plish its task." He regarded women as his natural allies in his educational reforms, and to his appeals they have responded nobly. It is chiefly through their agency that his reforms have been promoted in both America and Europe. Fortunate is the cause that enlists the hearty interest and support of women!

SUMMARY OF PRINCIPLES.-The leading ideas in Froebel's educational system have been summed up as follows: "1. The task of education is to assist natural development toward its destined end. As the child's development begins with its first breath, so must its education also.

"2. As the beginning gives a bias to the whole afterdevelopment, so the early beginnings of education are of most importance.

"3. The spiritual and physical development do not go on separately in childhood, but the two are closely bound up with each other.

"4. Early education must deal directly with the physical development, and influence the spiritual development through the exercise of the senses.

"5. The right mode of procedure in the exercise of these organs is indicated by nature in the utterances of the child's instincts, and through these alone can a natural basis of education be found.

"6. The instincts of the child, as a being destined to become reasonable, express not only physical but also spiritual wants. Education has to satisfy both.

"Y. The development of the limbs by means of movement is the first that takes place, and therefore claims our first attention.

"8. Physical impressions are at the beginning of life the only possible medium for awakening the child's soul. These impressions should, therefore, be regulated as sys

tematically as is the care of the body, and not be left to chance."

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FROEBEL'S SPIRIT.—It is interesting to look behind a great work to discover the spirit of the author, and it is also important to examine the principles upon which it rests. Froebel, like his illustrious master, Pestalozzi, was animated by a profound love for humanity. This gave to his endeavors an exalted. character. "The fame of knowledge," it was said over his grave, was not his ambition. Glowing love for mankind, for the people, left him neither rest nor quiet. After he had offered his life for his native land in the wars of freedom, he turned with the same enthusiasm which surrenders and sacrifices for the highest thought, to the aim of cultivating the people and youth, founded the celebrated institution at Keilhau among his native mountains, and talked and planted in the domain of men's hearts. And how many brave men he has educated, who honor his memory and bless his name!”

E. Herbart

BIOGRAPHICAL.-John Frederick Herbart, a distinguished philosopher and educator, was born at Oldenburg, Germany, in 1776. He was a student under Fichte at the University of Jena, though he later discarded the views of that great metaphysician. In Switzerland he became tutor in a private family, and made the acquaintance of Pestalozzi, whose views he adopted and subsequently improved. In 1800 he delivered a course of pedagogical lec-tures in Bremen, and two years later became a lecturer at Göttingen. In 1809 he was called to the University of Königsberg, where he filled the chair previously occupied by the illustrious Kant. The following year he established

a pedagogical seminary, or normal school, in which young teachers were to impart instruction under his direction. and according to his educational principles.

PEDAGOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY.-With Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and other great German philosophers, pedagogy was incidental and secondary in their investigations. With Herbart it was different. Pedagogy was the ultimate aim of his philosophical inquiries. "For my part," he says, "I have devoted every energy for twenty years to metaphysics, mathematics, self-contemplation, experiments, and trials, in order only to find the basis of true psychological insight. And the prime motive of these laborious investigations was and is above all my conviction that a large part of the huge gaps in our pedagogical science proceeds from a lack of psychology, and that we must first have this science, yea, must beforehand get rid of the mirage that is nowadays called psychology, before we can determine with some degree of certainty what is right and what is wrong in a single hour of instruction."

HERBART AND PESTALOZZI.-In an important sense Herbart may be said to supplement or complete the work of Pestalozzi. The great Swiss educator laid stress upon sense-perception. He accomplished a great work in pedagogy by insisting on clearness and definiteness in our observation of the external world. The whole fabric of knowledge is based on the ideas that come to us from our senses. But Pestalozzi made no adequate provision for system in sense-perception, and failed to consider fully the upbuilding of knowledge and soul-power through mental digestion and assimilation. It is this phase of education, neglected by Pestalozzi, that Herbart emphasizes. "He teaches," as Dr. W. T. Harris well says, "that the chief object of instruction is to secure the reaction of the mind

upon what is offered to sense-perception. We must understand what we see. We must explain it by what we know already. Herbart would secure the assimilation of all our new perceptions by the total amount of experience already stored in our minds. Pestalozzi, on the other hand, made no account of previous experience and of this process of digesting our intellectual food. Pestalozzi wished to have us learn by seeing and hearing and the use of our other senses. In his mental physiology, the process of eating is everything, and the process of digestion is ignored."

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APPERCEPTION.-This brings us to the great word of the Herbartian system, namely, apperception. By this term is meant the active contribution of the mind to the ideas received in sense-perception. In perceiving a house, for example, we recognize or identify it as that of a friend, or we classify it as a factory or a place of worship. This identification or classification is what the mind, from its previous knowledge, adds or contributes to the sense-perception. When we identify or classify an object, we apperceive it. Or, to borrow the lucid explanation of Dr. Harris, In perception we have an object presented to our senses; but in apperception we identify the object or those features of it which were familiar to us before; we recognize it; we explain it ; we interpret the new by our previous knowledge, and thus are enabled to proceed from the known to the unknown, and make new acquisitions; in recognizing the object we classify it under various general classes; in identifying it with what we had seen before, we note also differences which characterize the new objects and lead to the definition of new species or varieties. All this and much more belong to the process called apperception, and we see at once that it is the chief business of school instruction to build up the process of apperception. By it

we reenforce the perception of the present moment by the aggregate of our own sense-perception, and by all that we have learned of the experience of mankind."

COURSE OF STUDY.-The importance he attached to apperception led Herbart to a careful consideration of the best order of studies. In education it is of the first importance to seize and hold the pupil's attention. Not only must the teacher gain his respect and obedience, but the studies pursued, by their progressive and logical connection, should arouse his interest. There must be a conscious unfolding of mental power, by which the pupil's attention is secured and maintained. This result mathematics attains, Herbart thinks, better than any other study. "Every self-deception," he says, "pretending to understand what it does not understand, to be conversant with that with which it is not conversant, may thus come to light. The weakness of his logic must be plainly evident to the pupil; but not only his weakness, also his strength and his capacity for development such an instruction must show him. It must lead him to demonstrate them to himself by his deeds. That which seemed incomprehensible, unattainable, that before which his mental powers stood still, must become perfectly clear, and clearness must lead to perfect ease of execution."

It is different, Herbart argues, with geography, natural history, and linguistic studies. These are matters of memory. They supply additions from without, but do not develop the understanding from within. "It is true," Herbart says, "that the names are gradually fixed in memory, but the fixation is not a sensible gain. Knowledge does not by this means grow. It does not push on. It does not reach out round about it. It unriddles nothing. It does not enchance the fulness of thought as is done by mathe