Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/190

 not the caprice and blind groping that has hitherto existed, but a definite and deliberate art of education; that is what we, too, wish and what German thoroughness must necessarily wish. He relates very frankly how a French phrase, that he wanted to make education mechanical, made his mind clear concerning this aim of his. In regard to the content, the first step in the new education described by me is that it shall stimulate and train the free activity of the pupil’s mind, his thought, in which later the world of his love shall dawn for him. With this first step Pestalozzi’s writings deal excellently; our examination of his fundamental conception treats this subject first of all. In this regard his censure of the previous system of instruction, that it has only plunged the pupil in mist and shadow and has never let him reach actual truth and reality, agrees with ours, that this system has never been able to influence life, nor to form the root of life. Pestalozzi’s proposed remedy for this, to lead the pupil to direct perception, is synonymous with ours, to stimulate his mental activity to the creation of images and to let him learn everything just by this free formation; for perception of what has been freely created is the only possible perception. The application, to be mentioned later, proves that the inventor really means this, and does not understand by perception that blindly groping and fumbling sense-impression. Quite rightly, too, this general and very far-reaching law is laid down for the stimulation of the pupil’s perception by education: from the beginning keep pace exactly with the evolution of the child’s powers that are to be developed.

136. On the other hand, in Pestalozzi’s system of instruction all the mistakes in terms and proposals have