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confusions of word-learning and opinions; and lay the foundation of their mental character and of the first determination of their powers, instead of truth and actual objects, with sounds and speech-and words."

The fundamental principles of Pestalozzi, most of which are contained in the extracts already given from his writings, have been summarized by Payne substantially as follows:

1. The principles of education are to be sought in human nature.

2. This nature is organic, consisting of paysical, intellectual, and moral capabilities, ready and struggling to develop themselves.

3. The function of the educator is both negative and positive. He must remove impediments to the learner's development, and he must also stimulate the exercise of his powers.

4. Self-development begins with sensations received through the senses. These sensations lead to perceptions which, registered in the mind as conceptions or ideas, constitute the basis of knowledge.

5. "Spontaneity and self-activity are the necessary conditions under which the mind educates itself, and gains power and independence."

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6. Practical aptness depends more on exercise than on knowledge. Knowing and doing must, however, proceed together. The chief aim of education is the development of the learner's powers."

7. All education must be based on the learner's own observation on his own personal experience. "This is the true basis of all knowledge. The opposite proceeding leads to empty, hollow, delusive word-knowledge.

First the reality, then the symbol; first the thing, then the word."

8. What the learner has gained by his own observation has become an actual possession which he can explain or describe in his own words. His ability to do this is the measure of the accuracy and extent of his knowledge.

9. The learner's growth necessitates advancement from the near and actual to the more remote; hence, from the concrete to the abstract, from particulars to generals, from the known to the unknown.

With this summary of principles, which are gradually permeating and changing modern education, we leave Pestalozzi, whom, notwithstanding his imperfections, we can not help loving. And this is the highest tribute which one being, whether human or divine, can pay another.

(B.) FROEBEL AND THE KINDERGARTEN.

One of the most illustrious disciples of Pestalozzi was Frederick Froebel, who was born in Thuringia, in 1782. He was the son of a Lutheran clergyman, who was so occupied in caring for a large parish that he neglected his son. Having early lost his mother, he was intrusted to the care of a maid-servant, who exercised as little oversight as possible. The step-mother, that came into the house in his fourth year, became gradually estranged from him, and filled his young heart with grief.

In due time he entered the village school to receive his rudimentary education. The religious instruction he here received made a deep impression. The older

pupils were required to repeat to the younger ones some text of Scripture occurring in the sermon on Sunday. Froebel entered school on Monday; the passage for the week was, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God." "I heard these words," he says, “repeated every day in a quiet, earnest, somewhat sing-song, childish tone, now by one, now by the whole. The verse made an impression on me like nothing before or since. Indeed, this impression was so lively and deep, that to-day every word lives freshly in my memory with the peculiar accent with which it was spoken; and yet since that time nearly forty years have elapsed. Perhaps the simple child's soul felt in these words the source and salvation of his life. Indeed, that conviction became to the struggling, striving man a source of inexhaustible courage, of always unimpaired joy, and willingness in self-consecration. Enough to say, my entrance into this school was for me the birth to a higher spiritual life.”

Froebel's local surroundings tended to bring him into sympathy with Nature. The woods possessed a charm for him; and in hours of leisure he loved to steal away to loiter by babbling brooks, to gather flowers, to listen to the songs of birds, to watch the movements of animals, and to catch the sighing of winds through the trees. His father's house was closely hemmed in by other buildings. "I was thus deprived," he says, "of a distant view; only above me I saw the clear sky of the mountain-region, and felt around me the pure fresh air. The impression which this clear sky and this pure air made upon me has continuously remained present with me. My observation was truly directed on what was near me in Nature; the plant and flower world became,

so far as I could see and touch it, an object of my contemplation and thought."

At ten years of age he went to live with an uncle, whose home was pervaded with a spirit of kindness and benevolence. To a boy of warm, generous nature, who had been accustomed only to austerity under the parental roof, this was peculiarly grateful. He developed bodily strength; his sympathy with Nature became more profound and intelligent, and the warmth of his religious life amounted at times to enthusiasm. He entered the.. town school of Stadt-Ilm, where his uncle lived. The teacher, "a regular driller of the old, time-honored stamp, had not the slightest conception of the inner nature of his pupil," says Payne, "and seems to have taken no pains whatever to discover it. He pronounced the boy to be idle (which, from his point of view, was quite true) and lazy (which certainly was not true)—a boy, in short, you could do nothing with. And, in fact, the teacher did nothing with his pupil, never once touched the chords of his inner being, or brought out the music they were fitted, under different handling, to produce. Froebel was indeed, at that time, a thoughtful, dreamy child, a very indifferent student of books, cordially hating the formal lessons with which he was crammed, and never so happy as when left alone with his great teacher in the woods."

At the age of fifteen he became a forester's apprentice. This man, though possessed of extensive knowledge, was too busy to give his protégé the promised instruction. Thrown upon his own resources, Froebel did the best he could with the forester's books in teaching himself. From a physician in a neighboring town he

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borrowed botanical books, by means of which he enlarged his acquaintance with the vegetable kingdom. "I used the long time of the forester's absence," he says, during which I was left entirely to myself, for drawing a kind of map of the district in which I lived; botany, however, busied me chiefly. My church religion changed into a religious life in Nature, and in the last half-year I lived entirely in and with plants, which attracted me wonderfully, without, however, the meaning of the inner life of the plant-world yet dawning on me. The collecting and drying of plants I carried on with the greatest zeal. This time, in manifold ways, was de voted to my self-education, self information, and elevation."

In 1799 Froebel entered the University of Jena, where he attended lectures on mathematics, botany, natural history, physics, chemistry, the science of finance, forest matters, and architecture. "In botany," he says, "I had a sensible, loving, and benevolent teacher. Through him my insight into Nature was essentially quickened, and my love for observing it made more active. I shall always think of this man with gratitude." Having loaned a part of his means to his brother, Froebel became involved in debt at the university; and, being unable for a time to make payment, he suffered imprisonment for nine weeks, obtaining his freedom in the summer of 1801.

The next several years were spent in various employments without yielding him either much profit or peace of mind. He had not yet found the sphere for which Nature had fitted him. In 1805 we find him in Frankfort with an architect; but, failing to see clearly how he

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