wrote to him once, "but you search for it by the most difficult way. You
take the whole of nature in order to obtain light on the particular
case; you look into the totality for the explanation of the individual
existence. From the simplest organism (in nature) you ascend step by
step to the more complicated, and finally construct the most complicated
of all--man--out of the materials of the whole of nature. In thus
creating man anew under the guidance of nature, you penetrate into his
mysterious organism."
And, indeed, as there is a wonderful harmony with nature in Goethe the
poet and the man, so there is the same harmony in Goethe the savant and
the thinker; nay, even science he practised as a poet. As one of the
greatest physicists of our days, Helmholtz, has said of him, "He did not
try to translate nature into abstract conceptions, but takes it as a
complete work of art, which must reveal its contents spontaneously to an
intelligent observer." Goethe never became a thorough experimentalist;
he did not want "to extort the secret from nature by pumps and retorts."
He waited patiently for a voluntary revelation, _i.e._, until he could
surprise that secret by an intuitive glance; for it was his conviction
that if you live intimately with Nature she will sooner or later
disclose her mysteries to you. If you read his _Songs_, his _Werther_,
his _Wahlverwandtschaften_, you feel that extraordinary intimacy--I had
almost said identification--with nature, present everywhere. Werther's
love springs up with the blossom of all nature; he begins to sink and
nears his self-made tomb while autumn, the death of nature, is in the
fields and woods. So does the moon spread her mellow light over his
garden, as "the mild eye of a true friend over his destiny." Never was
there a poet who humanized nature or naturalized human feeling, if I
might say so, to the same degree as Goethe. Now, this same love of
nature he brought into his scientific researches.
He began his studies of nature early, and he began them as he was to
finish them--with geology. Buffon's great views on the revolutions of
the earth had made a deep impression upon him, although he was to end as
the declared adversary of that vulcanism which we can trace already at
the bottom of Buffon's theory--naturally enough, when we think how
uncongenial all violence in society and nature was to him, how he looked
everywhere for slow, uninterrupted evolution. From theoretical study he
had early turned to direct observation; and when his administrative
functions obliged him to survey the mines of the little dukedom, ample
opportunity was offered for positive studies. As early as 1778, in a
paper, _Granite_, he wrote: "I do not fear the reproach that a spirit of
contradiction draws me from the contemplation of the human heart--this
most mobile, most mutable and fickle part of the creation--to the
observation of (granite) the oldest, firmest, deepest, most immovable
son of nature. For all natural things are in connection with each
other." It was his life's task to search for the links of this coherence
in order to find that unity which he knew to be in the moral as well as
material universe.
From those "first and most solid beginnings of our existence" he turned
to the history of plants and to the anatomy of the animals which cover
this crust of the earth. The study of Spinoza confirmed him in the
direction thus taken. "There I am on and under the mountains, seeking
the divine _in herbis et lapidibus_," says he, in Spinoza's own words;
and again: "Pardon me if I like to remain silent when people speak of a
divine being which I can know only in _rebus singularibus_." This
pantheistic view grew stronger and stronger with years; but it became a
pantheism very different from that of Parmenides, for whom being and
thinking are one, or from that of Giordano Bruno, which rests on the
analogy of a universal soul with the human soul, or even from that of
Spinoza himself, which takes its start from the relations of the
physical world with the conceptive world, and of both with the divine
one. Goethe's pantheism always tends to discover the cohesion of the
members of nature, of which man is one: if once he has discovered this
universal unity, where there are no gaps in space nor leaps in time, he
need not search further for the divine.
It is analogy which helps us to form these intuitive or platonic ideas.
It was through analogy that Goethe arrived at his great discoveries in
natural science, and I only repeat what such men as Johannes Mueller,
Baer, and Helmholtz have been willing to acknowledge, when I say that
the poet's eye has been as keen as that of any naturalist. Kant had
contended that there might be a superior intelligence, which, contrary
to human intelligence, goes from the general to the particular; and
Goethe thought--he proved, I might say--that in man too some of this
divine intelligence can operate and shine, if only in isolated sparks.
It was a spark of this kind which, first at Padua on the sight of a
fanpalm-tree, then again, on the eve of his departure from Palermo,
during a walk in the public garden amid the Southern vegetation,
revealed to him the law of the metamorphosis of plants. He found an
analogy between the different parts of the same plant which seemed to
repeat themselves: unity and evolution were revealed to him at once.
Three years later the sight of a half-broken sheep-skull, which he found
by chance on the sand of the Venetian Lido, taught him that the same
law, as he had suspected, applied also to vertebrate animals, and that
the skull might be considered as a series of strongly modified vertebræ.
He had, in fact, already hinted at the principle, shortly after put
forward by Lamarck, and long afterward developed and firmly established
by Darwin. He considered the difference in the anatomical structure of
animal species as modifications of a type or planned structure,
modifications brought about by the difference of life, food, and
dwellings. He had discovered as early as 1786 the intermaxillary bone in
man, i.e., the remnant of a part which had had to be adapted to the
exigencies of the changed structure; and proved thereby that there had
been a primitive similarity of structure, which had been transformed by
development of some parts and atrophy of others. Goethe's sketch of an
_Introduction into Comparative Anatomy_, which he wrote in 1795, urged
by A. von Humboldt, has remained, if I may believe those competent to
judge, a fundamental stone of modern science. And I may be allowed, as I
am unversed in such matters, to invoke the authority of one of the most
eminent living physiologists, Helmholtz, who says of Goethe's anatomical
essay, that in it the poet "teaches, with the greatest clearness and
decision, that all differences in the structure of animal species are to
be considered as changes of one fundamental type, which have been
brought about by fusion, transformation, aggrandizement, diminution, or
total annihilation of several parts. This has, indeed, become, in the
present state of comparative anatomy, the leading idea of this science.
It has never since been expressed better or more clearly than by Goethe:
and after-times have made few essential modifications."[59]
Now, the same may be said, I am told, in spite of some differences as to
details, of his metamorphosis of plants. I do not mean by this to say
that Goethe is the real author of the theory of evolution. There is
between him and Mr. Darwin the difference which there is between Vico
and Niebuhr, Herder and F.A. Wolf. In the one case we have a fertile
hint, in the other a well-established system, worked out by proofs and
convincing arguments. Nevertheless, when a man like Johannes Mueller
sees in Goethe's views "the presentiment of a distant ideal of natural
history," we may be allowed to see in Goethe one of the fathers of the
doctrine of evolution, which, after all, is only an application of
Herder's principle of _fieri_ to the material world.
After having thus gone through the whole series of organisms, from the
simplest to the most complicated, Goethe finds that he has laid, as it
were the last crowning stone of the universal pyramid, raised from the
materials of the whole quarry of nature; that he has reconstructed man.
And here begins a new domain; for after all for mankind the _highest_
study must be man himself. The social problems of property, education,
marriage, occupied Goethe's mind all his life through, although more
particularly in the last thirty years. The relations of man with nature,
the question how far he is free from the laws of necessity, how far
subject to them, are always haunting him. If you read the
_Wahlverwandtschaften_, the _Wanderjahre_, the second _Faust_, you will
find those grave questions approached from all sides. I shall not,
however, enter here into an exposition of Goethe's political, social,
and educational views, not only because they mostly belong to a later
period, but especially because they have never found a wide echo, nor
determined the opinions of an important portion of the nation, nor
entered as integrating principles into its lay creed. Not so with the
metaphysical conclusion which he reached by this path, and which is
somewhat different from the pantheism of his youth, inasmuch as he
combines with it somewhat of the fundamental ideas of Leibnitz, which
were also Lessing's, and which, after all, form a sort of return to
Christianity, as understood in its widest sense, in the sense in which
it harmonizes with Plato's idealism. "Thinking is not to be severed from
what is thought, nor will from movement." Nature consequently is God,
and God is nature, but in this God-nature man lives as an imperishable
monad, capable of going through thousands of metamorphoses, but destined
to rest on each stage of this unlimited existence, in full possession of
the present, in which he has to expand his whole being by action or
enjoyment. This conception of life was not, as you will see, the
creation of an imagination longing to pass beyond the conditions of
human existence--which is the idealism of the "general"--but the highest
result of the poet's insight into the order of nature.
I have said that there was an antagonism between Kant's views and those
of Herder and Goethe, and that this antagonism has been ever since
sensibly felt in the intellectual history of Germany. Some efforts were
made to reconcile them, as for instance by Schiller. Sometimes a sort of
alliance took place, as in 1813, when the Romanticists, who were quite
under the spell of the Herder-Goethe ideas, invoked the aid of the moral
energy, which was a special characteristic of Kant's disciples; but the
antagonism lives on not the less even now in the German nation, as the
antagonism between Hume and Burke, Locke and Berkeley, Fielding and
Richardson, Shakespeare and Milton, nay, between Renaissance and
Puritanism in spite of their apparent death, is still living in the
English nation. This difference is, as will happen in this world, much
more the difference between two dispositions of mind, character, and
temperament, than between two opposite theories; or at least the
conflicting opinions are much more the result of our moral and
intellectual dispositions than of objective observation and abstract
argumentation. Germany owes much to the stern unflinching moral
principles of Kant; she owes still more, however, to the serene and
large views of Goethe. The misfortune of both ideals is that they
cannot and will never be accessible save to a small _élite_, that of
Kant to a moral, that of Goethe to an intellectual, élite. But are not
all ideals of an essentially aristocratic nature? The German ideals,
however, are so more than others, and the consequence has been a wide
gap between the mass of the nation and the minority which has been true
to those ideals. The numerical majority, indeed, of the German nation
has either remained faithful to the Church, though without fanaticism,
or has become materialistic and rationalistic. It is a great misfortune
for a nation when its greatest writer in his greatest works is only
understood by the happy few, and when its greatest moralist preaches a
moral which is above the common force of human nature. The only means of
union between the nation and the intellectual and moral aristocracy,
which has kept and guarded that treasure, as well as the only link
between these two aristocratic views of life themselves, would be
furnished by religion, a religion such as Lessing, Mendelssohn, and
above all Schleiermacher, propounded, such as reigned all over Germany
forty or fifty years ago, before party spirit had set to work, and the
flattest of rationalisms had again invaded the nation--a religion
corresponding, for the mass, to what Goethe's and Kant's philosophy,
which is neither materialism nor spiritualism, is for the few--a
religion based on feeling and intuition, on conscience and reverence,
but a religion without dogmas, without ritual, without forms, above all
without exclusiveness and without intolerance. I doubt whether this mild
and noble spirit, which is by no means indifferentism, will soon revive,
as I doubt whether Germany will quickly get over the conflict between
the traditional and the rationalistic spirit which mars her public life;
whether too she will soon reach that political ideal which England
realized most fully in the first half of this century, and which
consists in a perfect equilibrium between the spirit of tradition and
that of rationalism. However, although Kant's lofty and Goethe's deep
philosophy of life is now the treasure of a small minority only, it has
none the less pervaded all the great scientific and literary work done
up to the middle of this century. It has presided over the birth of our
new state; and the day will certainly come when public opinion in
Germany will turn away from the tendency of her present literature,
science, and politics--a somewhat narrow patriotism, a rather shallow
materialism, and a thoroughly false parliamentary _régime_--and come
back to the spirit of the generations to whom, after all, she owes her
intellectual, though not perhaps her political and material,
civilization.
FOOTNOTES:
[58] "Storm and stress," the period of intellectual revolt, struggle,
and emancipation in Germany.--ED.
[59] Written in 1853, five years before the appearance of Mr. Darwin's
great work.
PESTALOZZI'S METHOD OF EDUCATION
A.D. 1775
GEORGE RIPLEY
Modern education began when Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi established
his experimental school at Neuhof in 1775. Comenius had shown the
true path of teaching. Pestalozzi was the enthusiast who felt with
burning passion the injustice done to the child in the schoolhouses
of his day. He protested that the old education was all wrong, and
he proved this by his achievements, establishing a little school in
his own home at Neuhof, and then in 1800 a larger one at Burgdorf.
The Swiss Government adopted his ideas. Teachers were sent to learn
of him. From Burgdorf is sprung the whole school system of to-day.
As a practical school-teacher Pestalozzi was nevertheless a failure
in the end, because he relied on no force but that of personal
affection to control his pupils. This divinest of methods succeeded
remarkably while his schools were so small as to bring him into
close paternal contact with every child. But at the large
institution at Yverdon, of which he was master in his later years,
the method broke down badly. Hence there were not wanting in his own
times critics who pronounced him a failure. They did not see that
beside his insistence on love as the "way," the reformer had an even
more important message for the world. "The grand change advocated by
Pestalozzi," says Mr. Quick, "was a change of object. The main
object of the school should not be to teach, but to develop." In
this sentence we have the key to all modern education, though not
every teacher even to-day has digested fully the idea that his duty
is less that of stuffing a child full of facts than of developing
its character and abilities, encouraging whatever of value exists
within itself.
The full importance of Pestalozzi's work was recognized by keener
intellects even in his own lifetime. Queen Louise, the heroine of
Prussia, wished she could fly to Switzerland to grasp Pestalozzi's
hand. His system was introduced throughout Northern Germany and did
wonders for the development of the German people. To-day it is the
system of the world.
After completing the usual course of education, Pestalozzi continued his
studies, with a view to engaging in the ministry of the gospel, to which
the wishes of his friends, as well as his own deep religious feelings,
had early destined him. This course, however, was soon abandoned. He
appeared for the first and only time in the pulpit as a candidate, and
then, discouraged by the ill-success of the experiment, renounced all
aspirations to the sacred office. Soon after, he applied himself to the
law, but with a strong predilection for political studies. At this time
his inquiries seem to have taken the direction which ultimately led him
to the discoveries that characterize his name. He saw clearly the great
abuses in society which prevailed in his native country; and by dwelling
on their enormity his active mind suggested means of relief which could
be realized only by a more thorough and judicious education of the
people at large. His first publication, issued while a student at law,
contained his views on this subject. It was an essay on the bearing
which education ought to have upon our respective callings.
It was not for a mind like Pestalozzi's to behold the evils which had
been brought to his notice without deep and painful emotion. This was
experienced to such a degree that he was thrown into a state of morbid
excitement; and, at length, a dangerous illness broke off his ardent
researches. Still his mind was not quieted. His thoughts could not be
prevented from dwelling on the painful subjects to which he had given
his whole soul. Prostrate on the bed of sickness, he continued to
indulge himself in dark musings; and his fancy represented the prospects
of the future, both for society and for himself, in gloomy colors. The
strength of his constitution, however, carried him through the disorder;
and from the moment of his recovery he resolved to follow the leadings
of Providence, and, setting aside all human considerations, to act up to
the full extent of his conceptions, and if possible to put his views to
the test of experience.
He now abandoned all his former studies, committed his papers to the
flames, and believing that the evils into which society was plunged were
mainly owing to a departure from the straight and simple path of nature,
to the school of nature he resolved to go. Accordingly he quitted Zurich
and went to Kirchberg, in the Canton of Bern, where he became an
apprentice to a farmer of the name of Tschiffeli.
After qualifying himself under the direction of Tschiffeli for the
charge of a farm, he purchased a tract of waste land in the neighborhood
of Lensburg, in the Canton of Bern, on which he erected a
dwelling-house, with suitable buildings, and gave it the name of Neuhof.
The work of his hands here was prospered. He soon brought himself into
comfortable circumstances, and saw his prospects as bright and happy as
could be wished. At this time he formed a connection in marriage with
Ann Schulthess, the daughter of one of the wealthiest merchants in
Zurich, a young lady of a refined education and great dignity of
character. This marriage, while it increased the happiness of his
domestic circle, offered him a new sphere of useful exertion, by giving
him an interest in a flourishing cotton manufactory.
After eight years of successful industry at Neuhof, Pestalozzi resolved
to make a fair trial of the plan, which he had long had at heart, of
giving the lower orders such an education as should raise them to a
condition more consistent with the capacities of their nature and with
the spirit of Christianity.
To avoid the interference of others as much as possible, and to place
the beneficial results of his system in a clearer light, he selected the
objects of his experiment from the very dregs of the people. If he found
a child who was left in destitute circumstances from the death of its
parents or from their incompetency and vice, he immediately took him
home, so that, in a short time, his house was converted into an asylum,
in which fifty orphan or pauper children were fed, clothed, and
instructed in the different employments from which they might afterward
be able to gain a livelihood, and for the exercise of which his farm and
the cotton manufactory, in which he was a partner, afforded an ample
opportunity.
But this experiment, so happily conceived by Pestalozzi, was destined to
prove unsuccessful. He possessed few of the means necessary to bring it
to a prosperous issue. His zeal, which led him to undertake the most
magnificent enterprises, was not combined with sufficient patience,
practical knowledge of human nature, and fixed habits of order and
economy to enable him to realize the plans which he proposed; and at
length he was obliged to abandon his experiment in despair. It was not,
however, altogether useless. He had the satisfaction of knowing that he
had rescued more than a hundred children from the degrading influences
under which they were born, and planted the seeds of virtue and religion
in their hearts; and, in addition to this, his qualifications for the
task to which his life was now devoted were greatly increased by this
insight he had acquired into its real nature, and the means of its
accomplishment. The results of his experience at Neuhof, from the time
of opening his asylum in 1775, to its close in 1790, are left on record
in the valuable works which he published during that interval. The first
of these, entitled _Leonard and Gertrude_, is a popular novel, under
which form he chose to convey his ideas respecting the condition of the
lower classes, and the means of their improvement. The success of this
work was not what he expected. Though universally popular as a novel,
there were few who entered into the spirit of the deep wisdom which it
contained. This was published in 1781, and, in order to draw the
attention of its readers to the great object which he had in view, he
published another work in the following year, entitled _Christopher and
Eliza_. But this also failed of the purpose for which it was principally
intended. Still Pestalozzi was not discouraged in his attempts to make
the public acquainted with his new ideas. He now addressed himself to
the literary world, as he had before written expressly for the common
people. In a journal published at Basel, under the direction of Iselin,
a distinguished philanthropist, he inserted a series of essays, entitled
_Evening Hours of a Hermit_, which contained a more systematic account
of his mode of instruction and his plans for national improvement. But
the current of public thought was in an opposite direction, and little
attention could be gained to the plans which he labored to introduce.
His success was somewhat better in a weekly publication, which he
undertook at the beginning of 1782, under the title of the _Swiss
Journal_. This was continued for one year, and forms two octavo volumes
in which a great variety of subjects is discussed, connected with his
favorite purpose of national improvement.