when architects and building committees use more courage and ingenuity in the construction of our school buildings, we shall have less difficulty with discipline. In conclusion, then, the moral life of children hinges upon the subtle influences of daily living. The good cheer, the unselfishness, and the general moral tone of the home and the school slowly and certainly build up the moral fiber of childhood. The child's standards of right and wrong are not formed to-morrow, but yesterday and to-day, out of the joys, sorrows, duties, sacrifices, and companionships of daily living. Social contact builds up a sense of honor and a legitimate pride which all the formal ethics in the world cannot instill. PART FOUR THE CONSERVATION OF CHILD LIFE CHAPTER XXII PESTALOZZI AND HOME EDUCATION Following is a passage chosen from Pestalozzi's greatest book, "Leonard and Gertrude." Arner, the magistrate of Bonnal, in company with the Lieutenant, is standing on a high mountain, from which he views his domain. The placid Itte which flowed at their feet was shimmering in the purest silvery light; the sun was sinking, and the liquid mirror of the sinuous stream glittered from the village of Bonnal far out to the end of the blue mountains, which, like a great curtain, shut off Arner's land from the world beyond. For a while Arner contemplated the scene in silence, and then abruptly said, Ah, mankind is so ugly, and no matter what we may do for men we can never bring it to pass that they will ever be beautiful as is this valley'; and the spectacle of the valley in the sunset was indeed a glorious one. But that is not true,' objected the Lieutenant; and as he spoke there appeared, at the base of the rock on which they stood, a shepherd youth driving before him a poor, lean goat. He stopped still at their feet and looked off toward the setting sun, leaned upon his crook, and sang an evening song. He was the very image of beauty, and mountain and valley, the stream and the sunset, vanished before their eyes, for now they saw only this ragged shepherd boy, and Arner said, 'I was wrong. The beauty of man is the highest beauty on earth."" This passage, which is even more beautiful in the original German, transports us into Switzerland, gives us at once a glimpse into the poetic and perhaps somewhat sentimental soul of its author, and strikes the keynote of his character. When Arner says, in the presence of the sunset and the mountains, that there is nothing nobler in this world than man, he is speaking for Pestalozzi, In one of his letters Pestalozzi himself says, "I looked with admiration from the height of Gurnigel upon the immense valley with its mountain border, and yet at that very moment thought more of the badly instructed people it contained than of the beautiful scenery. I could not, nor would I, live without accomplishing my aim.” This is more than mere emotional vaporizing, for the whole life of Pestalozzi bears out his words. He had an enthusiasm for humanity, and he lived out his ideas. He simply could not hold his instinct of brotherhood in check, and herein lies his genius. If genius is insanity, we shall have to express it this way: he was a monomaniac dominated and swayed by one impulse, love for his fellow man; he had one fixed idea, the regeneration of humanity; and if it was a case of delusional insanity, he had one persistent delusion, — a faith in the educability of mankind. Indeed, during his lifetime people more than once doubted his sanity, and predicted that he would end his days in a madhouse. Others who were more charitable explained that he engaged in the menial trade of schoolmaster because he had fallen into poverty. At any rate, before he died, even such conservatives as kings and princes recognized something of the sanity of the great ideas that were announced by this peculiar-looking, peculiar-acting Swiss schoolmaster, with that strange-sounding Italian name, and to-day almost all the world is ready to assent to the epitaph inscribed above his tomb: Here lies Heinrich Pestalozzi Born in Zurich on the 12th of January, 1746 Preacher to the people in "Leonard and Gertrude" Founder of the new elementary school at Burgdorf Educator of humanity in Yverdon Man, Christian, Citizen. Everything for others, nothing for himself. This epitaph recalls the landmarks of a long, active career of eighty-one years. Pestalozzi lived in an age that literally teemed with great men, ideas, and events. In America the struggle for individual freedom was largely political and culminated in a revolutionary war. It expressed itself in the self-evident phrases of Rousseau's philosophy, a philosophy destined to be the mouthpiece of another revolution still more comprehensive. In Germany there was a peculiar little man, about as large as Pestalozzi, by name Immanuel Kant, who shed tears of joy over these two revolutions, the one in Paris, the other across the sea, -and constructed a philosophy which itself was profoundly revolutionary. This philosophy, if it did anything, emphasized the dignity of the individual and the possibilities of his creative self-activity. Fichte, the earliest exponent of Kantianism, and personal friend of Pestalozzi, declared that Kant's philosophy coincided exactly with the fundamental principles laid down in "Leonard and Gertrude." There was much sympathy among the great men of this period of Aufklärung. ९९ But, marked as was the intellectual activity in Germany, the awakening in Switzerland during the last half of the eighteenth century was, if anything, more brilliant. Tremendous powers were concentrated on Swiss soil during that period. Rousseau, a native of Geneva, after his Émile" had been publicly burned by the hangman, fled to the Swiss Alps. Voltaire also found a retreat there. Edward Gibbon completed his great history in Lausanne. Madame de Staël held an intellectual court in a castle on a Swiss lake. Kleist, the Swiss literary scholar, could write, in 1752, “Whereas in great Berlin there are not more than three or four men of taste and genius, in little Zurich there are twenty or thirty"; and Zurich, be it remembered, was Pestalozzi's birthplace and college town. The doctrine of the simple life, and the Wolffian philosophy, which preached a return to nature, were in special favor at Zurich, and found ardent disciples at the university. Breitinger and Bodmer, the advocate of republican liberalism, were two inspiring teachers, and gathered about them groups of eager students, Pestalozzi among others. Sometimes they would all assemble as a revolutionary organization called the Helvetic society. In this feverish, utopian atmosphere Pestalozzi lived out his adolescence. It must have been a congenial atmosphere for his ardent soul. Even as a lad he had shown a precocious reforming instinct. When a mere boy he was impressed by the good deeds of his grandfather, the village pastor, and announced, "When I am big, I am going to be a pastor too, and side with the peasants." And so at the university he studied theology, but fortunately broke down |