§ 55. In endeavouring to put teaching, as he said, “on a psychological basis,” Pestalozzi compared it to a mechanism. On one occasion when expounding his views, he was interrupted by the exclamation, “Vous voulez mécaniser l’éducation!” Pestalozzi was weak in French, and he took these words to mean, “You wish to get at the mechanism of education.” He accordingly assented, and was in his turn misunderstood. Soon afterwards he endeavoured to express the new thing by a new word and said, “Ich will den menschlichen Unterricht psychologisieren; I wish to psychologise instruction,” and this he explains to mean that he sought to make instruction fall in with the eternal laws which govern the development of the human intellect (Morf, I, p. 227). But this was a task which no one man could accomplish, not even Pestalozzi. The eternal laws which govern the development of mind have not been completely ascertained even after investigations carried on during thousands of years; and Pestalozzi did not know what had been established by previous thinkers. He made a gigantic effort to find both the laws and their application, but if he had continued to stand alone he could have done but little. Happily he attracted to him some young and vigorous assistants, who caught his enthusiasm and worked in his spirit. They did much, but there was one thing the Master could not communicate—his genius. § 56. Just at this time, before Pestalozzi found associates in his work, he drew up for a “Society of Friends of Education” an account of his method; and this begins with the words I have already quoted, “I want to psychologise education.” Basing all instruction on _Anschauung_ (which is nearly equivalent to the child’s own observation), he explains how this may be used for a series of exercises, and he takes as the general elements of culture the following: language, drawing, writing, arithmetic, and the art of measuring. In the education of the poor he would lay special stress on the importance of two things, then and since much neglected, viz., singing and the sense of the beautiful. The mother’s cradle song should begin a series leading up to hymns of praise to God. Education should develop in all a sense of the beauties of Nature. “Nature is full of lovely sights, yet Europe has done nothing either to awaken in the poor a sense for these beauties, or to arrange them in such a way as to produce a series of impressions capable of developing this sense.... If ever popular education should cease to be the barbarous absurdity it now is, and put itself into harmony with the real needs of our nature, this want will be supplied.” (R.’s Guimps, 186.)