which they may become imbittered. It is better to take them separately, talk to them kindly-sometimes even pray with them. If these means are fruitless, let them be brought before the school board, or punished in the presence of a colleague.

Francke's long and useful life was crowned with a fitting close. He bore his last sickness with Christian resignation. The words of the patriarch Jacob were often upon his lips, "Lord, I wait for thy salvation." At the last hour his wife, the faithful companion of many years, stood by his side. "The Saviour will be with you," she said. "There is no doubt of it," he replied. These were his last words; and, in the midst of the hymns and prayers of assembled friends, he peacefully fell asleep June 8, 1727.

6. ABSTRACT HUMAN EDUCATION.

The eighteenth century witnessed a new movement which has been characterized as abstract human education.* In general, it ignores or rejects revealed religion, and bases its educational principles on the purely natural. Though as one-sided as the theological tendency, it has the great merit of stimulating a careful study of man in the interests of correct educational methods. In this way it rendered invaluable service to the cause of educational progress.

This movement exhibited two entirely different tendencies the realistic tendency, which emphasized the study of Nature, and the humanistic tendency, which

*The German expression is "abstract menschliche Erziehung."

emphasized the study of words. Both of these tenden cies, which had been in conflict to a greater or less degree during the preceding century, agreed in eliminating revealed religion from education.

This dual movement admits of an easy explanation. In the great process of human development extremes tend to beget extremes. The path of human progress is zigzag. Throughout the seventeenth century, which we have just considered, a mere formal religion remained in the ascendency. It continued the controlling factor in education, in spite of the attacks of the pietists and educational reformers. It long thwarted the confident expectations of Comenius. But a religion, which has lost its vital power, can not hold a permanent ascendency over the world. Its weakness exposes it to attack. A skeptical movement, known as Deism, arose in Eng land, and gradually extended over the whole of Europe. Its principal tenets, as given by Kahnis, are the following: "Christianity is a positive religion, like Judaism and Mohammedanism. It is a prejudice which the Christians have, in common with the Jews and Mohammedans, to imagine that their religion is the only true one. That which separates these religions is the positive, but that is merely the unessential-the shell. In the main point, all positive religions are at one. This main point is natural religion—the religion of sound common sense." Deism rejected the supernatural in religion. As its principles had no other than a speculative basis, they were lacking in certainty and authority, and in many cases prepared the way for the grossest atheism. From the deistic or skeptical stand-point the current education of the time, unduly controlled by nar

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row ecclesiastical influences, was judged defective. Educational reformers representing the skeptical tendency arose, and new movements were inaugurated.

(A.) ROUSSEAU.

greater influ

There are few men who have exerted ence upon education than the celebrated author, JeanJacques Rousseau. He was born at Geneva, in 1712, the son of a poor watchmaker. As a child he was feeble in body and shy in disposition, but at the same time he was endowed with remarkable vivacity in thought and feeling." He was exceedingly fond of reading, in which he was encouraged by his father; and, among other works, many of which were worthless, he early devoured Bossuet, Ovid, and Plutarch. "Thus began to be formed within me," he says, "that heart, at once so proud and so tender, that effeminate but yet indomitable character which, ever oscillating between weakness and courage, between indulgence and virtue, has to the last placed me in contradiction with myself, and has brought it to pass that abstinence and enjoyment, pleasure and wisdom, have alike eluded me."

It is not worth while to follow him through the unimportant events of his life. His boyhood was by no means worthy of imitation; and in his "Confessions," a work written with the utmost frankness late in life, he does not attempt to conceal theft and lying. He ran away from an engraver to whom he had been apprenticed, and during the remainder of his life he was a wanderer who enjoyed but temporary seasons of repose. Throughout his career he was subject to petty misfortunes and persecutions, but his immoralities repress our

sympathy for his sufferings and lessen our admiration for his genius. His life was a singular paradox. "There is in our literary history," says an interesting French author, "a celebrated writer who offers the singular combination of grandeur in his works and of baseness in his conduct; it is Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Full of enthusiasm for the beautiful and the good, he defended with invincible logic and passionate eloquence the eternal principles of justice and morality, and he committed the most shameful and culpable acts. This man, who wrote admirable pages upon domestic affection, friendship, and gratitude, chose a companion unworthy of him, placed his children in a foundling hospital, and showed himself unjust and harsh toward his friends, and ungrateful toward his benefactors. And all the time doing wrong, he believed himself moral, because he loved virtue. 'I do evil,' he said, 'but I love good. My heart is pure.""

Rousseau has exerted his influence upon education, through a single work, half treatise and half romance. It is, as he himself says, "a collection of thoughts and observations, without order and almost without connection." It is entitled "Émile, or concerning Education.” In many respects a radical book, it is flung defiantly in the face of prevalent usage. "Go directly contrary to custom," he says, "and you will nearly always be right." The work abounds in mingled truth and error, and needs to be read with great discrimination; but many of its truths are fundamental, and ever since their publication they have been gradually forcing an entrance into educational practice. "Not Rousseau's individual rules," says the great German Richter, "many of which may

be erroneous without injury to the whole, but the spirit of education which fills and animates the work has shaken to their foundations and purified all the schoolrooms, and even the nurseries in Europe. In no previous work on education was the ideal so richly and beautifully combined with actual observation as in his."

Rousseau was largely indebted to his predecessors, especially to Locke, whom he frequently quotes. The two fundamental truths which have perhaps exerted the widest influence are these: 1. Nature is to be studied and followed. 2. Education is an unbroken unity, extending from early childhood to maturity. It is true that both of these principles had been advocated by Comenius, but it was through the charm of Rousseau's work that they made the widest impression upon the educational thinking of Europe. Along with positions wholly indefensible, Rousseau urges, in admirable style, many of the reforms with which we are already familiar, and which have won our hearty approval. His standpoint, as presented in the opening paragraph of "Émile," is undoubtedly wrong. "Everything is good," he says, "as it comes from the hands of the Creator; everything degenerates in the hands of man. He forces one country to bring forth the productions of another; one tree to bear the fruits of another; he mingles and confuses climates, elements, seasons; he mutilates his dog, his horse, his slave; he overturns everything, he disfigures everything; he loves deformity, monsters; he wishes nothing as Nature has made it, not even man; it is necessary to train him like a riding-horse; to conform him to a model like a tree in the garden."

Rousseau is thus seen to be hostile to the established