Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/195

 by its aid; as soon as it awakes to life, a mental eye is set in life, and from that time onward never leaves it. Thus, also, measure and number, in themselves empty forms, obtain for the succeeding exercises of perception their clearly recognized inner content which, according to Pestalozzi’s method, can be given them only by obscure tendency and compulsion. In Pestalozzi’s writings a confession, which is remarkable from this point of view, is made by one of his teachers who, when initiated into this method, began to perceive only empty geometrical bodies. This would happen to all pupils of that method if spiritual nature did not, unnoticed, guard against it. It is at this stage, too, when what is really perceived is thus clearly grasped, that not language signs, indeed, but speech itself and the need for expressing oneself to others trains man, and raises him out of darkness and confusion to clearness and definiteness. When the child first awakes to consciousness, all the impressions of surrounding nature immediately crowd upon him and are mingled to a vague chaos, in which no single thing stands out from among the general confusion. How is he ever to emerge from this stage of vagueness? He needs the help of others; he cannot get it except by definitely expressing his need and distinguishing it from similar needs which are already denoted in the language. Under the guidance of those distinctions he is compelled to reflect and to collect his thoughts, to notice what he actually feels, to compare it with, and differentiate it from, something else which he already knows but does not at present feel. Thus a conscious and free ego begins to be separated off in him. Now, education ought with deliberate and free art to continue the course which necessity and nature begin with us.

140. In the field of objective knowledge, which is