Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/698

676 676 EDUCATION astounding effect throughout Europe. Those were days when the whole cultivated world vibrated to any touch of new philosophy. French had superseded Latin as the general medium of thought. French learning stood in the same relation to the rest of Europe as German learning does now ; and any discovery of D Alembert, liousseau, or Maupertuis travelled with inconceivable speed from Versailles to Schonbrunn, from the Spree to the Neva. Kant in his distant home of Konigsberg broke for one day through his habits, more regular than the town clock, and stayed at home to study the new revelation. The burthen of Rousseau s message was nature, such a nature as never did and never will exist, but still a name for an ideal worthy of our struggles. He revolted against the false civilization which he saw around him ; he was penetrated with sorrow at the shams of government and society, at the misery of the poor existing side by side with the heartless- ness of the rich. The child should- be the pupil of nature. He lays great stress on the earliest education. The first year of life is in every respect the most important. Nature must be closely followed. The child s tears are petitions which should be granted. The naughtiness of children comes from weakness ; make the child strong and he will be good. Children s destructiveness is a form of activity. Do not be too anxious to make children talk ; be satisfied with a small vocabulary. Lay aside all padded caps and baby jumpers. Let children learn to walk by learning that it hurts them to fall. Do not insist too much on the duty of obedience as on the necessity of submission to natural laws. Do not argue too much with children ; educate the heart to wish for right actions ; before all things study nature. The chief moral principle is do no one harm. Emile is to be taught by the real things of life, by observation and experi ence. At twelve years old he is scarcely to know what a book is ; to be able to read and write at fifteen is quite enough. We must first make him a man, and that chiefly by athletic exercises. Educate his sight to measure, count, and weigh accurately ; teach him to draw ; tune his ear to time and harmony ; give him simple food, but let him eat as much as he likes. Thus at twelve years old Emile is a real child of nature. His carriage and bearing are fair and confident, his nature open and candid, his speech simple and to the point ; his ideas are few but clear ; he knows nothing by learning, much by experience. He has read deeply in the book of nature. His mind is not on his tongue but in his head. He speaks only one language, but knows what he is saying, and can do what he cannot describe. Routine and custom are unknown to him ; authority and example affect him not ; he does what he thinks right. He understands nothing of duty and obedience, but he will do what you ask him, and will expect a similar service of you in return. His strength and body are fully developed ; he is first-rate at running, jumping, and judging distances. Should he die at this age he will so far have lived his life. From twelve to fifteen Emile s practical education is to continue. He is still to avoid books v/hich teach not learning itself but to appear learned. He is to be taught and to practice some handicraft. Half the value of education is to waste time wisely, to tide over dangerous years with safety, until the character is better able to stand temptation. At fifteen a new epoch commences. The passions are awakened ; the care of the teacher should now redouble ; he should never leave the helm. Emile having gradually acquired the love of himself and of those immediately about him, will begin to love his kind. Now is the time to teach him history, and the machinery of society, the world as it is and as it might be. Still an encumbrance of useless and burdensome knowledge is to be avoided. Between this age and manhood Emile learns all that it is necessary for him to know. It is, per haps, strange that a book in many respects so wild and fantastic should have produced so greafc a practical effect. In pursuance of its precepts, children went about naked, were not allowed to read, and when they grew up wore the simplest clothes, and cared for little learning except the study of nature and Plutarch. The catastrophe of the French Revolution has made the importance of Emile less apparent to us. Much of the heroism of that time is doubtless due to the exaltation produced by the sweeping away of abuses, and the approach of a brighter age. But we must not forget that the first generation of Emile was just thirty years old in 1792; that many of the Girondins, the Marseillais, the soldiers and generals of Carnot and Napoleon had been bred in that hardy school. There is no more interesting chapter in the history of education than the tracing back of epochs of special activity to the obscure source from which they arose. Thus the Whigs of the Reform Bill sprang from the wits of Edinburgh, the heroes of the Rebellion from the divines who translated the Bible, the martyrs of the Revolution from the philosophers of the Encyclopaedia. The teaching of Rousseau found its practical expression Basedov in the philanthropin of Dessau, a school founded by !723- Basedow, the friend of Goethe and Lavater, one of the two prophets between whom the world-child sat bodkin in that memorable post-chaise journey of which Goethe has left us an account. The principles of the teaching given in this establishment were very much those of Comenius, the com bination of words and things. An amusing account of the in struction given in this school, which at this time consisted of only thirteen pupils, has come down to us, a translation of which is given in the excellent work of Mr Quick on educational reformers. The little ones have gone through the oddest performances. They play at &quot; word of command.&quot; Eight or ten stand in a line like soldiers, and Herr Wolke is officer. He gives the word in Latin, and they must do whatever he says. For instance when he says &quot; claudiiis oculos,&quot; they all shut their eyes ; when he says &quot; circurnspicite,&quot; they look about them; &quot; imitamini sutorem,&quot; they draw the waxed thread like cobblers. Herr Wolke gives a thousand different commands in the drollest fashion. Another game, &quot; the hiding game,&quot; may also be described. Some one writes a name and hides it from the children, the name of some part of the body, or of a plant or animal, or metal, and the children guess what it is. Whoever guesses right gets an apple or a piece of cake; one of the visitors wrote &quot;intesttna,&quot; and told the children it was part of the body. Then the guessing began, one guessed caput, another nasus, another os, another manus, pes, digiti, pectus, and so forth for a long time, but one of them hits it at last. Next Herr Wolke wrote the name of a beast or quadruped, then came the guesses, leo, ursus, camelus, elephas, and so on, till one guessed right it was urns. Then a town was written, and they guessed Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, London, till a child won with St Petersburg. They had another game which was this. Herr Wolke gave the command in Latin, and they imitated the noises of different animals, and made the visitors laugh till they were tired. They roared like lions, crowed like cocks, mewed like cats, just as they were bid. Yet Kant found a great deal to praise in this school, and spoke of its influence as one of the best hopes of the future, and as &quot; the only school where the teachers had liberty to act according to their own methods and schemes, and where they were in free communication both among themselves and with all learned men throughout Germany.&quot; A more successful labourer in the same school was Salzmau Salzmann, who bought the property of Schnepfenthal near Gotha in 1784, and established a school there, which still exists as a flourishing institution. He gave full scope tc