at while
right in his fundamental ideas, Pestalozzi was not therefore right in
all his applications of them. As described even by his admirers,
Pestalozzi was a man of partial intuitions--a man who had occasional
flashes of insight rather than a man of systematic thought. His first
great success at Stantz was achieved when he had no books or appliances
of ordinary teaching, and when "the only object of his attention was to
find out at each moment what instruction his children stood peculiarly
in need of, and what was the best manner of connecting it with the
knowledge they already possessed." Much of his power was due, not to
calmly reasoned-out plans of culture, but to his profound sympathy,
which gave him a quick perception of childish needs and difficulties. He
lacked the ability logically to co-ordinate and develop the truths which
he thus from time to time laid hold of; and had in great measure to
leave this to his assistants, Kruesi, Tobler, Buss, Niederer, and
Schmid. The result is, that in their details his own plans, and those
vicariously devised, contain numerous crudities and inconsistencies. His
nursery-method, described in _The Mother's Manual_, beginning as it does
with a nomenclature of the different parts of the body, and proceeding
next to specify their relative positions, and next their connections,
may be proved not at all in accordance with the initial stages of mental
evolution. His process of teaching the mother-tongue by formal exercises
in the meanings of words and in the construction of sentences, is quite
needless, and must entail on the pupil loss of time, labour, and
happiness. His proposed lessons in geography are utterly unpestalozzian.
And often where his plans are essentially sound, they are either
incomplete or vitiated by some remnant of the old regime. While,
therefore, we would defend in its entire extent the general doctrine
which Pestalozzi inaugurated, we think great evil likely to result from
an uncritical reception of his specific methods. That tendency,
constantly exhibited by mankind, to canonise the forms and practices
along with which any great truth has been bequeathed to them--their
liability to prostrate their intellects before the prophet, and swear by
his every word--their proneness to mistake the clothing of the idea for
the idea itself; renders it needful to insist strongly upon the
distinction between the fundamental principle of the Pestalozzian
system, and the set of