Pestalozzi was not widely read in the literature of education; in fact, the _Émile_ was about the only such book he ever read, as he himself tells us. It is, nevertheless, apparent that he was quite as much influenced by Comenius as by Rousseau. The vital principle of his reforms—love of and sympathy for the child—had been as forcefully enunciated by Comenius as by Rousseau; and the saner and more practical character of Pestalozzi’s enthusiasm would lead one to suppose that he was less influenced by the author of the _Émile_ than by the Moravian reformer. “The first qualification for the task [of teaching],” says Pestalozzi, in a letter to Greaves,[44] “is _thinking love_.” And this spirit dominated all his efforts in behalf of educational reform. He says: “It is recorded that God opened the heavens to the patriarch of old, and showed him a ladder leading thither. This ladder is let down to every descendant of Adam; it is offered to your child. But he must be taught to climb it—not by the cold calculations of the head, or by the mere impulses of the heart, but by a combination of both.” Both reformers started with the child at birth, and made domestic education fundamental to their schemes. “Maternal love,” says Pestalozzi, “is the first agent in education. Nature has qualified the mother to be the chief factor in the education of the child.” In _How Gertrude teaches her children_[45] he tells us, “It is the main design of my method to make home instruction again possible to our neglected people, and to induce every mother whose heart beats for her child to make use of my elementary exercises.” Again, in the account of his school at Stanz, he says: “My aim was to simplify teaching so that the common people might be induced to begin the instruction of their children, and thus render superfluous the teaching of the elements in the schools. As the mother is the first to nourish her child physically, so also, by the appointment of God, she must be the first to give it spiritual and mental nourishment. I consider that very great evils have been occasioned by sending children too early to school; and by adopting so many artificial means of educating them away from home. The time will come, so soon as we shall have simplified instruction, when every mother will be able to teach, without the help of others, and thereby, at the same time, go on herself always learning.” This, it will be recalled, was also Comenius’ cherished desire in the _School of infancy_.