responsibility of their deed belongs in part to him. If we confound the standpoint in which punishment is administered in the state with that in education, we work much evil.

Punishment considered as an educational means, can not be determined a priori, but must always be modified by the peculiarities of the individual offender and by peculiar circumstances. Its administration calls for the exercise of the ingenuity and tact of the educator.

Generally speaking, we must make a distinction between the sexes, as well as between the different periods of youth; (1) some kind of corporal punishment is most suitable for children, (2) isolation for older boys and girls, and (3) punishment based on the sense of honor for young men and women.

(1.) Corporal punishment is the production of physical pain. The youth is generally whipped, and this kind of punishment, provided always that it is not too often administered, or with undue severity, is the proper way of dealing with willful defiance, with obstinate carelessness, or with a really perverted will, so long or so often as the higher perception is closed against appeal. The imposing of other physical punishments, e.g., that of depriving the pupil of food, partakes of cruelty. The view which sees in the rod the panacea for all the teacher's embarrassments is censurable, but equally undesirable is the false sentimentality which assumes that the dignity of humanity is affected by a blow given to a child, and confounds self-conscious humanity with child-humanity, to which a blow is the most natural form of reaction, in which all other forms of influence at last end.

The fully-grown man ought never to be whipped, because this kind of punishment reduces him to the level of the child, and when it becomes barbarous, to that of a brute animal, and so is absolutely degrading to him.

(2) By Isolation we remove the offender temporarily from the society of his fellows. The boy left alone, cut off from all companionship, and left absolutely to himself, suffers from a sense of helplessness. The time passes heavily, and soon he is very anxious to be allowed to return to the company of parents, brothers and sisters, teachers and fellow-pupils.

(3) This way of isolating a child does not touch his sense of honor at all, and is soon forgotten, because it relates to only one side of his conduct. It is quite different from punishment based on the sense of honor, which in a formal manner, shuts the youth out from companionship because he has attacked the principle which holds society together, and for this reason can no longer be considered as belonging to it. Honor is the recognition of one individual by others as their equal. Through his error, or it may be his crime, he has simply made himself unequal to them, and in so far has separated himself from them, so that his banishment from their society is only the outward expression of the real isolation which he himself has brought to pass in his inner nature, and which he, by means of his negative act, only betrayed to the outer world. Since the punishment founded on the sense of honor affects the whole ethical man and makes a lasting impression upon his memory, extreme caution is necessary in its application lest a permanent injury be inflicted upon the character. The idea of his perpetual continuance in disgrace, destroys in a man all aspiration for improvement.

It is important to consider well this gradation of punishment (which, starting with sensuous physical pain, passes through the external teleology of temporary

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isolation up to the idealism of the sense of honor), both in relation to the different ages at which they are appropriate and to the training which they bring with them. Every punishment must be considered merely as a means to some end, and, in so far, as transitory. The pupil must always be deeply conscious that it is very painful to his instructor to be obliged to punish him. The pathos of another's sorrow for the sake of his cure which he perceives in the mein, in the tone of the voice, in the delay with which the punishment is administered, will become a purifying fire for his soul.

3. The Limits of Education.

There are two widely differing views with regard to the Limits of Education. One lays great stress on the weakness of the pupil and the power of the teacher. According to this view, Education has for its province the entire formation of the youth. The despotism of this view often manifests itself where large numbers are to be educated together, and with very undesirable results, because it assumes that the individual pupil is only a specimen of the whole, as if the school were a great factory where each piece of goods is to be stamped exactly like all the rest. Individuality is reduced by the tyranny of such despotism to one uniform level till all originality is destroyed, as in cloisters, barracks, and orphan asylums, where only one individual seems to exist. There is a kind of Pedagogy also which fancies that one can thrust into or out of the individual pupil what one will. This may be called a superstitious belief in the power of Education. The opposite extreme disbelieves this, and advances the policy which lets alone and does nothing, urging that individuality is unconquerable, and that often the most careful and far-sighted education fails of reaching its aim in so far as it is opposed to the nature of the youth, and that this individuality has made of no avail all efforts toward the obtaining of any end which was opposed to it. This representation of the fruitlessness of all pedagogical efforts engenders an indifference toward it which would leave, as a result, only a sort of vegetation of individuality growing at hap-hazard.

The limit of Education is (1) a Subjective one, a limit made by the individuality of the youth. This is a definite limit. Whatever does not exist in this individuality as a possibility can not be developed from it. Education can only lead and assist; it can not create. What Nature has denied to a man, Education can not give him any more than it is able, on the other hand, to annihilate entirely his original gifts, although it is true that his talents may be suppressed, distorted, and measurably destroyed. But the decision of the question in what the real essence of any one's individuality consists can never be made with certainty till he has left behind him his years of development, because it is then only that he first arrives at the consciousness of his entire self; besides, at this critical time, in the first place, much knowledge only superficially acquired will drop off; and again, talents, long slumbering and unsuspected, may first make their appearance. Whatever has been forced upon a child in opposition to his individuality, whatever has been only driven into him and has lacked receptivity on his side, or a rational ground on the side of culture, remains attached to his being only as an external ornament, a foreign outgrowth which enfeebles his own proper character.

(2) The Objective limit of Education lies in the means which can be appropriated for it. That the talent for a certain culture shall be present is certainly

the first thing; but the cultivation of this talent is the second, and no less necessary. But how much cultivation can be given to it extensively and intensively depends upon the means used, and these again are conditioned by the material resources of the family to which each one belongs. The greater and more valuable the means of culture which are found in a family are, the greater is the immediate advantage which the culture of each one has at the start. With regard to many of the arts and sciences this limit of education is of great significance. But the means alone are of no avail. The finest educational apparatus will produce no fruit where corresponding talent is wanting, while on the other hand talent often accomplishes incredible feats with very limited means, and, if the way is only once open, makes of itself a center of attraction which draws to itself with magnetic power the necessary means. The moral culture of each one is, however, fortunately from its very nature, out of the reach of such dependence.

(3) The Absolute limit of Education is the time when the youth has apprehended the problem which he has to solve, has learned to know the means at his disposal, and has acquired a certain facility in using them. The end and aim of Education is the emancipation of the youth. It strives to make him self-dependent, and as soon as he has become so it wishes to retire and to be able to leave him to the sole responsibility of his actions. To treat the youth after he has passed this point of time still as a youth, contradicts the very idea of education, which idea finds its fulfillment in the attainment of majority by the pupil. Since the accomplishment of education cancels the original inequality between the educator and the pupil, nothing is more oppressing, nay, revolting to the latter than to be prevented by a continued dependence from the enjoyment of the freedom which he has earned.

The opposite extreme of the protracting of Education beyond its proper time is necessarily the undue hastening of the Emancipation.-The question whether one is prepared for freedom has been often opened in politics. When any people have gone so far as to ask this question themselves, it is no longer a question whether that people are prepared for it, for without the consciousness of freedom this question would never have occurred to them.

Although educators must now leave the youth free, the necessity of further culture for him is still imperative. But it will no longer come directly through them. Their pre-arranged, pattern-making work is now supplanted by selfeducation. Each sketches for himself an ideal to which in his life he seeks to approximate every day.

In the work of self-culture one friend can help another by advice and example; but he can not educate, for education presupposes inequality.-The necessities of human nature produce societies in which equals seek to influence each other in a pedagogical way, since they establish by certain steps of culture different classes. They presuppose Education in the ordinary sense. But they wish to bring about Education in a higher sense, and therefore they vail the last form of their ideal in the mystery of secrecy.-To one who lives on contented with himself and without the impulse toward self-culture, unless his unconcern springs from his belonging to a savage state of society, the Germans give the name of Philistine, and he is always repulsive to the student who is intoxicated with an ideal.

FREBEL AND THE KINDERGARTEN SYSTEM.

MEMOIR.

FREEBEL (Friedrich Wilhelm August) was born April 21, 1782, at Oberweissbach, in the principality of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. His mother died when he was so young that he never even remembered her; and he was left to the care of an ignorant maid-of-all-work, who simply provided for his bodily wants. His father, who was the laborious pastor of several parishes, seems to have been solely occupied with his duties, and to have given no concern whatever to the development of the child's mind and character beyond that of strictly confining him within doors, lest he should come to harm by straying away. One of his principal amusements, he tells us, consisted in watching from the window some workmen who were repairing the church, and he remembered long afterward how he earnestly desired to lend a helping hand himself. The instinct of construction, for the exercise of which, in his system, he makes ample provision, was even then stirring within him. As years went on, though nothing was done for his education by others, he found opportunities for satisfying some of the longings of his soul, by wandering in the woods, gathering flowers, listening to the birds, or to the wind as it swayed the forest trees, watching the movements of all kinds of animals, and laying up in his mind the various impressions then produced, as a store for future years.

Not until he was ten years of age did he receive the slightest regular instruction. He was then sent to school, to an uncle who lived in the neighborhood. This man, a regular driller of the old, timehonored stamp, had not the slightest conception of the inner nature of his pupil, and seems to have taken no pains whatever to discover it. He pronounced the boy to be idle (which, from his point of view, was quite true) and lazy (which certainly was not true)-a boy, in short, that you could do nothing with. And, in fact, the teacher did nothing with his pupil, never once touched the chords of his inner being, or brought out the music they were fitted, under different handling, to produce. Froebel was indeed, at that time, a thoughtful, dreamy child, a very indifferent student of books, cor

dially hating the formal lessons with which he was crammed, and never so happy as when left alone with his great teacher in the woods.

It was necessary for him to earn his bread, and we next find him a sort of apprentice to a woodsman in the great Thuringian forest. Here, as he afterward tells us, he lived some years in cordial intercourse with nature and mathematics, learning even then, though unconsciously, from the teaching he received, how to teach others. His daily occupation in the midst of trees led him to observe the laws of nature, and to recognize union and unity in apparently contradictory phenomena.

In 1801 he went to the University of Jena, where he attended lectures on natural history, physics, and mathematics; but, as he tells us, gained little from them. This result was obviously due to the same dreamy speculative tendency of mind which characterized his earlier school life. Instead of studying hard, he speculated on unity and diversity, on the relation of the whole to the parts, of the parts to the whole, &c., continually striving after the unattainable and neglecting the attainable. This desultory style of life was put an end to by the failure of means to stay at the University. For the next few years he tried various occupations, ever restlessly tossed to and fro by the demands of the outer life, and not less distracted by the consciousness that his powers had not yet found what he calls their center of gravity.' At last, however, they found it.

While engaged in an architect's office at Frankfort, he formed an acquaintance with the Rector of the Model School, a man named Gruner. Gruner saw the capabilities of Fræbel, and detected also his entire want of interest in the work that he was doing; and one day suddenly said to him: 'Give up your architect's business; you will do nothing at it. Be a teacher. We want one now in the school; you shall have the place.' This was the turning point in Fræbel's life. He accepted the engagement, began work at once, and tells us that the first time he found himself in the midst of a class of 30 or 40 boys, he felt that he was in the element that he had missed so long the fish was in the water.' He was inexpressibly happy. This ecstasy of feeling, we may easily imagine, soon subsided. In a calmer mood he severely questioned himself as to the means by which he was to satisfy the demands of his new position.

About this time he met with some of Pestalozzi's writings, which so deeply impressed him that he determined to go to Yverdun and study Pestalozzism on the spot. He accomplished his purpose, and lived and worked for two years with Pestalozzi. His experience at