Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/194

 reformation is intended, it must once for all be entirely separated from itself and cut off altogether from its old life. Not until a generation has passed through the new education can the question be considered, as to what part of the national education shall be entrusted to the home.

139. Setting that aside, and considering Pestalozzi’s book for mothers simply as the first foundation of instruction; to take, as the book does, the child’s body as the subject of instruction is also a complete mistake. He starts with the very correct statement, that the first object of the child’s knowledge must be the child himself. But is the child’s body, then, the child himself? If it must be a human body, would not the mother’s body be far closer and more visible to him? And how can the child obtain a perceptual knowledge of his body, without first having learnt to use it? That information is not knowledge, but simply the learning by heart of arbitrary word-symbols, brought about by the over-estimation of speaking. The true foundation of instruction and knowledge would be, to use Pestalozzi’s language, an A B C of the sensations. When the child begins to understand, and imperfectly to make, speech sounds, he should be led to make himself quite clear, whether he is hungry or sleepy, whether he sees or hears the actual sensation denoted by this or that expression, or, indeed, simply imagines it. He should be clear, too, as to the differences and degrees of difference of the various impressions on the same sense that are denoted by special words, e.g., the colours and the sounds of different bodies, etc. All this should take place in succession, developing properly and regularly the power of sensation. By this means the child first obtains an ego, which he abstracts in free and conscious conception, and which he scrutinizes