." I replied that I should protect myself as to my
position and my relations with others by a very definite written
contract. To which the man of experience retorted, "Certainly, and
everything will be punctually fulfilled, so that you cannot say that any
one condition of all those you stood out so firmly for has failed to be
observed; nevertheless you will find you will lose on all points." So
spake experienced shrewdness, and what had I to set against it? I spoke
of the educational necessities and wants of these children. "Good," said
he, "then you will leave your own educational necessities and your own
wants out of the question?" How it mortified me, that worldly wisdom
should be able to speak thus, and that I was unable to controvert it! We
talked no more about the matter.
And keen as was the internal conflict over this decision and this
resolve of mine, equally keen was the external contest which I had to
wage in entering on my new post.
There were, namely, two immutable conditions in our agreement. One was
that I should never be compelled to live in town with my pupils, and
that when I began my duties my pupils should be handed over entirely to
my care, without any restriction; that they should follow me into the
country, and there form a restricted and perfectly isolated circle, and
that when they returned to town life my duties as preceptor should be at
an end. The time for beginning my new career drew nigh. As the
stipulated dwelling for myself and my pupils was not yet ready, I was
expected to take up my abode, for a few days, with my pupils in their
town house. But I felt that it was clear that the least want of firmness
at the outset would endanger my whole educational plan; therefore, I
stood firm, and indeed gained my point, though at the price of being
called headstrong, self-willed, and stubborn. That my assumption of my
post was attended with a sharp contest was a very good and wholesome
discipline for me. It was the fitting inauguration of a position and a
sphere of work which was henceforth to be attended, for me, with
perpetual and never-ending strife.
But as to this family and all its members, my earnest unbending
maintenance of my resolve had a most wholesome effect upon them, even to
winning in the end their comprehension and approval, though this was
later and long after I had quitted the situation. It was ten or eleven
years afterwards--that is, four or five years after my departure--that
the mother of these lads expressed her entire approval of the adamantine
perseverance I had exhibited in my convictions.
I entered my new sphere of educational work in July 1807. I was
twenty-five years old, as far as years went, but younger by several
years in regard to the development of my character. I neither felt
myself so old as I was, nor indeed had I any conception or realisation
of my age. I was only conscious of the strength and striving of my life,
the extent of my mental culture, the circumstances of my experience in
the world, and especially of--what shall I call it?--the shiftlessness
and undeveloped state of my culture as far as its helplessness with the
external world was concerned, of my ignorance of life both as to what it
really was, and how it showed in its outer aspect. The state of my
culture was such as only to serve to plunge me into conflict, through
the contradiction and opposition in which I found myself henceforward
with all existing methods; and consequently the whole period of my
tutorial career was one continual contest.
It was a salutary thing for me that this was my appointed lot from the
very beginning. Now and later on I was therefore able to say to myself
by way of consolation and encouragement: "You knew beforehand just how
it would be." Still, unpleasantness seldom arrives in exactly the manner
expected, and the unexpected is always the hardest to bear. Thus it was
with me in this case; my situation seemed to contain insurmountable
difficulties. I sought the basis for them in imperfect culture; and the
cause of the disconnected nature of the culture I had been able to
attain, lay, so I perceived, in the interruptions which marred my
university career. Educator and teacher, however, I had determined to
become and to remain; and as far as I could know my own feelings and my
own powers, I must and would work out my profession in an independent
free fashion of my own, founded on the view of man and his nature and
relationships which had now begun to dawn upon me. Yet every man finds
it above all things difficult to understand himself, and especially hard
was it in my own case. I began to think that I must look for help
outside myself, and seek to acquire from others the knowledge and
experience I needed.
And thus there came to me once again the idea of fitting myself by
continuing my university studies to become founder, principal, and
manager of an educational establishment of my own. But the fact was to
be considered that I had turned away from the educational path on which
I had entered. Now, when the imperfection of my training pressed itself
upon me, I not only sought help from Nature as of old, that school
allotted to me by fate, but I turned also for assistance to my
fellow-men who had divided out the whole field of education and teaching
into separate departments of science, and had added to these the
assistance of a rich literature. This need of help so troubled and
oppressed me, and threw my whole nature into such confusion, that I
resolved, as soon as might be, once more to proceed to one of the
universities, and necessarily, therefore, to relinquish as speedily as
possible my occupation as an educator.
As I always discussed everything important with my brother, I wrote to
him on this occasion as usual, telling him of my plans and of my
resolve. But for this time, at least, my nature was able to work out its
difficulty without his help. I soon came to see that I had failed to
appreciate my position, and had misunderstood myself; and, therefore,
before I had time to get an answer from my brother to my first letter I
wrote to him again, telling him that my university plans had been given
up, and that my fixed resolve now was to remain at my post. He rejoiced
doubly at my decision, because this time he would have been unable to
agree with me.[59]
No sooner had I firmly come to my decision than I began to apply my
thoughts vigorously to the subjects of education and instruction. The
first thing that absorbed me was the clear conviction that to educate
properly one must share the life of one's pupil. Then came the
questions, "What is elementary education? and of what value are the
educational methods advocated by Pestalozzi? Above all, what is the
purpose of education?"
In answering the question, "What is the purpose of education?" I relied
at that time upon the following observations: Man lives in a world of
objects, which influence him, and which he desires to influence;
therefore he ought to know these objects in their nature, in their
conditions, and in their relations with each other and with mankind.
Objects have form, measurement, and number.
By the expression, "the external world," at this time I meant only
Nature; my life was so bound up in natural objects that I altogether
passed by the productions of man's art or manufacture. Therefore for a
long time it was an effort to me to regard man's handiwork, with
Pestalozzi's scholars, Tobler and Hopf, as a proper subject for
elementary culture, and it broadened my inward and outward glance
considerably when I was able to look upon the world of the works of man
as also part of the "external world." In this way I sought, to the
extent of such powers as I consciously possessed at that time, to make
clear the meaning of all things through man, his relations with himself,
and with the external world.
The most pregnant thought which arose in me at this period was this: All
is unity, all rests in unity, all springs from unity, strives for and
leads up to unity, and returns to unity at last. This striving in unity
and after unity is the cause of the several aspects of human life. But
between my inner vision and my outer perception, presentation, and
action was a great gulf fixed. Therefore it seemed to me that
everything which should or could be required for human education and
instruction must be necessarily conditioned and given, by virtue of the
very nature of the necessary course of his development, in man's own
being, and in the relationships amidst which he is set. A man, it seemed
to me, would be well educated, when he had been trained to care for
these relationships and to acknowledge them, to master them and to
survey them.
I worked hard, severely hard, during this period, but both the methods
and the aims of education came before me in such an incoherent heap, so
split up into little fragments, and so entirely without any kind of
order, that during several years I did not make much progress towards my
constant purpose of bringing all educational methods into an orderly
sequence and a living unity. As my habitual and therefore characteristic
expression of my desires then ran, I longed to see, to know, and to show
forth, all things in inter-connection.
For my good fortune, however there came out about that time certain
educational writings by Seller,[60] Jean Paul,[61] and others. They
supported and elevated me, sometimes by their concurrence with my own
views, expressed above, sometimes by the very contrary.
The Pestalozzian method I knew, it is true, in its main principles, but
not as a living force, satisfying the needs of man. What especially lay
heavy upon me at this time, however, painfully felt by myself though not
apparent to my pupils, was the utter absence of any organised connection
between the subjects of education. Joyful and unfettered work springs
from the conception of all things as one whole, and forms a life and a
lifework in harmony with the constitution of the universe and resting
firmly upon it.
That this was the true education I soon felt fervently convinced, and so
my first educational work consisted merely in being with my pupils and
influencing them by the power of my life and work; more than this I was
not at all in a position to give.
Oh, why is it that man knows so ill and prizes so little the blessings
that he possesses for the first time?
When I now seek to make myself clear as to the proper life and work of
an educator, my notes of that time rise fresh and fair to meet me. I
look back from now into that childhood of my teacher's life, and learn
from it; just as I look back into the childhood of my man's life, and
survey that, and learn from that, too. Why is all childhood and youth so
full of wealth and so unconscious of it, and why does it lose it without
knowing it only to learn what it possessed when it is for ever lost?
Ought this always to be so? Ought it to be so for every child, for every
youth? Will not a time come at last, come perhaps soon, when the
experience, the insight, the knowledge of age, and wisdom herself, shall
build up a defence, a shelter, a protection for the childhood of youth?
Of what use to mankind is the old man's experience and the greybeard's
wisdom when they sink into the grave with their possessors?
At first my life and my work with my pupils was confined within narrow
limits. It consisted in merely living, lounging, and strolling in the
open air, and going for walks. Although I was disgusted with the methods
of town education, I did not yet venture to convert life amidst Nature
into an educational course. That was taught me by my young pupils
themselves; and as from the circumstances of my own culture I eagerly
fostered to my utmost every budding sense for Nature that showed itself,
there soon developed amongst them a life-encompassing, life-giving, and
life-raising enjoyment of natural objects. In the following year[62]
this way of life was further enhanced by the father giving his sons a
piece of meadowland for a garden, at the cultivation of which we
accordingly worked in common. The greatest delight of my pupils was to
make little presents of the produce of their garden to their parents and
also to me. How their eyes would gleam with pleasure when they were
fortunate enough to be able to accomplish this. Pretty plants and little
shrubs from the fields, the great garden of God, were transplanted by us
to the children's gardens, and there carefully tended. Great was the
joy, especially of the two younger ones, when such a colonist frankly
enrolled himself amongst the citizens of the state. From this time forth
my own childhood no longer seemed wasted. I acknowledged how entirely
different a thing is the cultivation of plants, to one who has watched
them and studied them in all the stages of their own free development,
from what it is to one who has always stood aloof from Nature.
And here already, living cheerfully and joyfully in the bosom of Nature
with my first pupils, I began to tell myself that the training of
natural life was closely akin to the training of human life. For did not
those gifts of flowers and plants express appreciation and
acknowledgment of the love of parents and teacher? Were they not the
outcome of the characteristic lovingness and the enthusiastic
thankfulness of childhood? A child that of its own accord and of its own
free will seeks out flowers, cares for them, and protects them, so that
in due time he can weave a garland or make a nosegay with them for his
parents or his teacher, can never become a bad child, a wicked man. Such
a child can easily be led towards love, towards thankfulness, towards
recognition of the fatherliness of God, who gives him these gifts and
permits them to grow that he, as a cheerful giver in his turn, may
gladden with them the hearts of his parents.