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Rethinking Life at the Margins The Assemblage of
Contexts Subjects and Politics Michele Lancione Digital
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Author(s): Michele Lancione
ISBN(s): 9781472465757, 147246575X
Edition: New
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Year: 2016
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 XIV.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU.
(1712-1778).

§ 1. The great men whom we meet with in the history of

education may be divided into two classes, thinkers and doers.
There would seem no good reason why the thinker should not be
great as a doer or the doer as a thinker; and yet we hardly find any
records of men who have been successful both in investigating
theory and directing practice. History tells us of first-rate practical
schoolmasters like Sturm and the Jesuits; but they did not think out
their own theory of their task: they accepted the current theory of
their time. On the other hand, men who like Montaigne and Locke
rejected the current theory and sought to establish a better by an
appeal to reason were not practical schoolmasters. Whenever the
thinker tries to turn his thought into action he has cause to be
disappointed with the result. We saw this in the disastrous failure of
Ratke; and even the books in which Comenius tried to work out his
principles, the Vestibulum, Janua and the rest, with the exception of
the Orbis Pictus, were speedily forgotten. In the world of education
as elsewhere it takes time to find for great thoughts the practice
which gives effect to them. The course of great thoughts is in some
ways like the course of great rivers. Most romantic and beautiful
near their source, they are not most useful. They must leave the
mountains in which they first appeared, and must flow not in
cataracts but smoothly along the plain among the dwellings of
common men before they can be turned to account in the every-day
business of life.
§ 2. The eighteenth century was soon distinguished by boundless
activity of thought; and this thought was directed mainly to a great
work of destruction. Europe had outgrown the ideas of the Middle
Age, and the framework of Society, which the Middle Age had
bequeathed, had waxed old and was ready to vanish as soon as any
strong force could be found to push it out of the way. As Matthew
Arnold has described it—

“It’s frame yet stood without a breach

“When blood and warmth were fled;
“And still it spake it’s wonted speech—
“But every word was dead.”

Here then there was need of some destructive power that should
remove and burn up much that had become mere obstacle and
incumbrance. This power was found in the writings which appeared
in France about the middle of the century; and among the authors of
them none spoke with more effect than one who differed from all
the rest, a vagabond without family ties or social position of any
kind, with no literary training, with little knowledge and in conduct at
least, with no morals. The writings of Rousseau and the results
produced by them are among the strangest things in history; and
especially in matters of education it is more than doubtful if the wise
man of the world Montaigne, the Christian philanthropist Comenius,
or that “slave of truth and reason” the philosopher Locke, had half
as much influence as this depraved serving man.
§ 3. The work by which Rousseau became famous was a prize
essay in which he maintained that civilization, the arts and all human
institutions were from first to last pernicious in their effects, and that
no happiness was possible for the human race without giving them
all up and returning to what he called the state of Nature. He
glorified the “noble savage.” If man had brought himself to a state of
misery bordering on despair by following his own many inventions,
take away all these inventions and you will have man in his proper
condition. The argument seems something of this kind: Man was
once happy: Man is now miserable: undo everything that has been
done and Man will be happy again.
 § 4. This principle of a so-called “natural” state existing before
man’s many inventions, Rousseau applied boldly to education, and
he deduced this general rule: “Do precisely the opposite to what is
usually done, and you will have hit on the right plan.” Not reform but
revolution was his advice. He took the ordinary school teaching and
held it up to ridicule, and certainly he did prove its absurdity. And a
most valuable service he thus rendered to teachers. Every
employment while it makes us see some things clearly, also provides
us with blinkers, so to speak, which prevent our seeing other things
at all. The school teacher’s blinkers often prevent his seeing much
that is plain enough to other people; and when a writer like
Rousseau takes off our blinkers for us and makes us look about us,
he does us a great deal of good. But we need more than this: if we
have children entrusted to us we must do something with them, and
Rousseau’s rule of doing the opposite to what is usual will not be
found universally applicable. So we consult Rousseau again, and
what is his advice?
§ 5. Rousseau would bring everything back to the “natural” state,
and unfortunately he never pauses to settle whether he means by
this a state of ideal perfection, or of simply savagery. The savage, he
says, gets his education without any one’s troubling about it, and so
he infers that all the trouble taken by the civilized is worse than
thrown away. (Girardin’s Rousseau, ij., 85.) But he does not fall back
on laisser faire. He urges on parents the duty of themselves
attending to the bringing up of their children. “Point de mère, point
d’enfant—no mother, no child,” says he; and he would have the
father see to the training of the child whom the mother has suckled.
§ 6. Rousseau’s picture of family life is given us where few
Englishmen are likely to find it, enveloped in the Nouvelle Héloïse.
Here we read how Julie always has her children with her, and while
seeming to let them do as they like, conceals with the air of
apparent carelessness the most vigilant observation. Possessed by
the notion that there can be no intellectual education before the age
of reason, she proclaims: “La fonction dont je suis chargée n’est pas
d’élever mes fils, mais de les préparer pour être élevés: My business
is not to educate my sons, but to prepare them for being educated.”
(N. Héloïse, 5th P., Lett. 3.)[120]
§ 7. There is much that is very pleasing in this picture of ideal
family life; but when Rousseau comes formally to propound his ideas
on education, he gives up family life to attain greater simplicity. “Je
m’en tiens à ce qui est plus simple,” says he: “What I stick to is the
more simple.” He tries to state everything in its lowest terms, so to
speak; and this method is excellent so long as he puts on one side
only what is accidental, and retains all the essentials of the problem.
But his rage for simplicity sometimes carried him beyond this. There
is an old Cambridge story of a problem introducing an elephant
“whose weight may be neglected.” This is after the manner of
Rousseau. In the bringing up of the model child, he “neglects”
parents, brothers and sisters, young companions; and though he
says that the needful qualities of a master may be expected only in
“un homme de génie,” he hands over Émile to a governor to live an
isolated life in the country.
§ 8. This governor is to devote himself, for some years, entirely to
imparting to his pupil these difficult arts—the art of being ignorant
and of losing time. Till he is twelve years old, Émile is to have no
direct instruction whatever. “At that age he shall not know what a
book is,” says Rousseau; though elsewhere we are told that he will
learn to read of his own accord by the time he is ten, if no attempt is
made to teach him. He is to be under no restraint, and is to do
nothing but what he sees to be useful.
§ 9. Freedom from restraint is, however, to be apparent, not real.
As in ordinary education the child employs all its faculties in duping
the master, so in education “according to Nature” the master is to
devote himself to duping the child. “Let him always be his own
master in appearance, and do you take care to be so in reality. There
is no subjection so complete as that which preserves the appearance
of liberty; it is by this means even the will is led captive.”
§ 10. “The most critical interval of human nature is that between
the hour of our birth and twelve years of age. This is the time
wherein vice and error take root without our being possessed of any
instrument to destroy them.” (Ém. ij., 79.) Throughout this season,
the governor is to be at work training the pupil in the art of being
ignorant and losing time. “The first education should be purely
negative. It consists by no means in teaching virtue or truth, but in
securing the heart from vice and the intellect from error. If you could
do nothing and let nothing be done, if you could bring on your pupil
healthy and strong to the age of 12 without his being able to tell his
right hand from his left, from your very first lessons the eyes of his
understanding would open to reason. Being without prejudices and
without habits he would have nothing in him to thwart the effect of
your care; and by beginning with doing nothing you would have
made an educational prodigy.”[121]
“Exercise his body, his organs, his senses, his powers; but keep
his mind passive as long as possible. Mistrust all his sentiments
formed before the judgment which determines their value. Restrain,
avoid all foreign impressions, and to prevent the birth of evil be in
no hurry to cause good; for good is good only in the light of reason.
Look on all delays as so many advantages: it is a great gain to
advance towards the goal without loss: let childhood ripen in
children. In short, whatever lesson they may need, be sure not to
give it them to-day if you can safely put it off till to-morrow.”[122]
“Do not, then, alarm yourself much about this apparent idleness.
What would you say of the man, who, in order to make the most of
life, should determine never to go to sleep? You would say, The man
is mad: he is not enjoying the time; he is depriving himself of it: to
avoid sleep he is hurrying towards death. Consider, then, that it is
the same here, and that childhood is the sleep of reason.”[123]
§ 11. We have now reached the climax (or shall we say the
nadir?) in negation. Rousseau has given the coup de grâce to the
ideal of the Renascence. Comenius was the first to take a
comprehensive view of the educator’s task and to connect it with
man’s nature and destiny; but he could not get clear from an over-
estimate of the importance of knowledge. According to his ideal,
man should know all things; so in practice he thought too much of
imparting knowledge. Then came Locke and treated the imparting of
knowledge as of trifling importance when compared with the
formation of character; but he too in practice hardly went so far as
this principle might have led him. He was much under the influence
of social distinctions, and could not help thinking of what it was
necessary for a gentleman to know. So that Rousseau was the very
first to shake himself entirely free from the notion which the
Renascence had handed down that man was mainly a learning
animal. Rousseau has the courage to deny this in the most emphatic
manner possible, and to say: “For the first 12 years the educator
must teach the child nothing.”
§ 12. In this reaction against the Renascence Rousseau puts the
truth in the form of such a violent paradox that we start back in
terror. But it was perhaps necessary thus to sweep away the
ordinary schoolroom rubbish before the true nature of the educator’s
task could be fairly considered. The rubbish having been cleared
away what was to take its place? No longer having his mind
engrossed by the knowledge he wished to communicate, the
educator had now an eye for something else not less worthy of his
attention, viz., the child itself. Rousseau was the first to base
education entirely on a study of the child to be educated; and by
doing this he became, as I believe, one of the greatest of
educational Reformers.
§ 13. It was, however, purely as a thinker, or rather as a voice
giving expression to the general discontent that Rousseau became
such a tremendous force in Europe. He has indeed often been called
the father of the first French Revolution which he did not live to see.
But, as Macaulay has well said, a good deal besides eloquent writing
is needed to cause such a convulsion; and we can no more attribute
the French Revolution to the writings of Rousseau than we can
attribute the shock of an explosion of gunpowder to the lucifer
match without which it might never have happened (v. Macaulay’s
Barrère). Rousseau did in the world of ideas what the French
Revolutionists afterwards did in the world of politics; he made a
clean sweep and endeavoured to start afresh.
§ 14. I have already said that as regards education I think his
labours in destruction were of very great value. But what shall we
say of his efforts at construction? There would not be the least
difficulty in showing that most of his proposals are impracticable. It
is no more “natural” to treat as a typical case a child brought up in
solitude than it would be to write a treatise on the rearing of a bee
cut off from the hive.[124] Rousseau requires impossibilities, e.g., he
postulates that the child is never to be brought into contact with
anyone who might set a bad example. Modern science has shown us
that the young are liable to take diseases from impurities in the air
they breathe: but as yet no one has proposed that all children
should be kept at an elevation of 5,000 feet above the level of the
sea. Yet the advice would be about as practicable as the advice of
Rousseau. A method which always starts with paradox and not
infrequently ends with platitude might seem to have little in its
favour; and Rousseau has had far less influence since (in the words
of Herman Merivale) “he was dethroned with the fall of his
extravagant child, the [First] Republic.” No doubt the great exponent
of English opinion was right in calling Rousseau “the most un-English
stranger who ever landed on our shores” (Times, 29 Aug., 1873);
and the torch of his eloquence will never cause a conflagration, still
less an explosion, here. His disregard for “appearances”—or rather
his evident purpose of making an impression by defying
“appearances” and saying just the opposite of what is expected, is
simply distressing to us. But there is no denying Rousseau’s genius.
His was one of the original voices that go on sounding and
awakening echoes in all lands. Willingly or unwillingly, at first hand
or from imperfect echoes, everyone who studies education must
study Rousseau.
§ 15. As specimens of Rousseau’s teaching I will give a few
characteristic passages from the Émile.
 “Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Creator:
everything degenerates in the hands of man.”[125] These are the
first words of the “Émile,” and the key-note of Rousseau’s
philosophy.
§ 16. “We are born weak, we have need of strength; we are born
destitute of everything, we have need of assistance; we are born
stupid, we have need of understanding. All that we have not at our
birth, and which we require when grown up, is bestowed on us by
education. This education we receive from nature, from men, or
from things. The internal development of our organs and faculties is
the education of nature: the use we are taught to make of that
development is the education given us by men; and in the
acquisitions made by our own experience on the objects that
surround us, consists our education from things.”[126] “Since the
concurrence of these three kinds of education is necessary to their
perfection, it is by that one which is entirely independent of us, we
must regulate the two others.”[127]
§ 17. Now “to live is not merely to breathe; it is to act, it is to
make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, and of all those
parts of ourselves which give us the feeling of our existence. The
man who has lived most, is not he who has counted the greatest
number of years, but he who has most thoroughly felt life.”[128]
§ 18. The aim of education, then, must be complete living.
But ordinary education, instead of seeking to develop the life of
the child, sacrifices childhood to the acquirement of knowledge, or
rather the semblance of knowledge, which it is thought will prove
useful to the youth or the man. Rousseau’s great merit lies in his
having exposed this fundamental error. He says, very truly, “We do
not understand childhood, and pursuing false ideas of it our every
step takes us further astray. The wisest among us fix upon what it
concerns men to know without ever considering what children are
capable of learning. They always expect to find the man in the child
without thinking of what the child is before it is a man. And this is
the study to which I have especially devoted myself, in order that
should my entire method be false and visionary, my observations
might always turn to account. I may not have seen aright what
ought to be done: but I believe I have seen aright the subject on
which we have to act. Begin then by studying your pupils better, for
most certainly you do not understand them.”[129] “Nature wills that
children should be children before they are men. If we seek to
pervert this order we shall produce forward fruits without ripeness or
flavour, and tho’ not ripe, soon rotten: we shall have young savans
and old children. Childhood has ways of seeing, thinking, feeling
peculiar to itself; nothing is more absurd than to wish to substitute
ours in their place.”[130] “We never know how to put ourselves in the
place of children; we do not enter into their ideas, we attribute to
them our own; and following always our own train of thought, even
with syllogisms we manage to fill their heads with nothing but
extravagance and error.”[131] “I wish some discreet person would
give us a treatise on the art of observing children—an art which
would be of immense value to us, but of which fathers and
schoolmasters have not as yet learnt the very first rudiments.”[132]
§ 19. In these passages, Rousseau strikes the key-note of true
education. The first thing necessary for us is to see aright the
subject on which we have to act. Unfortunately, however, this
subject has often been the subject most neglected in the
schoolroom. Children have been treated as if they were made for
their school books, not their school books for them. As education
has been thought of as learning, childhood has been treated as
unimportant, a necessary stage in existence no doubt, but far more
troublesome and hardly more interesting than the state of the
chrysalis. If some forms of words, tables, declensions, county towns,
and the like can be drummed into children, this is, say educators of
the old school, a clear gain. For the rest nothing can be done with
them except teaching them to read, write, and say the multiplication
table.

É
 But since the publication of the Émile, there has been in the world
a very different view of education. According to this view, the
importance of childhood is not to be measured by the amount of our
knowledge, or even the number of our words, we can force it to
remember. According to this view, in dealing with children we must
not think of our knowledge or of our notions at all. We must think
not of our own minds, but of the minds of the little ones.[133]
§ 20. The absurd results in which the opposite course has ended,
Rousseau exposes with great severity. “All the studies demanded
from the poor unfortunates lead to such things as are entirely
beyond the range of their ideas, so you may judge what amount of
attention they can give to them. Schoolmasters who make a great
display of the instruction they give their pupils are paid to differ from
me; but we see from what they do that they are entirely of my
opinion. For what do they really teach? Words, words, for ever
words. Among the various knowledges which they boast of giving,
they are careful not to include such as would be of use; because
these would involve a knowledge of things, and there they would be
sure to fail; but they choose subjects that seem to be known when
the terms are known such as heraldry, geography, chronology,
languages and the like; all of them studies so foreign to a man, and
still more to a child, that it is a great chance if anything of the whole
lot ever proves useful to him on a single occasion in his whole
life.”[134] “Whatever the study may be, without the idea of the things
represented the signs representing them go for nothing. And yet the
child is always kept to these signs without our being able to make
him comprehend any of the things they represent.”[135] What does a
child understand by “the globe”? An old geography book says
candidly, that it is a round thing made of plaster; and this is the only
notion children have of it. What a fearful waste, and worse than
waste, it is to make them learn the signs without the things, when if
they ever learn the things, they must at the same time acquire the
signs! (Conf. Ruskin supra p. 159, note.) “No! if Nature gives to the
child’s brain this pliability which makes it capable of receiving
impressions of every kind, this is not that we may engrave on it the
names of kings, dates, the technical words of heraldry, of astronomy,
of geography, and all those words meaningless at his age and
useless at any age, with which we oppress his sad and sterile
childhood; but that all the ideas which he can conceive and which
are useful to him, all those which relate to his happiness and will one
day make his duty plain to him, may trace themselves there in
characters never to be effaced, and may assist him in conducting
himself through life in a manner appropriate to his nature and his
faculties.”[136]
§ 21. With Rousseau, as afterwards with Froebel, education was a
kind of “child-gardening.” “Plants are developed by cultivation,” says
he, “men by education: On façonne les plantes par la culture, et les
hommes par l’éducation” (Ém. j., 6). The governor, who is the child-
gardener, is to aim at three things: first, he is to shield the child from
all corrupting influences; second, he is to devote himself to
developing in the child a healthy and strong body in which the
senses are to be rendered acute by exercise; third, he is, by practice
not precept, to cultivate the child’s sense of duty.
§ 22. In his study of children Rousseau fixed on their never-resting
activity. “The failing energy concentrates itself in the heart of the old
man; in the heart of the child energy is overflowing and spreads
outwards; he feels in him life enough to animate all his
surroundings. Whether he makes or mars it is all one to him: it is
enough that he has changed the state of things, and every change is
an action. If he seems by preference to destroy, this is not from
mischief; but the act of construction is always slow, and the act of
destruction being quicker is more suited to his vivacity.”[137]
One of the first requisites in the care of the young is then to
provide for the expansion of their activity. All restraints such as
swaddling clothes for infants and “school” and “lessons” for children
are to be entirely done away with.[138] Literary instruction must not
be thought of. “There must be no other book than the world,” says
Rousseau, “no other instruction than facts. The child who reads does
not think, he does nothing but read, he gets no instruction; he
learns words: Point d’autre livre que le monde, point d’autre
instruction que les faits. L’enfant qui lit ne pense pas, il ne fait que
lire; il ne s’instruit pas, il apprend les mots.” (Ém. iij., 181.)[139]
§ 23. If it be objected that, according to Rousseau’s plan, there
would be a neglect of memory, he replies: “Without the study of
books the kind of memory that a child should have will not remain
inactive; all he sees, all he hears, strikes him, and he remembers it;
he keeps a record in himself of people’s actions and people’s talk;
and all around him makes the book by which without thinking of it
he is constantly enriching his memory against the time that his
judgment may benefit by it: Sans étudier dans les livres, l’espèce de
mémoire que peut avoir un enfant ne reste pas pour cela oisive; tout
ce qu’il voit, tout ce qu’il entend le frappe, et il s’en souvient; il tient
registre en lui-même des actions, des discours des hommes; et tout
ce qui l’environne est le livre, dans lequel, sans y songer, il enrichit
continuellement sa mémoire, en attendant que son jugement puisse
en profiter.” (Ém. ij., 106.) We should be most careful not to commit
to our memory anything we do not understand, for if we do, we can
never tell what part of our stores really belong to us. (Ém. iij., 236.)
§ 24. On the positive side the most striking part of Rousseau’s
advice relates to the training of the senses. “The first faculties which
become strong in us,” says he, “are our senses. These then are the
first that should be cultivated; they are in fact the only faculties we
forget or at least those which we neglect most completely.” We find
that the young child “wants to touch and handle everything. By no
means check this restlessness; it points to a very necessary
apprenticeship. Thus it is that the child gets to be conscious of the
hotness or coldness, the hardness or softness, the heaviness or
lightness of bodies, to judge of their size and shape and all their
sensible properties by looking, feeling, listening, especially by
comparing sight and touch, and combining the sensations of the eye
with those of the fingers.”[140] “See a cat enter a room for the first
time; she examines round and stares and sniffs about without a
moment’s rest, she is satisfied with nothing before she has tried it
and made it out. This is just what a child does when he begins to
walk, and enters, so to say, the chamber of the world. The only
difference is that to the sight which is common to the child and the
cat the first joins in his observations the hands which nature has
given him, and the other animal that subtle sense of smell which has
been bestowed upon her. It is this tendency, according as it is well
cultivated or the reverse, that makes children either sharp or dull,
active or slow, giddy or thoughtful.
“The first natural movements of the child being then to measure
himself with his surroundings and to test in everything he sees all its
sensible properties which may concern him, his first study is a kind
of experimental physics relating to his own preservation; and from
this we divert him to speculative studies before he feels himself at
home here below. So long as his delicate and flexible organs can
adjust themselves to the bodies on which they ought to act, so long
as his senses as yet uncorrupted are free from illusion, this is the
time to exercise them all in their proper functions; this is the time to
learn to understand the sensuous relations which things have with
us. As everything that enters the mind finds its way through the
senses, the first reason of a human being is a reason of sensations;
this it is which forms the basis of the intellectual reason; our first
masters in philosophy are our feet, our hands, our eyes. Substituting
books for all this is not teaching us to reason, but simply to use the
reason of other people; it teaches us to take a great deal on trust
and never to know anything.
“In order to practise an art we must begin by getting the proper
implements; and that we may have good use of these implements
they must be made strong enough to stand wear and tear. That we
may learn to think we must then exercise our members, our senses,
our organs, as these are the implements of our intelligence; and that
we may make the most of these implements the body which supplies
them must be strong and healthy. We see then that far from man’s
true reason forming itself independently of his body, it is the sound
constitution of the body that makes the operations of the mind easy
and certain.”[141]
§ 25. Rousseau does not confine himself to advising that the
senses should be cultivated; he also gives some hints of the way in
which they should be cultivated, and many modern experiments,
such as “object lessons” and the use of actual weights and
measures, may be directly traced to him. “As soon as a child begins
to distinguish objects, a proper choice should be made in those
which are presented to him.” Elsewhere he says, “To exercise the
senses is not simply to make use of them; it is to learn to judge
aright by means of them; it is to learn, so to say, to perceive; for we
can only touch and see and hear according as we have learnt how.
There is a kind of exercise perfectly natural and mechanical which
serves to make the body strong without giving anything for the
judgment to lay hold of: swimming, running, jumping, whip-top,
stone throwing; all this is capital; but have we nothing but arms and
legs? have we not also eyes and ears? and are these organs not
needed in our use of the others? Do not then merely exercise the
strength but exercise all the senses which direct it; get all you can
out of each of them, and then check the impressions of one by the
impressions of another. Measure, reckon, weigh, compare.”[142]
§ 26. Two subjects there were in which Émile was to receive
instruction, viz.: music and drawing. Rousseau’s advice about
drawing is well worth considering. He says: “Children who are great
imitators all try to draw. I should wish my child to cultivate this art,
not exactly for the art itself, but to make his eye correct and his
hand supple: Les enfants, grands imitateurs, essayent tous de
dessiner: je voudrais que le mien cultivât cet art, non précisément
pour l’art même, mais pour se rendre l’œil juste et la main flexible.”
(Ém. ij., 149). But Émile is to be kept clear of the ordinary drawing-
master who would put him to imitate imitations; and there is a
striking contrast between Rousseau’s suggestions and those of the
authorities at South Kensington. Technical skill he cares for less than
the training of the eye; so Émile is always to draw from the object,
and, says Rousseau, “my intention is not so much that he should get
to imitate the objects, as get to know them: mon intention n’est pas
tant qu’il sache imiter les objets que les connaître.” (Ém. ij., 150).
§ 27. Before we pass the age of twelve years, at which point, as
someone says, Rousseau substitutes another Émile for the one he
has hitherto spoken of, let us look at his proposals for moral training.
Rousseau is right, beyond question, in desiring that children should
be treated as children. But what are children? What can they
understand? What is the world in which they live? Is it the material
world only, or is the moral world also open to them? (Girardin’s R.,
vol. ij., 136). On the subject of morals Rousseau seems to have
admirable instincts,[143] but no principles, and moral as he is “on
instinct,” there is always some confusion in what he Says. At one
time he asserts that “there is only one knowledge to give children,
and that is a knowledge of duty: Il n’y a qu’une science à enseigner
aux enfants: c’est celle des devoirs de l’homme.” (Ém. j., 26).
Elsewhere he says: “To know right from wrong, to be conscious of
the reason of duty is not the business of a child: Connaître le bien et
le mal, sentir la raison des devoirs de l’homme, n’est pas l’affaire
d’un enfant.” (Ém. ij., 75).[144] In another place he mounts his
hobby that “the most sublime virtues are negative” (Ém. ij., 95), and
that about the best man who ever lived (till he found Friday?) was
Robinson Crusoe. The outcome of all Rousseau’s teaching on this
subject seems that we should in every way develop the child’s
animal or physical life, retard his intellectual life, and ignore his life
as a spiritual and moral being.
§ 28. A variety of influences had combined, as they combine still,
to draw attention away from the importance of physical training; and
by placing the child’s bodily organs and senses as the first things to
be thought of in education, Rousseau did much to save us from the
bad tradition of the Renascence. But there were more things in
heaven and earth than were dreamt of in his philosophy, and
whatever Rousseau might say, Émile could never be restrained from
inquiring after them. Every boy will think; i.e., he will think for
himself, however unable he may seem to think in the direction in
which his instructors try to urge him. The wise elders who have
charge of him must take this into account, and must endeavour to
guide him into thinking modestly and thinking right. Then again, as
soon as the child can speak, or before, the world of sensation
becomes for him a world, not of sensations only, but also of
sentiments, of sympathies, of affections, of consciousness of right
and wrong, good and evil. All these feelings, it is true, may be
affected by traditional prejudices. The air the child breathes may
also contain much that is noxious; but we have no more power to
exclude the atmosphere of the moral world than of the physical. All
we can do is to take thought for fresh air in both cases. As for
Rousseau’s notion that we can withdraw the child from the moral
atmosphere, we see in it nothing but a proof how little he
understood the problems he professed to solve.[145]
§ 29. Although the governor is to devote himself to a single child,
Rousseau is careful to protest against over-direction. “You would
stupify the child,” says he, “if you were constantly directing him, if
you were always saying to him, ‘Come here! Go there! Stop! Do this!
Don’t do that!’ If your head always directs his arms, his own head
becomes useless to him.” (Ém., ij., 114). Here we have a warning
which should not be neglected by those who maintain the Lycées in
France, and the ordinary private boarding-schools in England. In
these schools a boy is hardly called upon to exercise his will all day
long. He rises in the morning when he must; at meals he eats till he
is obliged to stop; he is taken out for exercise like a horse; he has all
his indoor work prescribed for him both as to time and quantity. In
this kind of life he never has occasion to think or act for himself. He
is therefore without self-reliance. So much care is taken to prevent
his doing wrong, that he gets to think only of checks from without.
He is therefore incapable of self-restraint. In the English public
schools boys have much less supervision from their elders, and
organise a great portion of their lives for themselves. This proves a
better preparation for life after the school age; and most public
schoolmasters would agree with Rousseau that “the lessons the boys
get from each other in the playground are a hundred times more
useful to them than the lessons given them in school: les leçons que
les écoliers prennent entre eux dans la cour du collège leur sont cent
fois plus utiles que tout ce qu’on leur dira jamais dans la classe.”
(Ém. ij., 123.)
§ 30. On questions put by children, Rousseau says: “The art of
questioning is not so easy as it may be thought; it is rather the art of
the master than of the pupil. We must have learnt a good deal of a
thing to be able to ask what we do not know. The learned know and
inquire, says an Indian proverb, but the ignorant know not what to
inquire about.” And from this he infers that children learn less from
asking than from being asked questions. (N. H., 5th p. 490.)
§ 31. At twelve years old Émile is said to be fit for instruction.
“Now is the time for labour, for instruction, for study; and observe
that it is not I who arbitrarily make this choice; it is pointed out to us
by Nature herself.”
§ 32. What novelties await us here? As we have seen Rousseau
was determined to recommend nothing that would harmonise with
ordinary educational practice; but even a genius, though he may
abandon previous practice, cannot keep clear of previous thought,
and Rousseau’s plan for instruction is obviously connected with the
thoughts of Montaigne and of Locke. But while on the same lines
with these great writers Rousseau goes beyond them and is both
clearer and bolder than they are.
§ 33. Rousseau’s proposals for instruction have the following main
features.
1st. Instruction is to be no longer literary or linguistic. The
teaching about words is to disappear, and the young are not to learn
by books or about books.
2nd. The subjects to be studied are to be mathematics and
physical science.
3rd. The method to be adopted is not the didactic but the method
of self-teaching.
 4th. The hands are to be called into play as a means of learning.
§ 34. 1st. Till quite recently the only learning ever given in schools
was book-learning, a fact to which the language of the people still
bears witness: when a child does not profit by school instruction he
is always said to be “no good at his book.” Now-a-days the tendency
is to change the character of the schools so that they may become
less and less mere “Ludi Literarii.” In this Rousseau seems to have
been a century and more in advance of us; and yet we cannot credit
him with any remarkable wisdom or insight about literature. He
himself used books as a means of “collecting a store of ideas, true or
false, but at any rate clear” (J. Morley’s Rousseau, j. chap. 3, p. 85),
and he has recorded for us his opinion that “the sensible and
interesting conversations of a young woman of merit are more
proper to form a young man than all the pedantical philosophy of
books” (Confessions, quoted by Morley j., 87). After this, whatever
we may think of the merit of his suggestions we can sit at the Sage’s
feet no longer.
§ 35. 2nd. Rousseau had himself little knowledge of mathematics
and natural science, but he was strongly in favour of the “study of
Nature”; and in his last years his devotion to botany became a
passion. His curriculum for Émile is in the air, but the chief thing is to
get him to attend to the phenomena of nature, and “to foster his
curiosity by being in no hurry to satisfy it.”
§ 36. 3rd. About teaching and learning, there is one point on
which we find a consensus of great authorities extending from the
least learned of writers who was probably Rousseau to the most
learned who was probably Friedrich August Wolf. In one form or
other these assert that there is no true teaching but self-teaching.
Past a doubt the besetting weakness of teachers is “telling.” They
can hardly resist the tendency to be didactic. They have the
knowledge which they desire to find in their pupils, and they cannot
help expressing it and endeavouring to pass it on to those who need
it, “like wealthy men who care not how they give.” But true
“teaching,” as Jacotot and his disciple Joseph Payne were never tired
of testifying, is “causing to learn,” and it is seldom that “didactic”
teaching has this effect. Rousseau saw this clearly, and clearly
pointed out the danger of didacticism. As usual he by exaggeration
laid himself open to an answer that seems to refute him, but in spite
of this we feel that there is valuable truth underlying what he says.
“I like not explanations given in long discourses,” says he; “young
people pay little attention to them and retain little from them. The
things themselves! The things themselves! I shall never repeat often
enough that we attach too much importance to words: with our
chattering education we make nothing but chatterers.”[146]
Accordingly Rousseau lays down the rule that Émile is not to learn
science but to invent it (qu’il n’apprenne pas la science; qu’il
l’invente); and he even expects him to invent geometry. As Émile is
not supposed to be a young Pascal but only an ordinary boy with
extraordinary physical development such a requirement is obviously
absurd, and Herbart has reckoned it among Rousseau’s Hauptfehler
(Päd. Schriften, ij., 242). The training prescribed is in fact the
training of the intellectual athlete; and the trainer may put the body
through its exercises much more easily than the mind. Of this the
practical teacher is only too conscious, and he will accept Rousseau’s
advice, if at all, only as “counsels of perfection.” Rousseau says:
“Émile, obliged to learn of himself, makes use of his own reason and
not that of others; for to give no weight to opinion, none must be
given to authority; and the more part of our mistakes come less
from ourselves than from other people. From this constant exercise
there should result a vigour of mind like that which the body gets
from labour and fatigue. Another advantage is that we advance only
in proportion to our strength. The mind like the body carries that
only which it can carry. When the understanding makes things its
own before they are committed to memory, whatever it afterwards
draws forth belongs to it; but if the memory is burdened with what
the understanding knows nothing about we are in danger of bringing
from it things which the understanding declines to
acknowledge.”[147] Again he writes: “Beyond contradiction we get
much more clear and certain notions of the things we learn thus of
ourselves than of those we derive from other people’s instruction,
and besides not accustoming our reason to bow as a slave before
authority, we become more ingenious in finding connexions, in
uniting ideas, and in inventing our implements, than when we take
all that is given us and let our minds sink into indifference, like the
body of a man who always has his clothes put on for him, is waited
on by his servants and drawn about by his horses till at length he
loses the strength and use of his limbs. Boileau boasted of having
taught Racine to find difficulty in rhyming. Among all the admirable
methods of shortening the study of the sciences we might have
need that some one should give us a way of learning them with
effort.”[148]
§ 37. 4th. However highly we may value our gains from the use of
books we must admit that in some ways the use of books tends to
the neglect of powers that should not be neglected. As Rousseau
wished to see the young brought up without books he naturally
looked to other means of learning, especially to learning by the eye
and by the hand. Much is now said about using the hand for
education, and many will agree with Rousseau: “If instead of making
a child stick to his books I employ him in a workshop, his hands
work to the advantage of his intellect: he becomes a philosopher
while he thinks he is becoming simply an artisan: Au lieu de coller un
enfant sur des livres, si je l’occupe dans un atelier, ses mains
travaillent au profit de son esprit: il devient philosophe, et croît
n’être qu’un ouvrier.” (Ém. iij., 193).
§ 38. In these essays I have done what I could to shew the best
that each reformer has left us. In Rousseau’s case I have been
obliged to confine myself to his words. “We attach far too much
importance to words,” said Rousseau, and yet it is by words and
words only that Rousseau still lives; and for the sake of his words we
forget his deeds. Of the Émile Mr. Morley says: “It is one of the
seminal books in the history of literature. It cleared away the
accumulation of clogging prejudices and obscure inveterate usage
which made education one of the dark formalistic arts; and it
admitted floods of light and air into tightly-closed nurseries and
schoolrooms” (Rousseau, ij., 248). In the region of thought it set us
free from the Renascence; and it did more than this, it announced
the true nature of the teacher’s calling, “Study the subject you have
to act upon.” In these words we have the starting point of the “New
Education.” From them the educator gets a fresh conception of his
task. We grown people have received innumerable impressions
which, forgotten as they are, have left their mark behind in our way
of looking at things; and as we advance in life these experiences and
associations cluster around everything to which we direct our
attention, till in the end the past seems to dominate the present and
to us “nothing is but what is not.” But to the child the present with
its revelations and the future which will be “something more, a
bringer of new things,” are all engrossing. It is our business as
teachers to try to realize how the world looks from the child’s point
of view. We may know a great many things and be ready to teach
them, but we shall have little success unless we get another
knowledge which we cannot teach and can learn only by patient
observation, a knowledge of “the subject to be acted on,” of the
mind of our pupils and what goes on there. When we set out on this
path, which was first clearly pointed out by Rousseau, teaching
becomes a new occupation with boundless possibilities and
unceasing interest in it. Every teacher becomes a learner, for we
have to study the minds of the young, their way of looking at things,
their habits, their difficulties, their likes and dislikes, how they are
stimulated to exertion, how they are discouraged, how one mood
succeeds another. What we need we may well devote a lifetime to
acquiring; it is a knowledge of the human mind with the object of
influencing it.
 XV.
BASEDOW AND THE PHILANTHROPINUM.

§ 1. One of the most famous movements ever made in

educational reform was started in the last century by John Bernard
Basedow. Basedow was born at Hamburg in 1723, the son of a
wigmaker. His early years were not spent in the ordinary happiness
of childhood. His mother he describes as melancholy, almost to
madness, and his father was severe almost to brutality. It was the
father’s intention to bring up his son to his own business, but the lad
ran away, and engaged himself as servant to a gentleman in
Holstein. The master soon perceived what had never occurred to the
father, viz., that the youth had very extraordinary abilities. Sent
home with a letter from his master pointing out this notable
discovery, Basedow was allowed to renounce the paternal calling,
and to go to the Hamburg Grammar School (Gymnasium), where he
was under Reimarus, the author of the “Wolfenbüttel Fragment.” In
due course his friends managed to send him to the University of
Leipzig to prepare himself for the least expensive of the learned
professions—the clerical. Basedow, however, was not a man to
follow the beaten tracks. After an irregular life he left the university
too unorthodox to think of being ordained, and in 1749 became
private tutor to the children of Herr von Quaalen in Holstein. In this
situation his talent for inventing new methods of teaching first
showed itself. He knew how to adapt himself to the capacity of the
children, and he taught them much by conversation, and in the way
of play, connecting his instruction with surrounding objects in the
house, garden, and fields. Through Quaalen’s influence, he next
obtained a professorship at Soroe, in Denmark, where he lectured
for eight years, but his unorthodox writings raised a storm of
opposition, and the Government finally removed him to the
Gymnasium at Altona. Here he still continued his efforts to change
the prevailing opinions in religious matters; and so great a stir was
made by the publication of his “Philalethia,” and his “Methodical
Instruction in both Natural and Biblical Religion,” that he and his
family were refused the Communion at Altona, and his books were
excluded, under a heavy penalty, from Lübeck.
§ 2. About this time Basedow, incited by Rousseau’s “Emile,”
turned his attention to a fresh field of activity, in which he was to
make as many friends as in theology he had found enemies. A very
general dissatisfaction was then felt with the condition of the
schools. Physical education was not attempted in them. The mother-
tongue was neglected. Instruction in Latin and Greek, which was the
only instruction given, was carried on in a mechanical way, without
any thought of improvement. The education of the poor and of the
middle classes received but little attention. “Youth,” says Raumer,
“was in those days, for most children, a sadly harassed period.
Instruction was hard and heartlessly severe. Grammar was caned
into the memory, so were portions of Scripture and poetry. A
common school punishment was to learn by heart Psalm cxix.
School-rooms were dismally dark. No one conceived it possible that
the young could find pleasure in any kind of work, or that they had
eyes for aught besides reading and writing. The pernicious age of
Louis XIV. had inflicted on the poor children of the upper class, hair
curled by the barber and messed with powder and pomade, braided
coats, knee breeches, silk stockings, and a dagger by the side—for
active, lively children a perfect torture” (Gesch. d. Pädagogik, ii.
297). Kant gave expression to a very wide-spread feeling when he
said that what was wanted in education was no longer a reform but
a revolution. Here, then, was a good scope offered for innovators,
and Basedow was a prince of innovators.
§ 3. Having succeeded in interesting the Danish minister,
Bernstorff, in his plans, he was permitted to devote himself entirely
to a work on the subject of education whilst retaining his income
from the Altona Gymnasium. The result was his “Address to
Philanthropists and Men of Property on Schools and Studies and
their Influence on the Public Weal” (1766), in which he announces
the plan of his “Elementary.”[149] In this address he calls upon
princes, governments, town-councils, dignitaries of the Church,
freemasons’ lodges, &c., &c., if they loved their fellow-creatures, to
come to his assistance in bringing out his book. Nor did he call in
vain. When the “Elementary” at length appeared (in 1774), he had
to acknowledge contributions from the Emperor Joseph II., from
Catherine II. of Russia, from Christian VII. of Denmark, from the
Grand Prince Paul, and many other celebrities, the total sum
received being over 2,000l.
§ 4. While Basedow was travelling about (in 1774) to get
subscriptions, he spent some time in Frankfurt, and thence made an
excursion to Ems with two distinguished companions, one of them
Lavater, and the other a young man of five-and-twenty, already
celebrated as the author of “Götz von Berlichingen,” and the
“Sorrows of Werther.” Of Basedow’s personal peculiarities at this time
Goethe has left us an amusing description in the “Wahrheit und
Dichtung;” but we must accept the portrait with caution: the sketch
was thrown in as an artistic contrast with that of Lavater, and no
doubt exaggerates those features in which the antithesis could be
brought out with best effect.
“One could not see,” writes Goethe, “a more marked contrast than
between Lavater and Basedow. As the lines of Lavater’s countenance
were free and open to the beholder, so were Basedow’s contracted,
and as it were drawn inwards, Lavater’s eye, clear and benign, under
a very wide eye-lid; Basedow’s, on the other hand, deep in his head,
small, black, sharp, gleaming out from under shaggy eyebrows,
whilst Lavater’s frontal bone seemed bounded by two arches of the
softest brown hair. Basedow’s impetuous rough voice, his rapid and
sharp utterances, a certain derisive laugh, an abrupt changing of the
topic of conversation, and whatever else distinguished him, all were
opposed to the peculiarities and the behaviour by which Lavater had
been making us over-fastidious.”
 § 5. Goethe approved of Basedow’s desire to make all instruction
lively and natural, and thought that his system would promote
mental activity and give the young a fresher view of the world: but
he finds fault with the “Elementary,” and prefers the “Orbis Pictus” of
Comenius, in which subjects are presented in their natural
connection. Basedow himself, says Goethe, was not a man either to
edify or to lead other people. Although the object of his journey was
to interest the public in his philanthropic enterprise, and to open not
only hearts but purses, and he was able to speak eloquently and
convincingly on the subject of education, he spoilt everything by his
tirades against prevalent religious belief, especially on the subject of
the Trinity.
§ 6. Goethe found in Basedow’s society an opportunity of
“exercising, if not enlightening,” his mind, so he bore with his
personal peculiarities, though apparently with great difficulty.
Basedow seems to have delighted in worrying his associates. “He
would never see anyone quiet but he provoked him with mocking
irony, in a hoarse voice, or put him to confusion by an unexpected
question, and laughed bitterly when he had gained his end; yet he
was pleased when the object of his jests was quick enough to collect
himself, and answer in the same strain.” So far Goethe was his
match; but he was nearly routed by Basedow’s use of bad tobacco,
and of some tinder still worse with which he was constantly lighting
his pipe and poisoning the air insufferably. He soon discovered
Goethe’s dislike to this preparation of his, so he took a malicious
pleasure in using it and dilating upon its merits.
§ 7. Here is an odd account of their intercourse. During their stay
at Ems Goethe went a great deal into fashionable society. “To make
up for these dissipations,” he writes, “I always passed a part of the
night with Basedow. He never went to bed, but dictated without
cessation. Occasionally he cast himself on the couch and slumbered,
while his amanuensis sat quietly, pen in hand, ready to continue his
work when the half-awakened author should once more give free
course to his thoughts. All this took place in a close confined
chamber, filled with the fumes of tobacco and the odious tinder. As
often as I was disengaged from a dance I hastened up to Basedow,
who was ready at once to speak and dispute on any question; and
when after a time I hurried again to the ball-room, before I had
closed the door behind me he would resume the thread of his essay
as composedly as if he had been engaged with nothing else.”
§ 8. It was through a friend of Goethe’s, Behrisch, whose
acquaintance we make in the “Wahrheit und Dichtung,” that
Basedow became connected with Prince Leopold of Dessau. Behrisch
was tutor to the Prince’s son, and by him the Prince was so
interested in Basedow’s plans that he determined to found an
Institute in which they should be realised. Basedow was therefore
called to Dessau, and under his direction was opened the famous
Philanthropinum. Then for the first, and probably for the last time, a
school was started in which use and wont were entirely set aside,
and everything done on “improved principles.” Such a bold
enterprise attracted the attention of all interested in education, far
and near: but it would seem that few parents considered their own
children vilia corpora on whom experiments might be made for the
public good. When, in May 1776, a number of schoolmasters and
others collected from different parts of Germany, and even from
beyond Germany, to be present by Basedow’s invitation at an
examination of the children, they found only thirteen pupils in the
Philanthropinum, including Basedow’s own son and daughter.
§ 9. Before we investigate how Basedow’s principles were
embodied in the Philanthropinum, let us see the form in which he
had already announced them. The great work from which all children
were to be taught was the “Elementary.” As a companion to this was
published the “Book of Method” (Methodenbuch) for parents and
teachers. The “Elementary” is a work in which a great deal of
information about things in general is given in the form of dialogue,
interspersed with tales and easy poetry. Except in bulk, it does not
seem to me to differ very materially from many of the reading-
books, which, in late years, have been published in this country. It
had the advantage, however, of being accompanied by a set of
engravings to which the text referred, though they were too large to
be bound up with it. The root-ideas of Basedow put forth in his
“Book of Method,” and other writings, are those of Rousseau. For
example, “You should attend to nature in your children far more than
to art. The elegant manners and usages of the world are for the
most part unnatural (Unnatur). These come of themselves in later
years. Treat children like children, that they may remain the longer
uncorrupted. A boy whose acutest faculties are his senses, and who
has no perception of anything abstract, must first of all be made
acquainted with the world as it presents itself to the senses. Let this
be shown him in nature herself, or where this is impossible, in
faithful drawings or models. Thereby can he, even in play, learn how
the various objects are to be named. Comenius alone has pointed
out the right road in this matter. By all means reduce the wretched
exercises of the memory.” Elsewhere he gives instances of the sort
of things to which this method should be applied. 1st. Man. Here he
would use pictures of foreigners and wild men, also a skeleton, a
hand in spirits, and other objects still more appropriate to a surgical
museum. 2nd. Animals. Only such animals are to be depicted as it is
useful to know about, because there is much that ought to be
known, and a good method of instruction must shorten rather than
increase the hours of study. Articles of commerce made from the
animals may also be exhibited. 3rd. Trees and plants. Only the most
important are to be selected. Of these the seeds also must be
shown, and cubes formed of the different woods. Gardeners’ and
farmers’ implements are to be explained. 4th. Minerals and chemical
substances. 5th. Mathematical instruments for weighing and
measuring; also the air-pump, siphon, and the like. The form and
motion of the earth are to be explained with globes and maps. 6th.
Trades. The use of various tools is to be taught. 7th. History. This is
to be illustrated by engravings of historical events. 8th. Commerce.
Samples of commodities may be produced. 9th. The younger
children should be shown pictures of familiar objects about the
house and its surroundings.
§ 10. We see from this list that Basedow contemplated giving his
educational course the charm of variety. Indeed, with that candour
in acknowledging mistakes which partly makes amends for the
effrontery too common in the trumpetings of his own performances,
past, present, and to come, he confesses that when he began the
“Elementary” he had exaggerated notions of the amount boys were
capable of learning, and that he had subsequently very much
contracted his proposed curriculum. And even “the Revolution,”
which was to introduce so much new learning into the schools, could
not afford entirely to neglect the old. However pleased parents
might be with the novel acquirements of their children, they were
not likely to be satisfied without the usual knowledge of Latin, and
still less would they tolerate the neglect of French, which in German
polite society of the eighteenth century was the recognised
substitute for the vulgar tongue. These, then, must be taught. But
the old methods might be abandoned, if not the old subjects.
Basedow proposed to teach both French and Latin by conversation.
Let a cabinet of models, or something of the kind, be shown the
children; let them learn the names of the different objects in Latin or
French; then let questions be asked in those languages, and the
right answers at first put into the children’s mouths. When they have
in this way acquired some knowledge of the language, they may
apply it to the translating of an easy book. Basedow does not claim
originality for the conversational method. He appeals to the success
with which it had been already used in teaching French. “Are the
French governesses,” he asks, “who, without vocabularies and
grammars, first by conversation, then by reading, teach their
language very successfully and very rapidly in schools of from thirty
to forty children, better teachers than most masters in our Latin
schools?”
§ 11. On the subject of religion the instruction was to be quite as
original as in matters of less importance. The teachers were to give
an impartial account of all religions, and nothing but “natural
religion” was to be inculcated.
§ 12. The key-note of the whole system was to be—everything
according to nature. The natural desires and inclinations of the
children were to be educated and directed aright, but in no case to
be suppressed.
§ 13. These, then, were the principles and the methods which, as
Basedow believed, were to revolutionise education through the
success of the Philanthropinum. Basedow himself, as we might infer
from Goethe’s description of him, was by no means a model director
for the model Institution, but he was fortunate in his assistants. Of
these he had three at the time of the public examination, of whom
Wolke is said to have been the ablest.
§ 14. A lively description of the examination was afterwards
published by Herr Schummel of Magdeburg, under the title of “Fred’s
Journey to Dessau.” It purports to be written by a boy of twelve
years old, and to describe what took place without attempting
criticism. A few extracts will give us a notion of the instruction
carried on in the Philanthropin.
“I have just come from a visit with my father to the
Philanthropinum, where I saw Herr Basedow, Herr Wolke, Herr
Simon, Herr Schweighäuser, and the little Philanthropinists. I am
delighted with all that I have seen, and hardly know where to begin
my description of it. There are two large white houses, and near
them a field with trees. A pupil—not one of the regular scholars, but
of those they call Famulants (a poorer class, who were servitors)—
received us at the door, and asked if we wished to see Herr
Basedow. We said ‘Yes,’ and he took us into the other house, where
we found Herr Basedow in a dressing-gown, writing at a desk. We
came at an inconvenient time, and Herr Basedow said he was very
busy. He was very friendly, however, and promised to visit us in the
evening. We then went into the other house, and enquired for Herr
Wolke.” By him they were taken to the scholars. “They have,” says
Fred, “their hair cut very short, and no wig-maker is employed. Their
throats are quite open, and their shirt-collars fall back over their
coats.” Further on he describes the examination. “The little ones
have gone through the oddest performances. They play at ‘word of
command.’ 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 Claudite oculos, they all shut their
eyes; when he says Circumspicite, they look about them; Imitamini
sartorem, they all sew like tailors; Imitamini sutorem, they draw the
waxed thread like the cobblers. Herr Wolke gives a thousand
different commands in the drollest fashion. Another game, ‘the
hiding game,’ I will also teach you. 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 Intestina, and told the children it was a 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 hit it at last. Next Herr Wolke wrote the
name of a beast, a quadruped. Then came the guesses: leo, ursus,
camelus, elephas, and so on, till one guessed right—it was mus.
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 us laugh till we
were tired. They roared like lions, crowed like cocks, mewed like
cats, just as they were bid.”
§ 15. The subject that was next handled had also the effect of
making the strangers laugh, till a severe reproof from Herr Wolke
restored their gravity. A picture was brought, in which was
represented a sad-looking woman, whose person indicated the
approaching arrival of another subject for education. From one part
of the picture it also appeared that the prospective mother, with a
prodigality of forethought, had got ready clothing for both a boy and
a girl. After a warning from Herr Wolke, that this was a most serious
and important subject, the children were questioned on the topics
the picture suggested. They were further taught the debt of
gratitude they owed to their mothers, and the German fiction about
the stork was dismissed with due contempt.
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