Pestalozzi: his life and work

Front matter

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Introduction

" I bead your essay on Pestalozzi," said to me one of the three Commissioners who were some twenty years ago empowered to remodel our endowed schools ; "I read your essay on Pestalozzi, whom they are always talking about on the Continent, and I found there was nothing whatever in him." This might have been a very effective sarcasm, but I have reason to think that it was not so intended. It was only an expression of our insular ignorance, and of our inability to measure the effect of ideas. Since then we have seen France prostrate before Germany ; and not a few, both of the Germans and the French, have attributed the German triumph to the influence of Pestalozzi. So perhaps there was something in him after all.

But what was there in these ideas of Pestalozzi which can be supposed to have so profoundly affected the education of the Germans ? Let us go back a little 'pour mieux sauter.

Europe was indebted to the Renascence for the conception of " a learned education." The key to all wisdom seemed to have been found in the classical Languages, and the highest display of the human intellect was seen in imitating the ancient writings. So education was for the few ; the many might do as best they could without it.

xiv INTRODUCTION.

This sixteenth - century devotion to the classical literatures met with many adversaries in the centuries following ; but the notion had got so firmly fixed that education consisted in learning, that the only question it seemed possible to raise was, In learning what ?

A great advance was made by our philosopher Locke, when he treated of education under the four heads: (1) Virtue; (2) Wisdom; (3) Manners; (4) Learning ; and declared that learning was least and last. But according to him, the education of the gentleman was the only thing to be cared for. " If," says he, " those of that rank are by their education once set right, they will quickly bring all the rest into order." {Ejpistle Bed. to " Thoughts c. Educ.")

Then came Rousseau. From the circumstances of his life he had no class prejudices, and he had a genius for thinking himself free from all conventions. He it was who first severed entirely education and learning, and brought up his ideal Emile without any regard to the requirements of " Society."

Pestalozzi was, like Rousseau, a citizen of the Swiss Republic, and little fettered by class distinctions. He read Rousseau with enthusiasm, and saw what a force education might become. His great object in life was the elevation of the people, and the consequence was, he became " a schoolmaster."

But his notions of the schoolmaster's function were based on conceptions which then for the first time came clearly into consciousness.

First, as to the aim of education, he announces that

INTRODUCTION.

every "human being is entitled to the development of the faculties he was bom with.

Then as to the nature of the educator's task, he says that it consists in a continual benevolent superintendence, with the object of drawing out those faculties.

There is a strange contrast between the men Rousseau and Pestalozzi. Rousseau was a voice, and nothing else. Everything that he did tended to lessen the influence of everything that he wrote. But Pestalozzi taught mainly by action. In him the most interesting thing is his life.

One of the best authorities we have had on education, my friend Professor Joseph Payne, drew my attention to the excellent biography of Pestalozzi by the Baron de Guimps. Professor Payne has now been taken from us more than thirteen years, and I have been hoping all those years to find as good a translator as my friend would have wished for this valuable book. At last such a translator has been found in a Cambridge friend, Mr. Russell, who was a pupil of mine more than twenty years ago, and who has since become familiar with French educational life and speech as a master in a Lycée. The completion of his task has been delayed by his waiting for the new edition ; but now the work has a suitable English dress, I trust we shall find a large increase in the number of Englishmen and Englishwomen who can discern that there is something in Pestalozzi.

R. H. QUICK.

Redhill.

AUTHOR'S PKEFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION [1888].

" In half a century from now every social stay will be shaken." These words were spoken eighty-three years ago by a man who, to save the poor had made himself poor ; who had lived as a pauper with paupers to teach paupers to live like men ; and who, after having sounded all the depths of the moral and intellectual poverty hidden beneath the brilliant civilization of his time, had come out of the experience terrified for the future of society, but bringing it a means of salvation. This man, whose prediction we now see fulfilled, was Henry Pestalozzi.

It is important to have complete knowledge of a man who, throughout a long life, sacrificed himself for what was, perhaps, the most fertile idea of modern times — the regeneration of nations by elementary education ; a man who, passionately loving the people in spite of their ignorance and vices, sought to teach and raise them even before they had made themselves feared ; a man who, in his ardent desire to help humanity, became, in turn, theologian, lawyer, agriculturist, manufacturer, author, journalist, and schoolmaster ; a man who, amid flattery from kings and people, never swerved a moment from his course ; a man, finally, whose bold and original genius was, to the very last, combined with the openness, simplicity, and absolute trust of a child.

Such was Pestalozzi. In another age and in other circumstances he would have been a saint. The Catholic Church has few greater or purer.

The life of this man offers strange contrasts. It will seem full of eccentricities, blunders, and even follies, unless we are guided by a perfect knowledge of his character and of the idea which was the mainspring of all his actions.

His child-like trust, which prevented him from thoroughly understanding the men of his time, led him into many an error, and caused the failure of his undertakings, and the world, that believes only in success, condemned Pestalozzi.

But posterity has been fairer to him,1 and to-day his memory is venerated and his devotion admired. We see that it is to him

1 Tbe town of Yverdun is just about to honour the memory of the famous man who lived there for so long, a bronze statue of Pestalozzi with two poor children being almost ready for inauguration.

PREFACE. xvii we owe the reform of elementary education, a reform, however, which, notwithstanding the progress already made, is still far from complete.

And yet Pestalozzi is still very little known, and not at all understood, even those who have heard of him having but a vague idea of the principles that guided him, and of the end that, in spite of disappointment and failure, he steadily pursued for so long.

Throughout his life Pestalozzi had always the same object in view ; and though the idea which animated him developed with age and experience, it never really changed. As the illusions of his youth vanished, his work appeared more holy and more beautiful, and the means he had employed more and more insufficient. And so he never ceased in his efforts to perfect and complete them. No man was ever less satisfied with himself ; no man was ever so quick to learn from experience. In one thing alone did he refuse to listen to its teaching : ingratitude never lessened his kindness, nor deceit his trust.

A history of Pestalozzi must, above all, be a history of the development of the great idea which, in its successive stages, he sought to put into practice in the various enterprises of his life. In this way alone can it be true, clear, and complete.

Such is the task we have set ourselves in writing this book, in which all who wish to understand Pestalozzi's work will find its true results, and, we hope, some practical help for the improvement of education.

Pestalozzi, like other men, had his faults and his weaknesses, which it would be unfair to the public and to him to hide. To the public, the historian's duty is to hide nothing of the truth; to Pestalozzi, to show him as he himself has chosen to appear in his appeal to posterity (Song of the Swan) in which, in an excess of humility and forbearance, he has even gone so far as to say that his faults alone were the cause of his misfortunes, condemning himself that he might save the beneficent idea he was bequeathing to humanity. His glory will lose nothing if we respect this last wish.

Pestalozzi's great and beautiful character is like no other ; the eagle and the dove, the lion and the lamb are there, the woman and the child, perhaps, more than the man. Its originality, to be fully understood, must be studied from its very earliest growth, and hence the importance of every detail we have been able to collect concerning the childhood of a man who has already had so many biographers, but the history of whose life is still so full of error and defects.

Amongst the innumerable works on Pestalozzi, we must particularly notice PompeVs, which was published in Paris in 1850, under the auspices of the Academy of Moral and Political Science.

xviii PREFACE.

He gives certain facts which are generally wanting in the Swiss and German biographers, and which we have made use of in the present work. He draws, too, a very true and lively picture of the man and his life of devotion ; but the account of the fall of the Yverdun Institute is so full of strange errors and mistaken views, that it would seem that the author must have drawn from a source which was not entirely trustworthy. It is this, undoubtedly, that has made him unfair to many of Pestalozzi's friends and fellow-workers.

Before finishing this work, on which we have been long engaged, we were fortunately able to profit by the many German publications which, for some years past, have been throwing new light on the life and work of Pestalozzi.

Two in particular have been very useful to us : —

First, that of Mr. Morf, at one time head of the Training College in Canton Berne, and then Director of the Orphanage at Winterthur, entitled, Documents for the Biography of Henry Pestalozzi. Mr. Morf has gone through public records, private letters, family papers, and indeed anything that was likely to throw light on the life of his hero, with indefatigable zeal, and judges the work of the educational reformer with much pedagogical penetration.1

'i'he second is that of Mr. Seyffarth, of Luckenwalde, near Brandenburg, who, between 1870 and 1873, published in eighteen volumes the first really complete edition of Pestalozzi's works. Cotta's edition, in 18*26, included many books which were not written by the master, but by his assistants, whilst several of Pestalozzi's most important works were wanting. Mr. Seyffarth has further enriched his collection by the addition of several interesting and characteristic smaller works which had remained unpublished, and by prefacing each of the bigger works with a well-written introduction.

How is it that so much has been talked and written about Pestalozzi in Germany lately ? Because she knows her present greatness is owing, in a large measure, to him.

After Jena, when Napoleon persisted in rejecting the principles of the Swiss Beformer, Germany, on the contrary, adopted them, and, reorganizing her public education in this spirit, produced a generation of men who were not only instructed but educated. Afterwards, however, she gradually neglected Pestalozzi's doctrine, especially from the moral point of view, and the Prussian schools degenerated. To-day, for instance, they would be incapable of forming men like those the country still possesses in the flower of their age. All the best minds are well aware of

1 He lias lately published a second book, entitled, Leaves from the Story of Pestalozzi's Life and Sorrows.

PREFACE. xix this, and an effort is being made to restore to his old honourable position the man whose educational doctrine was one of the chief means of raising Prussia when she had fallen so low.

At Easter, 1872, there was a Congress in Berlin of delegates from the Societies of Elementary Teachers in Brandenburg, Saxony, Hanoyer, and Hesse-Nassau. The Congress represented more than ten thousand teachers, and decided upon the creation of a [National Society of German Elementary Teachers, the head-quarters of which should be in Berlin.

On the 4th of April, Dr. Falk, the Minister of Beligion and Education, received a deputation of delegates, who made three requests in the name of the Congress.

According to the Hanover Courier the third request ran thus :—

" The extension of the programme of study for elementary teachers, and the organization of training schools in accordance with the pedagogic principles of Pestalozzi, which, thanks to the protection of Queen Louisa, Stein, William Humboldt, Fichte, etc., formerly enjoyed so much favour in Prussia and so visibly contributed to the regeneration of the country."

In France, the first attempts at educational reform in the spirit of Pestalozzi were owing to the efforts of men like Cochin and Pompée ; not however that the full value of the labours of the Swiss pedagogue was not recognized at the outset by a large number of distinguished men of all shades of opinion. It will be enough to mention Maine de Biran, de Yailly, Georges Cuvier, de Gérando, de Lasteyrie, Madame de Staël, de Clermont- Tonnerre, de Dreux-Brézé, Bourbon-Busset, Biot, Geoff roi- Saint- Hilaire, Sébastiani, de Laborde, Gaultier, Jomard, Choron, Ordinaire, Matter, Delessert, de Broglie, Casimir Perrier, and Victor Cousin. But it is since the labours of Madame Pape- Carpentier, and especially since the conferences on sense-impressing1 teaching in the Exhibition of 1878, that we may say that every intelligent teacher in France has sought to reduce elementary education to the principles laid down by Pestalozzi. The pedagogical works published during the last ten or fifteen years are all animated by the same spirit ; and if they do not all explicitly recommend the Pestalozzian method, they at least obey the tendency. May the book we are now publishing contribute to the success of their efforts !

1 This word — or sense-impressed — I have used through out for intuitif (anschaulich) . For intuition (Anschaulichkeit) I have said sense-impression. [Translator.]

Contents

PAG3

Introduction . . . . iii

Author's Preface . . vi

CHAP. I. — Pestalozzi the Child 1 II — Pestalozzi the Student 8

III. — Pestalozzi the Agriculturist .... 22

IV. — Pestalozzi the Father . . . .36

V. — Pestalozzi the Philanthropist .... 52

VI. — Pestalozzi the Writer 73

VII. — Pestalozzi's Doctrine before 1798 . . . 117

VIII. — Pestalozzi at Stanz 125

IX. — Pestalozzi at Burgdorf 173

X. — Krusi, Pestalozzi's First Fellow- worker . . 190

XI. — Pestalozzi's Institute at Burgdorf . . . 201

XII. — Pestalozzi's Books and Method at Burgdorf . 227

XIII. — First Years at Yverdun ..... 251

XIV. — Decline of the Institute ..... 275

XV. — Death-Agony of the Institute .... 321

XVI. — Pestalozzi's Last Years 359

XVII. — Pestalozzi's Last Writings .... 368

XVIII. — Personal Eecollections of the Author . . 388

XIX. — Pestalozzi's Beligion 399

XX. — Pestalozzi's Philosophy 406

XXI.— Pestalozzi's Elementary Method . . , 412

APPENDIX I. — Niederer's Literary Collaboration ,, II. — List of Pestalozzi's Works

III. — Books to Consult on Pestalozzi

425 433

Pestalozzi: His Life and Work.

Chapter I. Pestalozzi The Child

Influence of home on his character ; influence of school and of a visit to the country. To help the poor, he decides to be a village pastor.

In 1567, Antony Pestalozzi, a Protestant refugee from Chiavenna, and his wife Madeline de Murait, of Locarno, also an exile from her country through having adopted the reformed faith, found refuge in the town of Zurich. Prom them was descended Andrew Pestalozzi, who was a pastor at Hôngg near Zurich, and the grandfather of the subject of this biography.1

Andrew's son, John Baptist, was a surgeon of good standing in Zurich, and had acquired some reputation as an oculist ; he had married Susanna Hotz, of Richterswyl, a beautiful village on the edge of the lake of Zurich. Susanna was a sister of the well-known Dr. Hotz, and the niece of the General Hotz who was killed at Schœnnis in 1799.

Henry, the subject of this biography, was the son of John Baptist Pestalozzi, and was born on the 12th of January, 1746. His early home and the circumstances of his childhood had so great an influence on his character that we must give some account of them.

In the middle of the town of Zurich stands a large bridge, used as a market for flowers, fruit, and vegetables, and con-

1 The parish registers of Hongg afford evidence of the mistake of those biographers who call this pastor Hotz and make him the maternal grandfather of Pestalozzi.

necting a small square on the left bank of the Limmat with the square in which the Town Hall stands on the opposite side. Not far from the latter building and the quay there is a small, old-fashioned square called Rtidenplatz, leading, on the south, into a very narrow street. The corner house fronting the street is the house where Pestalozzi was born. It is numbered five, and bears the date 1691 ; the ground-floor, which is now used as a warehouse, was probably in 1746 the shop where, according to the custom of the time, the chirurgeon John Pestalozzi sold his simples and his drugs.

It was an old custom in Zurich for every house to have a name and sign ; that in which Pestalozzi's parents lived was called The Black Horn}

Henry was only just five years old when his father died, leaving a widow and three children (two boys and a girl), but very little fortune. Baptist, the eldest boy, died young ; the girl, Barbara, eventually married a Mr. Gross, a merchant in Leipsic, and corresponded all her life with her brother Hemy, to whom she was very much attached.

Susanna Pestalozzi was a gifted woman and an admirable mother. Having been well brought up herself, she now thought of nothing but her duty to her children, and it was undoubtedly the educational advantages of Zurich that made her prefer this town to the pleasanter and easier life she might have led near her brother at Richterswyl. She must, however, have succumbed under the difficulties of the task she had set herself, had it not been for the devotion of a faithful servant. But here we will quote from Pestalozzi's own account of his early education : —

" My mother devoted herself to the education of her three children with the most complete abnegation, foregoing everything that could have given her pleasure. In this noble sacrifice she was supported by a poor young servant whom I can never forget. During the few months she had

1 Some have maintained that Pestalozzi was born at the Bed Lattice, 23, Munsterstrasse, a house which bears the inscription, Honour to God alone, 1664, and which is a little lower down than the one occupied by his friend Lavater. This is a mistake, for it is contradicted not only by local tradition but by Pestalozzi's own statements, as we shall see. It is true, however, that at the age of eighteen Pestalozzi lived with his mother at the lied Lattice.

PESTAL0ZZ1 THE CHILD.

been in onr service, my father had been struck by her rare fidelity and unusual quickness. On his deathbed, agonized at the thought of what the consequence of his death might be for his family that he was leaving almost penniless, he sent for her, and said : ' Babeli, for the love of God and all His mercies, do not forsake my wife ! What will become of her after my death? My children will fall into the hands of strangers and their lot will be hard. Without your help she cannot possibly keep her children with her.' Her noble, simple heart was touched, and her soul accepted the sacrifice. ' If you die,' she said, 1 1 will not forsake your wife, but I will remain with her, if needs be, till death.' Her words soothed my poor father, a gleam of joy shone in his eyes, and he died happily.

" She kept her word, for she stayed with my mother till she died, helping her to bring up her three children under the most difficult and painful circumstances imaginable, and showing in this work of patient devotion a tact and delicacy which were the more astonishing, seeing that she was entirely without education and had left her native village only a few months before to try and find a situation in Zurich.

" Her fidelity and dignity of manner were a result of her piety and simple faith. However painful the conscientious fulfilment of her promise may sometimes have been, it never once occurred to her that she might break it.

" My mother's position as a widow necessitated the most careful economy, and the trouble that Babeli took to do what was almost impossible, is hardly credible. To save a farthing or two in the purchase of vegetables or fruit, she would go two or three times to the market, waiting for the moment when the peasants would be anxious to get rid of their goods for the sake of returning home. The same careful economy was applied to everything, otherwise my mother's slender means would not have sufficed for our housekeeping expenses. When we children wanted to be off somewhere and there was no particular reason for us to go, Babeli would stop us, saying : * Why do you want to go and spoil your clothes and shoes to no purpose ? See how your mother goes without everything for your sakes, how she never leaves the house for months together, how she is saving every farthing for your education.' But of herself, of what she did for us, of her continual sacrifices, the noble girl never spoke. The economy in the house was not allowed to interfere in any way with the family traditions, and the money devoted to alms, gratuities, and new year's gifts was out of all proportion to our personal expenses. Although these extra disbursements always troubled my mother and Babeli, they never hesitated to make them. My brother, my sister and myself had all fine Sunday clothes, but we wore them very little, always taking them off as soon as we got indoors, in order that they might last the longer. When my mother expected visitors, no pains were spared to make our one room fit to receive them." ]

This economy did not prevent the children from occasionally having a little pocket-money. One day, when little Henry had a few pence in his pocket, he was tempted by the good things in a confectioner's window near his home and went in to buy something. The house, which was in the square and has since been restored, was called The Plough. The shopkeeper's name was Schulthess, and inside Henry found little Anna Schulthess minding the shop. The girl was only seven years older than he was, but she refused to sell him anything and advised him to keep his money till he could make a better use of it. She who now gave him this excellent piece of advice afterwards became his wife, and remained his good angel till her death.

Thus Pestalozzi passed his childhood in an atmosphere of love, devotion, and peace, of rigid economy and of noble generosity. It was this, undoubtedly, that made him trustful, self-forgetful, calm, and affectionate, and gave him that gentle, sincere, and active piety which finds pleasure even in renunciation and privation. At the same time his imagination did not remain dormant, indeed its development seemed to make up in a measure for his lack of physical activity. The little fellow, nearly always shut up at home, listened eagerly to tales and readings, of which he never forgot a word. On the contrary, he turned them over and over in his mind, putting himself in the place of his heroes and making them act differently with different results. Already he was busy with thoughts which took him far away from the realities of his life.

1 Letter from Pestalozzi to Professor Ith, 1802.

PESTALOZZI THE CHILD. 5

The education Pestalozzi received from his mother left ineffaceable memories in his heart. Mothers, to him, were the ideal educators ; it was to them he addressed his advice and exhortations, and on them that he relied for the regeneration of the people. And is not he himself an example of how much a man's childhood may be influenced by the care, love, and devotion of a good mother ? And may we not think that if Rousseau had been brought up by a good mother, his genius might have been entirely beneficent ?

But however excellent Pestalozzi's early education may have been in all the most important points, and especially in the development of his affections, it was bound to be incomplete. The boy, puny from his birth, always indoors, brought up entirely by women, deprived of a father's influence, of all contact with boys of his own age, and of out-door games and interests, remained all his life small and weak, shy and awkward, changeable and impressionable. As Niederer, who afterwards became his friend and helper, once said : " In Pestalozzi there was as much of the woman as of the man."

The springs of young Pestalozzi's life were in the heart and imagination alone ; his thought, swift to perceive the relations between things, and often turned in on itself, left him absent-minded, inattentive, and careless about mere formalities, and, as a general rule, about the material conditions of life. He was unaware of the exceptional character of the family-life he had enjoyed, and ignorant of what the society of men in general was like. It is easy to judge from this how many bitter disappointments were in store for him.

They commenced as soon as he went to school. Although he often gave proof of penetration, he was unsuccessful with most of his work ; indeed, he wrote and spelt so badly that his master judged him to be utterly incapable. His companions liked him for his good disposition and obliging nature, but they took advantage of his good qualities to make a butt of him. Pestalozzi speaks of himself at this period of his life as follows : —

"The failures which would have sadly troubled other children hardly affected me. However much I might have desired or dreaded anything, when it was once over, and I had had two or three nights of good sleep after it, if it concerned me alone, it was just as though it had never been. From my childhood I have been everybody's plaything. My education, which gave food to all the dreams of my fancy, left me alike incapable of doing what everybody does, and of enjoying what everybody enjoys. From the very first, little children, my schoolfellows, sent me where they would rather not go, and I went ; in short I did all they wanted. The day of the earthquake at Zurich,1 when masters and boys rushed pell-mell downstairs, and nobody would venture back into the class-room, it was I who went to fetch the caps and books. But, in spite of all this, there was no intimacy between my companions and myself. Although I worked hard, and learned some things well, I had none of their ability for the ordinary lessons, and so I could not take it amiss that they dubbed me Harry Oddity of Foolborough.2

" More than any other child, I was always running my head against the wall for mere trifles ; but it did not trouble me. I thought I could do many things which were quite beyond me ; I measured the whole world by my mother's house and my schoolroom, and the ordinary life of men was almost as unknown to me as if I had lived in another world." 3

From the time that he was nine years old, young Pestalozzi was invited every summer to spend a few weeks with his grandfather, Andrew Pestalozzi, the pastor at Hôngg, a village about three miles from Zurich.

This village is magnificently situated ; the hills on which it lies, on the right bank of the Limmat, slope rapidly on the south to the river, on the other side of which the ground is lower and covered with houses. The land at Hôngg is rich and divided into fields, vineyards, and large orchards. The parsonage, which is close to the church, is still the same as a hundred years ago, though parts of it have been restored and modernized. The gardens which surround it were formerly narrow terraces built on the side of the hill. The dining-room, which is in the south-east corner of the

1 The 19th of December, 1755.

2 As Mr. Quick has well put it. [Tr.]

3 Letter to Ith, already que ted.

PESTALOZZI THE CHILD.

building, and has large windows looking east and south commanding a beautiful view of the basin of the Limmat, is unchanged, save that a small stove, in white porcelain, has replaced the enormous green structure that formerly stood there.