62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



marked the Dessau Educational Institute as the one that displays the 

 evidences of excellence." 



Kant's commendatory words refer to the School of the Philan- 

 thropists, founded December 27, 1774, at Dessau, under the direc- 

 tion of Basedow. This reformer represented Comenius and Rousseau. 

 A few sentences from his writings are significant in this connection : 



" The great aim of education should be to prepare the youth for a 

 useful, patriotic, and happy life. Instruction should be rendered as 

 agreeable as is consistent with its nature. Practice in the memory of 

 things is far more important than in the memory of words. 



" But this knowledge of things must furnish new representations 

 to the understanding ; must not simply fill out the memory with 

 words. Paintings and engravings are of great service in instruction. 

 Experience teaches how everything which resembles a picture pleases 

 children." 



A public examination of Basedow's work was held in May, 1776. 

 The reformer's invitation contained the following passage : " This 

 affair is not Catholic, Lutheran, or Reformed, but Christian. We are 

 philanthropists, cosmopolitans. Russia's or Denmark's sovereignty is 

 not, in our teachings, placed after Switzerland's freedom. Our text- 

 books are free from theological bias for the Christian as against Jews, 

 Mohammedans, deists, or the dissenters, called, in some places, here- 

 tics. Very little memorizing is done by us. The students are not 

 forced to be industrious. Still, we promise by the excellence of our 

 method of instruction, and by its agreement with all philanthropic 

 education, twofold as much progress as can be secured by the best 

 schools or gymnasia." The public examination was favorable, and 

 many influential men approved the undertaking in highest terms. 

 There were bitter enemies, however. Most of the directors of the 

 gymnasia opposed Basedow to the utmost, and Herder expressed a 

 feeling more or less prevalent when he wrote : " The whole thing 

 appears to me horrible. They tell of a new method for raising oak- 

 forests in ten years. I wouldn't give Basedow calves to raise, much 

 less men ! " 



We have considered a slow and complex movement, yet one stead- 

 ily tending to definite result. The movement has been away from 

 classical training as a necessary part of education. Montaigne, Bacon, 

 Ratich, Comenius, the pietists, the philanthropists, have led education 

 into new courses. The tendency was clearly revealed in the Dessau 

 Institute. Education has been emancipated from scholasticism, and 

 this with such force as to threaten the future supremacy of Greece and 

 Rome. 



As matter of fact, we have now before us, in the historical devel- 

 opment of our subject, two sharply contrasted ideas. Whether these 

 ideas are necessarily antagonistic is not the present question. We are 

 concerned with the forces actually at work, and with the manner of 



