Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/196

 concerned with external objects, acquaintance with the word-sign adds absolutely nothing to the clearness and definiteness of the inner knowledge for the knower himself, but simply brings it within the sphere of what can be communicated to others, which is an altogether different sphere. The clearness of that knowledge depends entirely on perception, and whatever man’s imagination can create again at will in all its parts, just as it really is, is fully known, whether one has a word for it or not. Indeed, we are convinced that this perfection of the perception should precede acquaintance with the word-symbol. The opposite process leads straight to that world of shadow and mist, and to premature loquacity, both of which are rightly so hateful to Pestalozzi. He who wants to know the word as soon as possible, and considers his knowledge increased as soon as he knows it, lives in that very world of mist and is anxious merely to extend it. Considering Pestalozzi’s system of thought as a whole, I believe that it was just this A B C of sensation that he aimed at as the first foundation of mental development and as the content of his book for mothers. In all his statements about language he had a dim notion of it, and it was only lack of training in philosophy that prevented him from becoming quite clear on this point.

141. Now, presupposing this development of the knowing subject by means of sensation and setting it as the first foundation of the national education we have in view, Pestalozzi’s A B C of sense-perception, the theory of the relations of number and measure, is the entirely appropriate and excellent consequence. With this perception any part of the world of sense can be connected; it can be introduced into the domain of mathematics, until the pupil is sufficiently trained by these preliminary exercises to be led on to the planning of a social order of