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men and those for boys as between a catechism and a system of dogmatic theology, or between a grammar for beginners and one for philologists. This difference consists not so much in the greater or smaller number of historical facts as in the selection of them; in its choice, for instance, of the more abstract civic and ecclesiastical relations, or of more pictorial representations of great men and occurrences. It depends upon the spirit in which the book deals with history.

A childlike and delicate tact may be exercised in the selection from the text-book of what is proper and comprehensible for beginners. The youngest pupils will prefer historical matter which is as near as possible in character to stories; they only gradually grow into a feeling for historical truth. Observe, for instance, what are the actual points of interest to children. They take pleasure in hearing of Marathon and Salamis, and of the campaigns of Alexander; but none in the contests between the patricians and plebeians of Rome, of the agrarian law, &c. They are not usually as much interested in Cæsar as in Alexander. In brief, they are pleased with whatever stimulates their imagination by beauty, greatness, nobility, chivalric bravery, and adventurousness; but not with any thing that is cold or purely intellectual, such as the subject of civic relations and civil controversies. Such matters are repulsive to them.

There are compendiums, as well as teachers, who do not use sufficient care in observing what children like and can understand. We are now speaking, let it be remembered, of school-children, not of students, who have reached the verge of adult age and of civic life. These latter very properly require a presentation of the subject which does not merely seek to please by an exciting narrative, but which shall tend to direct and fix their minds in a knowledge of the true and serious nature of the approaching labors of their life as citizens, and for the great and solemn problems of human life generally.

We have thus discussed the beginning of the study of history. What, now, is its ultimate object-the purpose of all the labor bestowed upon it? What are the highest aims which we have in view in the lower as well as the higher stages of progress in the study? Let us prepare to answer by deciding a narrower preliminary question:-What do we desire to learn from the biography of an individual man? I reply, The problems of his life, and their solution. The history of the world is the biography of the human speciesunder which nations are the varieties. What are the gifts and the problems of humanity-of single nations? "There are many gifts,

⚫ of the Romans, children-like Livy-make a special favorite of the elder Scipio.

but one spirit." Whence do we come-whither do we go-we, all men, taken as one representative man?

When an individual dies, we ask, What has become of him? And millions and millions have, in like manner, died during the course of time, and what has become of them? History plays over graves; and future generations, like past ones, are all drawing toward the great necropolis. When will the dominion of death be ended? Does the end of Time-the beginning of Eternity-now approach, when they shall no longer be born or die?

The infancy of man is lost in the darkness of the past, and its future fate in that of the future. No man has investigated and understood death; and none has escaped over the limits of that unknown land from which no wanderer returns.

At this point Revelation appears, displays to us a part of the future, and opens to us the knowledge of our race-so highly gifted, so fallen away from God, and saved and forgiven through Christ. It encourages us as to the departed, and prophesies the resurrection of the dead and the Last Judgment. At this tribunal, love will be the rule of procedure; to him who hath loved much, much shall be forgiven.

What pride lost, the lowliness of Christ has recovered. With the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ began a new creation, the regeneration of a fallen and saved world, the establishment of the kingdom of God, in which all contentions shall cease. It is the kingdom of a love that shall never cease, because it is stronger than death.

VI. GEOGRAPHY.

[Translated from Raumer's "History of Pedagogy," for the American Journal of Education.]

PESTALOZZI mentions a schoolmaster who instructed his scholars in geography so skillfully that they were well acquainted with the road to the East Indies, but very ill with the roads and paths about their own village. And Rousseau says: "I assert that no child of ten years old, who has had two years' instruction in geography, can, by using the rules which have been given to him, find his way from Paris to Saint Denis; or can even find his way about the curved paths in his own father's garden, without making a mistake. And these are the learned men who know, to a hair, whereabouts are Pekin, Ispahan, Mexico, and all the countries of the earth." The reason of this practical incapacity Rousseau found to be that the children were taught maps only; the names of cities, countries, and rivers, which existed, for the scholars, only on the maps where they were shown to them. He advised, on the contrary, to commence instruction in geography by furnishing the boys with correct knowledge of the neighborhood of their own place of abode, and making them draw maps of it.

These views of Rousseau seemed the more reasonable to me, because I had spent years in geognostic researches among the mountains, and knew by experience the heaven-wide difference between a knowledge of a map and of a country. I composed a dialogue upon teaching geography, in which I set forth Rousseau's views in detail. The speakers were Otto and George. "Before I made my first tour to the Silesian mountains," says George, "I read over all that I could find respecting them in books of travels. The result of this reading was, that I formed in my mind so distinct an idea of those mountains that I could have painted them from these descriptions. I came among the mountains themselves; and, to my astonishment, the mountains of my imagination had no resemblance whatever to the real ones." And he says, again, "Permit me to add something further, in order to make my meaning clear. If any one inquires of you about the features of your room, or your house, you describe them to him according to the representation of them which is before your mind; not according to such a representation before your

Second book of "Emile."

mind of ground-plans or elevations. If you are asked about a house in your neighborhood, you answer in like manner, not according to any representation before your mind of a plan of the city, but according to a representation-such as your faculties have made it— of the city itself; you say through what streets the questioner must go to reach the houses, and you point it out to him by shape, color, and peculiarities. And you can in the same way describe localities in the neighborhood of the city—unless you are an inveterate stayer at home. But how will it be if any one inquires of you for directions to a place say twenty-five miles distant? Will the picture of the road in that case still be clear before your mind, as it runs in through the fields and the woods, so that you can tell through what villages and over what waters it passes, how you must leave this mountain on the right hand and that castle on the left? Or will not your imagination in this case be at fault; will you not have forgotten many portions of the road, and have but an obscure recollection of others? May you not even have quite forgotten the whole road?" And when Otto answers, "This is the case for which maps are intended," George replies, "Then you must have within you the representation of the maps instead of that of the localities, and give your directions wholly from that, or else your recollection of the map will mingle in a confusing manner with that of the ground." And, at last, when the question is put, "How does the road run from your residence in Germany to Canton, for instance, or Irkutsk?" it appears that all representations in the mind of the extensive regions over which you must travel will quite disappear, and the representation of the map will entirely occupy their place.

Otto now calls attention to the necessarily limited extent of the knowledge of most persons respecting countries. No Titan, he says, is born, who can give information about the whole earth as fully as we can about our own homes and places of abode--who carries in his mind representations of all lands and nations. We must therefore make use of indirect knowledge, of some kind, in the place of direct. Whether this indirect knowledge shall begin with the district in which the learner lives, or the kingdom-whether with a smaller or larger area-is of but small importance.

George. What you say is like what I once heard alledged against the intuitional method in arithmetic, which Pestalozzi urged so earnestly. What is the use of it? asked its opponents; in the case of large numbers, all actual pictures of them must disappear from the mind. Who can imagine even a hundred apples? Away, therefore, with all intuitional arithmetic.

Otto. I agree with them.

George. I do not. I think the power of intuition should be developed as far as to the number ten, which can be counted on the fingers. So far the smallest capacities might attain. Then the tens, and afterward the hundreds and thousands, might be treated as units, and thus, by means of the wonderful decimal system, the most monstrous numbers can be dealt with. Without this intuitional knowledge, from one to ten, the children are liable to run into a mere course of juggling by means of the decimal system, without gaining a clear and intelligent knowledge of arithmetic.

Otto. And what is your application of all this to geography?

George. The numbers from one to ten are the boy's place of abode, the man's country; they are the Archimedean point in geography. He who understands them thoroughly may acquaint himself with other countries.

George now proceeds to explain how, according to Rousseau's system, the boys may be carried onward from the knowledge of, and ability to map out, the neighborhood-their home and its vicinity-to an acquaintance with foreign countries and the ability to describe them. During youth and manhood, he says, they may take journeys, especially within their German fatherland, and to countries most interesting to Germans, and may thus enlarge their direct knowledge of countries. But, he adds, how great soever their knowledge is, it can never include the whole earth; and this fact forces us to use substitutes-to supply the defect by means of a symbolical knowledge of the earth. And he explains this symbolical knowledge as follows:

The sphere of the individual man is limited in space and in time; he can not exceed the measure of his bodily growth, nor add a single year to his life, nor do wings bear him over the earth. Yet his mind belongs not merely to the immediate present, but to a greater spiritual universe. Thus there is an incongruity between the wide aspirations of his mind and the limitations of his mortal body. The use of symbols is a mode of reconciling this incongruity.

There are two kinds of symbols; artificial and natural. The artificial symbol brings before the mind original ideas, by means of representations; while the natural sees the original idea in the parts of it. Permit me to give a brief illustration of these two kinds of symbols. You can represent Paris to yourself by plans of the city, panoramas, models, descriptions-by the most various kinds of representations, based upon an actual immediate observation of Paris. You see the city mirrored in another mind. These I call artificial symbols. But suppose you could remain for some time in some house in Paris, without leaving it. You would see and hear from your

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