ng aids to pure
human life; and although nearly twenty years have elapsed since I heard
those lessons of his, the fire of the love for music which they kindled
burns yet, active for good, within my breast. And further, I was taught
and convinced by these two super-excellent music teachers, who
instructed my pupils, that purely instrumental music, such as that of
the violin or of the pianoforte, is also in its essence based upon and
derived from vocal music, though developed through the independent
discovery of a few simple sound-producing instruments. Not only have I
never since left the path thus opened to me at its origin, but I have
consistently traced it onwards in all care and love, and continue to
rejoice in the excellent results obtained. This course of
music-teaching, as extended and applied later on, has always enjoyed the
approbation of the thoughtful and experienced amongst music teachers.

I also studied the boys' play, the whole series of games in the open
air, and learned to recognise their mighty power to awake and to
strengthen the intelligence and the soul as well as the body. In these
games and what was connected with them I detected the mainspring of the
moral strength which animated the pupils and the young people in the
institution. The games, as I am now fervently assured, formed a mental
bath of extraordinary strengthening-power;[71] and although the sense of
the higher symbolic meaning of games had not yet dawned upon me, I was
nevertheless able to perceive in each boy genuinely at play a moral
strength governing both mind and body which won my highest esteem.

Closely akin to the games in their morally strengthening aspect were the
walks, especially those of the general walking parties, more
particularly when conducted by Pestalozzi himself. These walks were by
no means always meant to be opportunities for drawing close to Nature,
but Nature herself, though unsought, always drew the walkers close to
her. Every contact with her elevates, strengthens, purifies. It is from
this cause that Nature, like noble great-souled men, wins us to her; and
whenever school or teaching duties gave me respite, my life at this time
was always passed amidst natural scenes and in communion with Nature.
From the tops of the high mountains near by I used to rejoice in the
clear and still sunset, in the pine-forests, the glaciers, the mountain
meadows, all bathed in rosy light. Such an evening walk came indeed to
be a