ITS NATIONAL DESIGN.

13

tion. He was aware that all these were only subordinate means, the efficacy of which in producing the desired effect would entirely depend on the simultaneous employment of means of a higher cast. This fact was, indeed, historically established before his eyes, though few men were, like himself, clear sighted enough to perceive it. The resources of Switzerland had been considerably augmented, its industry and its wealth had risen to a degree unparalleled at any former period, and yet the people, so far from showing any symptoms of improvement, were, on the contrary, sinking lower and lower every day. While the rulers of the land and the teachers of the people were buried in deep slumber, amusing themselves with vain dreams of the approaching return of a golden age, Pestalozzi, who lived among the people, and sought their acquaintance with eager benevolence, saw the degradation to which they were fast descending, and he resolved, as far as in him lay, to stem the torrent by endeavouring to place national education upon a more internal and more solid basis. He wished to purify the affections, which he saw depraved into low propensities; to substitute intelligence and true knowledge in the place of cunning and ignorant routine; and to restore to the word of faith, which had been perverted into a dead creed, its original influence upon mankind, by receiving the child, not only as a child of man, but also as a child of God, destined to be restored to the image of divine perfection.

Such was his generous intention; but, unfortunately, his means were, in almost every respect, inadequate to the magnitude of the object he had in view. The most important qualification required on his part, was an accurate and comprehensive knowledge of human nature, and of the laws by which it is governed, both in its internal development, and in its intercourse with the world. Of this knowledge, however, he was almost entirely destitute. He had, no doubt, acquired a deep insight into the workings of his own mind, in consequence of the freedom and decision with which he had, at every period of his life, acted up to his

14

REQUIREMENTS OF THE UNDERTAKING.

convictions; he had, moreover, had ample opportunities of watching the train of thoughts and feelings by which the lower orders become a prey to ignorance, prejudice, and vice; he had observed most of the evils by which human nature is beset, and traced many of them to their source; but, with all this experience, he was quite a novice in the difficult art of fostering the growth of the young mind, and modifying the influences of the surrounding world, and especially of human society, so that they should bear upon it with all the power of truth and love. His career had hitherto been essentially one of opposition against the existing state of things, and against the systems by which that state was upheld; and he now embarked in an undertaking, in which a merely negative wisdom, teaching how things ought not to be, was in nowise sufficient. His establishment required organization; that organization required positive principles; but positive principles were exactly what Pestalozzi did not possess.

Considering that he was himself conscious of this deficiency, the reception of so many children into his house for the purpose of giving them a suitable education, was one of the boldest undertakings in the annals of private life. He was prompted to it by the mighty impulses of faith and love: faith, that God, whose will it is that man should be raised from the degradation to which he has sunk, would enable him to trace the means deposited for that purpose in the mind and heart of the child; and love, which was ready to sacrifice all the comforts and enjoyments of affluence, in order to rescue the poor from their wretched condition. It was that faith in the self-evidence of the divine purpose in human nature, that enabled him to dispense altogether with those "beggarly elements" of education, with which one generation after the other has been nursed up to a crippled and sickly existence, and to strike out for himself an entirely new road, which would lead him more directly and more securely to the end. And it was that tender sympathy for the sufferings of his fellow-creatures, that benevo

lent zeal for the promotion of their welfare, which enabled him to continue his establishment at Neuhof for the space of fifteen years, in spite of all the difficulties with which he had to struggle, and the extreme distress to which he was at last reduced, in consequence of the disproportion between the extent of his undertaking and the limited pecuniary means that were at his command.

When Pestalozzi first ventured upon the experiment, he was not aware of its ruinous tendency. His knowledge of economical concerns was founded chiefly upon the experience which he had acquired in bringing his farm into a state of cultivation, and which was of the most encouraging nature. His acquaintance with the manufacturing department was more superficial, yet, apparently, sufficient to enable him to include that line of industry in his plan. He calculated that the expense incurred by the support of so large a number would, in a great measure, be covered by the produce of their own labour; but experience taught him, that the waste of material in manufacture, and the diminution of harvest, occasioned by an inferior cultivation of the soil, swallowed up nearly the whole amount of that produce, so that the weight of the increased consumption fell almost entirely upon the original resources of the establishment. A variety of other obstacles, arising out of the nature of the undertaking, and the peculiar turn of his own mind, concurred to impede his success and, ultimately, to defeat his plan. The mixture of agricultural and manufacturing labour, of domestic economy and commercial operations, had the effect of bringing confusion into every part, and concealing from his view the real state of his circumstances. His thoughts were, of course, chiefly directed towards the moral object of his institution; the inquiry into the best method of communicating instruction and developing the mental powers as well as the affections, necessarily diverted his mind from mere matters of business, and prevented him from acquiring those habits of strict attention to the minute details of economy, in the full possession of which the conduct of so

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PERSONAL FAILINGS.

complicated an undertaking as his, would still have proved an arduous and perhaps unsuccessful task. To combine in one and the same person the offices of manager, schoolmaster, farmer, manufacturer, and merchant, was beyond the reach of a man, whose energy of feeling carried him on with irresistible power in the pursuit of one great object, and would not allow him to stoop and measure every inch of ground over which he had to go.

On the other hand the prospect of a failure, which presented itself at a distance almost from the very beginning, and which became with every year nearer and more certain, deprived Pestalozzi of that calmness and serenity of temper, which was so essentially necessary, not only to the financial, but also to the moral success of his institution. The agitation of his mind was consequently kept up by a variety of vexatious and distressing incidents, till, at last, his disposition grew turbulent and restless. The losses entailed upon him by the inexperience of those whom he employed, and by the neglect prevailing in all parts of his establishment, affected him deeply, because they involved, as a necessary consequence, the total failure of his benevolent plans; and the consciousness which he had of the disinterestedness of his motives, rendered him unjust towards those that surrounded him, and prone to blame them for the existence of evils, which were, after all, but the inevitable result of the nature of the undertaking, and of his own inability to superintend and direct its complicated machinery. This inability, of course, increased in proportion as he abandoned himself to the violence and injustice of his feelings; and, in the same proportion, its ruinous effects became more and more visible in the state of his affairs. The more his circumstances required maturity of judgment and steadiness of action, the more inconsiderate and rash was his conduct; and vice versâ, the more comfort and freedom from anxiety the state of his mind rendered necessary, the more painful and distressing became his situation. The concurrence of such a number of evils, constantly reproducing each other,

THE ESTABLISHMENT BROKEN UP.

17

compelled Pestalozzi at last, however unwillingly, to give up an experiment which had required, from the beginning, ampler means and a firmer hand than his, to conduct it to a successful issue.

But as no good seed remains without its harvest, though it should not be as rich as the sower anticipated, so likewise Pestalozzi's persevering exertions for the education of the poor were not quite fruitless. His house, it is true, was now no longer an asylum for the houseless and the fatherless: the objects of his long-continued care and attention were disbanded, and left to provide for their own support in a world in which another Neuhof was not to be found; but the sting of this disappointment was much softened by the reflection, that upwards of an hundred children had been rescued from the destitution and the corrupting influences, of which they would otherwise have become the victims. Let those who are tempted to sneer at Pestalozzi's views, or to call their practicability in question, look at this result of the first abortive attempt of his benevolence; let them look around for another instance, in which the persevering labours of one individual, entirely unsupported by public or private assistance, have been productive of the same amount of good; and if they feel at a loss where to find it, let them respect the man who bestowed greater benefits upon mankind by his failures, than others do by their success.

The consciousness of having saved such a number of human beings from almost certain destruction, and awakened in their hearts the seeds of virtue and religion, was no small reward; and yet it was, perhaps, the least that Pestalozzi reaped from his first experiment. He had gained, what was of infinitely greater value to him, a rich store of experience, and a deeper insight than he had before possessed, into the nature of his task, as well as of the means by which it might be accomplished. In the works published during the period which elapsed from the opening of his asylum on the Neuhof, in 1775, to its close in 1790, he has left a permanent and highly instructive record of the discoveries which he

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