EDUCATION. 109 



property near Celle in Hanover, to a select number of 

 students. Berlin quickly detected Thaer's ability and 

 the importance of his subject and, after Hardenberg had, 

 as Prime Minister, called him to a professorial chair at 

 Berlin, he — about 1804 — removed his infant agricultural 

 college to Moglin in the Prussian province of Brandenburg, 

 which became the first recognised agricultural educational 

 institution in Germany. (Bishop Grundtvig's organisation 

 of the noted Folks Hoejskoler (People's High Schools) and 

 " Peasant Schools " in Denmark took place at a much later 

 period.) However, Thaer's action was more on academical 

 lines than on practical. Fellenberg's activity was directed 

 towards practical work, supplemented by science, and the 

 influence of his teaching proved on the whole far more 

 stimulating and expansive and became in fact the practical 

 starting point for agricultural education in all countries. 

 For the" Fa.vm.-schools" {Ackerbauschulcn), which set prac- 

 tical education a-going in Germany — not Prussia alone — 

 and have been so largely imitated elsewhere, were avowedly 

 imitations of Fellenberg's Swiss Wehrlischulen. And the 

 French fermes ecoles appear likewise to have taken the 

 Swiss institution for their model. In his organising work 

 Fellenberg showed himself thoroughly public-spirited, en- 

 deavouring to attract even very poor young folk, for whose 

 education no payment could be exacted from empty pockets. 

 His wish was, if possible, to establish a farm school in every 

 village or parish — " civil " parish, that is, such as in Switzer- 

 land often enough embraces several ecclesiastical parishes 

 — in the Federated Cantons. Of course, there had been 

 research and discussion previously in agricultural societies. 

 The Agricultural Society of Dublin, among others, had a 

 distinguished record to show, and it had proved, as the 

 late F. Passy had recently related, the direct inspirer to 

 the formation of the Societe Nationale d' Agriculture de 

 France, which numbered Turgot, Buff on, Lavoisier, Males- 

 herbes and Gournay (the coiner of the familiar phrase, 

 " laissez faire et laissez passer ") among its members. But 

 that was not schooling. 



Since Fellenberg and Thaer set their hands experimentally 



