ense of forming a part of the great connected
life of the world, by some skilled kindergarten teacher--nay, even by
one who is only simple-hearted, thoughtful, and attentive; nor how it
blooms into delicious harmonies like a beautifully tinted flower. Oh,
if I could only shout aloud with ten thousand lung-power the truth
that I now tell you in silence! Then would I make the ears of a
hundred thousand men ring with it! What keenness of sensation, what
a soul, what a mind, what force of will and active energy, what
dexterity and skill of muscular movement and of perception, and what
calm and patience, will not all these things call out in the children!

How is it that parents are so blind and deaf, when they profess to be
so eager to work for the welfare, the health, and peace of their
children? No! I cannot understand it; and yet a whole generation has
passed since this system first delivered its message, first called for
educational amendment, first pointed out where the need for it lay,
and showed how it could be satisfied.

If I were not afraid of being taken for an idiot or an escaped
lunatic, I would run barefoot from one end of Germany to the other and
cry aloud to all men:--"Set to work at once for your children's sake
on some universally developing plan, aiming at unity of life purpose,
and through that at joy and peace." But what good would it do? A
Curtman and a Ramsauer, in their stupidity or maliciousness, make it
their duty to stigmatize my work as sinful, when I am but quietly
corresponding with just my own friends and sympathizers; for they say
I am destroying all pleasure in life for the parents: "Who could be so
silly as I,--amongst sane men who acknowledge that parents have a
right to enjoy life,--I who perpetually call to these parents in tones
of imperative demand, 'Come, let us live for our children!'" (Kommt,
laszt uns unseren Kindern leben!)

MOTIVES

From 'The Education of Man.' By permission of Josephine Jarvis, the
translator, and A. Lovell & Co., publishers

Only in the measure that we are thoroughly penetrated by the pure,
spiritual, inward, human relations, and are faithful to them even in
the smallest detail in life, do we attain to the complete knowledge
and perception of the Divine-human relation; only in that measure do
we anticipate them so deeply, vividly, and truly, that every yearning
of our whole being is thereby satisfied,--at least receives its whole
meaning, and is c