Basedow's School System.--Basedow proposes in his _Philalethia_ to
hedge up thirty uneducated children in a garden, to leave them to their
own development, and to assign them only mute attendants, who should
not even wear human clothing, and then to publish in a protocol the
results of the experiment. Philosophers are so preoccupied with
possibility that they do not see reality; otherwise Basedow must have
observed that our country-schools are just such gardens, in which
Philosophy would try the experiment of what will at last come of human
creatures, if they are absolutely deprived of all culture. I confess,
however, that all these attempts must continue uncertain and imperfect
so long as the schoolmasters cannot refrain from imparting to these
little probationers some instruction, though it were the least
possible; and the thing would work better with wholly dumb teachers, as
there are deaf and dumb pupils.