OUTLINES FROM THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION. 61 



where uncornprehended words are learned verbatim, school-dust lies 

 hundreds of years thick on the natural method of teaching languages ; 

 every one who breathes this dust is sick in the brain. Instruction 

 carries everywhere the marks of the time when the schools were es- 

 tablished. Young people are taught a multitude of things of which 

 they make no use in all their life. 



" A neio foundation must be laid upon which a new species can 

 develop, since a regeneration can not be thought of while the youth 

 are not transplanted to a new ground." 



We note a few of the affirmative propositions : " Artists must be 

 trained if art is to prosper. In physical education we must return to 

 the method of the ancients. 



" The will must be governed by the reason. During youth religion 

 shall be taught only in its extreme simplicity, without attention to sects 

 or parties. We should not repress the natural tendency to freedom, 

 but guide it. Children are by nature good — compulsion renders them 

 bad. 



" The boy who has no sense for anything abstract and incompre- 

 hensible, least of all for the ordinary catechism, should, before any- 

 thing else, be made acquainted with the sense-world. This can be 

 shown to him in Nature and by pictures. 



"The youth are troubled with nothing so much as with Latin. 

 More than five years are given simply to the learning of Latin. Yet 

 there is not a fourth of the pupils thus taught who can read Latin 

 books without trouble or without mistakes. When these hindrances 

 are removed, the true aim of education will be reached. This aim is 

 to form Europeans, people having such habits and manners as are 

 common in all Europe, people whose life should be free from harm- 

 fulness, as universally useful and contented as they might become 

 through education." 



Kant, born April 22, 1724, expressed his opinion very forcibly as 

 to the needs of the schools at this time : " In the civilized lands of 

 Europe educational institutions are not lacking, neither is there lack- 

 ing, on the part of the teachers, a well-intentioned industry. Still, it 

 has been clearly shown that these institutions are worthless, and that, 

 since everything in them wor/cs contrary to Nature, they fall far short 

 of bringing out of men the good for which Nature has given the ma- 

 terial. We should see quite different men around us if those educa- 

 tional methods came into force which are really drawn out of Nature, 

 and not those which are but slavish imitations of the ancient customs 

 of rude and inexperienced ages. The solicitude of the common peo- 

 ple of all lands should now be directed to the establishment of such a 

 master-school. This institution is no longer a merely beautiful idea, 

 but now shows, by visible proofs, the practicability of what has been 

 so long desired. The public repute, and pre-eminently the united 

 voices of scientific and discerning judges from varied lands, have 



