Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/231

Rh grass so that you shall think it is grass, and go to put your hand upon it. Here is one who will paint you no grass, but bring a green field with soft breezes playing over it, sweet odors rising from it, life dwelling in it; and this one is the artist. His language is no illustration, no picture, but something far higher, even an actual creation. The fundamental command of Pestalozzi, proceed vision-wise, is susceptible of exaggeration. Too literally obeyed, this command is harmful in all departments of human activity. This thought has wide application. It lies against all exclusively physical training, all training depending solely upon material objects. There is great danger lest such training keep the student from clearness of vision in the eye of the mind. He sees things, but, unless things lead to independent thoughts, they are nothing more than pictures upon the retina of flesh. Our thought is applicable to classical education, in so far a words become the objects and are studied as mere things. Latin and Greek, taught as vital parts of language, are, even in their minutest particles, so many expressions of the mysterious and indestructible power of thought. Pestalozzi's teaching that the clear idea is the result to be secured by education is unquestionably true. Man proceeds from sense-perception to concept when he proceeds normally. The end, however, is often lost sight of in the means; the idea is not realized because the object, the matter, the substance, is too prominent, too permanent, too overbearing.

The writer hopes that not the least result of this historical survey has been to set forth Pestalozzi's fundamental principle as a controlling power in the educational development of the past. Man not only should give law to his education, he has done so. The education of China was the Chinese interpretation of man; the education of India was the Indian interpretation of man; the education of Greece the Grecian interpretation of man; and the new education of to-day is our interpretation of man. Has man's nature been taken at its entirety by any educational scheme of the past? Is man's nature taken at its entirety by the educational system which to-day claims precedence and finality?

We have seen man, the grown man, as a child: this was and is China. We have seen man as member of a caste, belonging body, soul, and estate to his order: this was and is India. We have seen man a Grecian or a Roman, self-conscious as a Grecian or Roman, not self-conscious as man. We have seen man a contra-natural member of a contra-natural church: this was the monk type of the perfect man. We have seen man, not satisfied with such interpretation of his nature, go back to Greece and Rome, finding in Demosthenes and Cicero the ideal being. To-day we see man as the producer, the builder, the one who brings things to pass.

In these "outlines" very much of importance has been omitted. This concluding paper does not make place for the things that were