EDUCATION.
Reading edition
The great error of all systems of education is, that they are systems;—schemes built upon moral theories, instead of developments of physiological facts; they are the result of a neglect of elements which are indestructible, in the attempt to establish doctrines which are hypothetical. Even Pestalozzi’s system has this radical defect. His doctrine of “la foi et l’amour,” which he has taken for its basis, or “that which children feel for their parents,” is to me unintelligible; for schoolmasters are not, and cannot be, parents; and his rejection of emulation, as a germ of dangerous passions,[31] is utterly unphilosophical. Until Nature ceases to give passions, man must use them. The lever of all action is motive.