should get _Die Didaktik Basedows im Vergleiche zur Didaktik
des Comenius von_ Dr. Petru Garbovicianu (Bucarest, C. Gobl),
1887. This is a very good piece of work; it is printed in roman
type, and the price is only 1_s._ 6_d._
Since the above was in type I have got an important book,
_L’Education en Allemagne au Dix-huitième Siècle: Basedow et le
Philanthropinisme_, by A. Pinloche (Paris, A. Colin, 1889.)
XVI.
PESTALOZZI.
1746-1827.
§ 1. _Qui facit per alium facit per se._ It is thus the law holds us
accountable for the action of others which we direct. By the extension
of this rule we immensely increase the personality of great writers and
may credit them with vast spheres of action which never come within their
consciousness. No man gains and suffers more from this consideration
than Rousseau. On the one hand, we may attribute to him the crimes of
Robespierre and Saint-Just; on the other Pestalozzi was instigated by him
to turn to farming and—education.
In treating of Rousseau as an educational reformer I passed over a life
in which almost every incident tends to weaken the effect of his words.
With Pestalozzi we must turn to his life for the true source of his
writings and the best comment on them.
§ 2. John Henry Pestalozzi was born at Zurich in 1746. His father dying
when he was five years old, he was brought up with a brother and sister
by a pious and self-denying mother and by a faithful servant “Babeli,”
who had comforted the father in his last hours by promising to stay
with his family. Thus Pestalozzi had an advantage denied to Rousseau
and denied as it would seem to Locke; there was scope for his home
affections, and the head was not developed before the heart. When he was
sent to a day-school he became to some extent the laughing stock of his
companions who dubbed him Harry Oddity of Foolborough; but he gained
their good-will by his unselfishness. It was remembered that on the shock
of an earthquake when teachers and taught fled from the school building
Harry Oddity was induced to go back and bring away what his companions
considered precious. His holidays he spent with his grandfather the
pastor of a village some three miles from Zurich, where the lad learnt
the condition of the rural poor and saw what a good man could do for
them. He always looked back to these visits as an important element in
his education. “The best way for a child to acquire the fear of God,” he
wrote, “is for him to see and hear a true Christian.” The grandfather’s
example so affected him that he wished to follow in his steps, and he
became a student of theology.[151]
§ 3. Even as a student Pestalozzi proved that he was no ordinary man.
In his time there was great intellectual and moral enthusiasm among the
students of the little Swiss University. Some distinguished professors,
especially Bodmer, had awakened a craving for the old Swiss virtues
of plain living and high thinking; and a band of students, among whom
Lavater was leader and Pestalozzi played a prominent part, became eager
reformers. The citizens of the great towns like Geneva and Zurich had
become in effect privileged classes; and as their spokesmen the Geneva
magistrates condemned the _Contrat Social_ and the _Emile_. This raised
the indignation of the reforming students at Zurich; and though their
organ, a periodical called the _Memorial_, kept clear of politics, one
Muller wrote a paper which contained some strong language, and this
was held to be proof of a conspiracy. Muller fled and was banished.
Pestalozzi and some other of his friends were imprisoned. The _Memorial_
was suppressed.
§ 4. It is in this _Memorial_, a weekly paper edited by Lavater who
was five years Pestalozzi’s senior that we have Pestalozzi’s earliest
writing. We find him coming forward as “a man of aspirations.” No one
he says can object to his expressing his wishes. And “wishes” with a
man of 19 are usually hopes. Among other wishes he says: “I would that
some one would draw up in a simple manner a few principles of education
intelligible to everybody; that some generous people would then share the
expense of printing, so that the pamphlet might be given to the public
for nothing or next to nothing. I would then have clergymen distribute it
to all fathers and mothers, so that they might bring up their children in
a rational and Christian manner. But,” he adds, “perhaps this is asking
too much at a time.”
The _Memorial_ was suppressed because “the privileged classes” knew that
it was in the hands of their opponents. Pestalozzi then and always felt
keenly the oppression to which the peasants were exposed; and he spoke
of “the privileged” as men on stilts who must descend among the people
before they could secure a natural and firm position. He also satirises
them in some of his fables, as, _e.g._, that of the “Fishes and the
Pike.” “The fishes in a pond brought an accusation against the pike who
were making great ravages among them. The judge, an old pike, said
that their complaint was well founded, and that the defendants, to make
amends, should allow two ordinary fish every year to become pike.”
§ 5. By this time Pestalozzi had given up theology and had taken to the
law. Now under the influence of Rousseau, or rather of the craving for
a simple “natural” life which found its most eloquent expression in
Rousseau’s writing, Pestalozzi made a bonfire of his MSS. and decided on
becoming a farmer.
§ 6. There was another person concerned in this decision. In his
childhood he had one day ventured into the shop of one of the leading
tradesmen, Herr Schulthess, bent on procuring for his farthings some
object of delight; but he found there a little shop-keeper, Anna
Schulthess, seven years his senior, who discouraged his extravagance and
persuaded him to keep his money. Anna and he since those days had become
engaged—not at all to the satisfaction of her parents. Their intimacy
had been strengthened by their concern for a common friend, a young man
named Bluntschli, who died of consumption. This friend, three years
older than Pestalozzi, seems to have understood him thoroughly; and in
the parting advice he gave him there was a warning which happily for the
general good was in after years neglected. “I am going,” said Bluntschli,
“and you will be left alone. Avoid any career in which you might become
the victim of your own goodness and trust, and choose some quiet life in
which you will run no risk. Above all, do not take part in any important
undertaking without having at your side a man who by his cool judgment,
knowledge of men and things, and unshakable fidelity may be able to
protect you from the dangers to which you will be exposed.”
§ 7. When the friendship with Anna Schulthess had ripened into a
betrothal Pestalozzi spent a year in the neighbourhood of Bern learning
farming under a man then famous for his innovations. His new ideas
Pestalozzi absorbed very readily. “I had come to him,” he says, “a
political visionary, though with many profound and correct attainments,
views, and anticipations in matters political. I went away from him just
as great an agricultural visionary, though with many enlarged and correct
ideas and intentions with regard to agriculture.”
§ 8. During his “learning year” he kept up a correspondence with his
betrothed, and the letters of both, which have been preserved, differ
very widely from love-letters in general. Of himself Pestalozzi gives an
account which shows that in part at least he could see himself as others
saw him. “Dearest,” he writes, “those of my faults which appear to me
most important in relation to the situation in which I may be placed in
after-life are improvidence, incautiousness, and a want of presence of
mind to meet unexpected changes in my prospects.... Of my great, and
indeed very reprehensible negligence in all matters of etiquette, and
generally in all matters which are not in themselves of importance, I
need not speak; anyone may see them at first sight of me. I also owe you
the open confession, my dear, that I shall always consider my duties
toward my beloved partner subordinate to my duties towards my country;
and that, although I shall be the tenderest husband, nevertheless, I
hold myself bound to be inexorable to the tears of my wife if she should
ever attempt to restrain me by them from the direct performance of my
duties as a citizen, whatever this must lead to. My wife shall be the
confidante of my heart, the partner of all my most secret counsels. A
great and honest simplicity shall reign in my house. And one thing more.
My life will not pass without important and very critical undertakings.
I shall not forget ... my first resolutions to devote myself wholly to
my country. I shall never, from fear of man, refrain from speaking when
I see that the good of my country calls upon me to speak. My whole heart
is my country’s: I will risk all to alleviate the need and misery of
my fellow-countrymen. What consequences may the undertakings to which
I feel myself urged on draw after them! how unequal to them am I! and
how imperative is my duty to show you the possibility of the great
dangers which they may bring upon me! My dear, my beloved friend, I have
now spoken candidly of my character and my aspirations. Reflect upon
everything. If the traits which it was my duty to mention diminish your
respect for me, you will still esteem my sincerity, and you will not
think less highly of me, that I did not take advantage of your want of
acquaintance with my character for the attainment of my inmost wishes.”
§ 9. The young lady addressed was worthy of her lover. “Such nobleness,
such elevation of character, reach my very soul,” said she. With
equal nobleness she encouraged Pestalozzi in his schemes and took the
consequences without a murmur during their long married life of 46 years.
§ 10. Full of new ideas about farming Pestalozzi now thought he saw his
way to making a fortune. He took some poor land near Birr not far from
Zurich, and persuaded a banking firm to advance money with which he
proposed to cultivate vegetables and madder. In September, 1769, he was
married, and six months later the pair settled in a new house, “Neuhof,”
which Pestalozzi had built on his land.
§ 11. But in spite of his excellent ideas and great industry, his
speculation failed. The bankers soon withdrew their money. Pestalozzi was
not cautious enough for them. However, his wife’s friends prevented an
immediate collapse.
§ 12. But before he had any reason to doubt the success of his
speculation Pestalozzi had begun to reproach himself with being engrossed
by it. What had become of all his thoughts for the people? Was he not
spending his strength entirely to gain the prosperity of himself and his
household? These thoughts came to him with all the more force when a son
was born to him; and at this time they naturally connected themselves
with education. He had now seen a good deal of the degraded state of the
peasantry. How were they to be raised out of it?
§ 13. To Pestalozzi there seemed one answer and one only. This was
_by education_. To many people in the present day it might seem that
“education,” when quite successful, would qualify labourers to become
clerks. This was not the notion of Pestalozzi. Rousseau had completely
freed him from bondage to the Renascence, and education did not mean to
him a training in the use of books. He looked at the children of the
lowest class of the peasants and asked himself what they needed to raise
them. Knowledge would not do it. “The thing was not that they should
know what they did not know, but that they should behave as they did
not behave” (_supra_, p. 169); and the road to right action lay through
right feeling. If they could be made conscious that they were loved and
cared for, their hearts would open and give back love and respect in
return. More than this, they must be taught not only to respect their
elders but also themselves. They must be taught to help themselves and
contribute to their own maintenance. So Pestalozzi resolved to take into
his own house some of the very poorest children, to bring them up in
an atmosphere of love, and to instruct them in field-work and spinning
which would soon partly (as Pestalozzi hoped, wholly) pay for their keep.
Thus, just at the time when the experiment for himself failed he began
for others an experiment that seemed likely to add indefinitely to his
difficulties.
§ 14. In the winter of 1774 the first children were taken into Neuhof.
The consequences to his wife and to his little son only four years old
might have vanquished the courage of a less ardent philanthropist. “Our
position entailed much suffering on my wife;” he writes, “but nothing
could shake us in our resolve to devote our time, strength and remaining
fortune to the simplification of the instruction and domestic education
of the people.”
§ 15. These children, at first not more than 20 in number, Pestalozzi
treated as his own. They worked with him in the summer in the garden and
fields, in winter in the house. Very little time was given to separate
lessons, the children often learning while they worked with their hands.
Pestalozzi held that talking should come before reading and writing; and
he practised them in conversation on subjects taken from their every day
life. They also repeated passages from the Bible till they knew them by
heart.
§ 16. In a few months, as we are told, the appearance of these poor
little creatures had entirely changed; though fed only on bread and
vegetables they looked strong and hearty, and their faces gained an
expression of cheerfulness, frankness and intelligence which till then
had been totally wanting. They made good progress with their manual work
as well as with the associated lessons, and took pleasure in both. In
all they said and did, they seemed to show their consciousness of their
benefactor’s kind care of them.
§ 17. This experiment naturally drew much attention to it, and when it
had gone on over a year Pestalozzi was induced by his friend Iselin
of Basel to insert in the _Ephemerides_ (a paper of which Iselin was
editor), an “appeal ... for an institution intended to provide education
and work for poor country children.” In this appeal Pestalozzi narrates
his experience. “I have proved,” says he, “that it is not regular work
that stops the development of so many poor children, but the turmoil and
irregularity of their lives, the privations they endure, the excesses
they indulge in when opportunity offers, the wild rebellious passions
so seldom restrained, and the hopelessness to which they are so often
a prey. I have proved that children after having lost health, strength
and courage in a life of idleness and mendicity have, when once set
to regular work quickly recovered their health and spirits and grown
rapidly. I have found that when taken out of their abject condition they
soon become kindly, trustful and sympathetic; that even the most degraded
of them are touched by kindness, and that the eyes of the child who has
been steeped in misery, grow bright with pleasure and surprise, when,
after years of hardship, he sees a gentle friendly hand stretched out to
help him; and I am convinced that _when a child’s heart has been touched
the consequences will be great for his development and entire moral
character_.”
Pestalozzi therefore would have the very poorest children brought up in
private establishments where agriculture and industry were combined, and
where they would learn to work steadily and carefully with their hands,
the chief part of their time being devoted to this manual work, and their
instruction and education being associated with it. And he asks for
support in greatly increasing the establishment he has already begun.
§ 18. Encouraged by the support he received and still more by his love
for the children and his own too sanguine disposition Pestalozzi enlarged
his undertaking. The consequence was bankruptcy. Several causes conspired
to bring about this result. Whatever he might do for the children, he
could not educate the parents, and these were many of them beggars with
the ordinary vices of their class. With the usual discernment of such
people they soon came to the conclusion that Pestalozzi was making a
fortune out of their children’s labour; so they haunted Neuhof, treated
Pestalozzi with the greatest insolence, and often induced their children
to run away in their new clothes. This would account for much, but there
was another cause of failure that accounted for a great deal more.
This was Pestalozzi’s extreme incapacity as an administrator. Even his
industrial experiment he carried on in such a way that it proved a source
of expense rather than of profit. He says himself, that, contrary to his
own principles, which should have led him to begin at the beginning and
lay a good foundation in teaching, he put the children to work that was
too difficult for them, wanted them to spin fine thread before their
hands got steadiness and skill by exercise on the coarser kind, and to
manufacture muslin before they could turn out well-made cotton goods.
“Before I was aware of it,” he adds, “I was deeply involved in debt, and
the greater part of my dear wife’s property and expectations had, as it
were, in an instant gone up in smoke.”
§ 19. The precise arrangement made with the creditors we do not know. The
bare facts remain that the children were sent away, and that the land was
let for the creditors’ benefit; but Pestalozzi remained in the house.
This was settled in 1780.
§ 20. We have now come to the most gloomy period in Pestalozzi’s history,
a period of eighteen years, and those the best years in a man’s life,
which Pestalozzi spent in great distress from poverty without and doubt
and despondency within. When he got into difficulties, his friends, he
tells us, loved him without hope: “in the whole surrounding district it
was everywhere said that I was a lost man, that nothing more could be
done for me.” “In his only too elegant country house,” we are told, “he
often wanted money, bread, fuel, to protect himself against hunger and
cold.” “Eighteen years!—what a time for a soul like his to wait! History
passes lightly over such a period. Ten, twenty, thirty years—it makes but
a cipher difference if nothing great happens in them. But with what agony
must he have seen day after day, year after year gliding by, who in his
fervent soul longed to labour for the good of mankind and yet looked in
vain for the opportunity!” (Palmer.)
§ 21. But he who was always ready to sacrifice himself for others now
found someone, and that a stranger, ready to make a great sacrifice for
him. A servant, named Elizabeth Naef, heard of the disaster and distress
at Neuhof, and her master having just died she resolved to go to the
rescue. At first Pestalozzi refused her help. He did not wish her to
share the poverty of his household, and he felt himself out of sympathy
with her “evangelical” form of piety. But Elizabeth declared she had come
to stay, and when Pestalozzi found he could not shake her determination
he consented, saying, “Well, you will find after all that God is in our
house also.”
§ 22. To this pious sensible but illiterate peasant woman Pestalozzi
was fond of tracing many of his ideas. She was the original of his
_Gertrude_, and it was of her he wrote: “God’s sun pursues its path
from morning to evening; yet your eye detects no movement, your ear no
sound. Even when it goes down, you know that it will rise again and
continue to ripen the fruits of the earth. Extreme as it may seem, I am
not ashamed to say that this is an image of Gertrude as of every woman
who makes her house a temple of the living God and wins heaven for her
husband and children.” (_Leonard and Gertrude_). She was invaluable at
Neuhof and restored comfort to the household. In after years she managed
the establishment at Yverdun and married one of the Krüsis who were
Pestalozzi’s assistants.
§ 23. Writing of the gloomy years at Neuhof Pestalozzi afterwards said;
“My head was grey, yet I was still a child. With a heart in which all
the foundations of life were shaken, I still pursued in those stormy
times my favourite object, but my way was one of prejudice, of passion
and of error.” But with Pestalozzi self-depreciation had “almost grown
the habit of his soul,” and in his writings at Neuhof at this period
we find no traces of this prejudice, passion and error from which he
supposes himself to have suffered. He certainly did not abandon his love
of humanity; and in his sacrifice for it he sought a religious basis.
In these Neuhof days he wrote: “Christ teaches us by His example and
doctrine to sacrifice not only our possessions but ourselves for the
good of others, and shews us that nothing we have received is absolutely
ours but is merely entrusted to us by God to be piously employed in the
service of charity.” (Quoted by Guimps. R’s trans. 72.) Whatever were his
doubts and difficulties, he never swerved from pursuing the great object
of his life, and nothing could cloud his mind as to the true method of
attaining that object. As he afterwards wrote to Gessner (_Wie Gertrud_
u.s.w.), “Even while I was the sport of men who condemned me I never lost
sight for a moment of the object I had in view, which was the removal of
the causes of the misery that I saw on all sides of me. My strength too
kept on increasing, and my own misfortunes taught me valuable truths.
I knew the people as no one else did. What deceived no one else always
deceived me, but what deceived everybody else deceived me no longer....
My own sufferings have enabled me to understand the sufferings of the
people and their causes as no man without suffering can understand them.
I suffered what the people suffered and saw them as no one else saw them;
and strange as it may seem, I was never more profoundly convinced of the
fundamental truths on which I had based my undertaking than when I saw
that I had failed.” (R’s. Guimps 74.)
§ 24. Pestalozzi still had a few friends who did not despise the dreamer
of dreams. Among them was the editor of the _Ephemerides_, Iselin.
This friend encouraged him to write, and there soon appeared in the
_Ephemerides_ a series of reflexions under the title of “The Evening Hour
of a Hermit.” Not many editors would have printed these aphorisms, and
they attracted little or no attention at the time, but they have proved
worth attending to. “The fruit of Pestalozzi’s past years, they are,”
says Raumer, “at the same time the seed-corn of the years that were to
come, the plan and key to his action in pedagogy.... The drawing of the
architect of genius contains his work, even though the architect himself
has not skill enough to carry out his own design.” (Quoted by Otto
Fischer).[152]
§ 25. What was the connexion between Pestalozzi’s belief at this season
and complete belief in dogmatic Christianity? The question is one that
will always be asked and can never, I think, be fully answered. In the
days preceding the French Revolution it was a proof of wisdom to “Cleave
ever to the sunnier side of doubt, and cling to Faith,” even though the
Faith were “beyond the forms of Faith” (see Tennyson’s _Ancient Sage_).
But Pestalozzi did far more than this. He traced all virtue and strength
in the people to belief in the Fatherhood of God; and he saw in unbelief
the severance of all the bonds of society. The “Hermit” does not indeed
use the phrases common among “evangelical” Christians, but that he was
indeed a Christian is established not only by the general tone of his
aphorisms but still more clearly by his last words: “The Man of God, who
with his sufferings and death has restored to humanity the lost feeling
of the child’s disposition towards God is the Redeemer of the world; he
is the sacrificed Priest of the Lord; he is the Mediator between God
and God-forgetting mankind. His teaching is pure justice, educating
philosophy of the people; it is the revelation of God the Father to the
lost race of his children.”