Pedagogy is in the same condition in which a science would be that would teach how a man ought to walk; and people would try to discover rules about how to teach the children, how to enjoin them to contract this muscle, stretch that muscle, and so forth. This condition of the new pedagogy results directly from its two fundamental principles: (1) that the aim of the school is development and not science, and (2) that development and the means for attaining it may be theoretically defined. From this has consistently resulted that miserable and frequently ridiculous condition in which the whole matter of the schools now is. Forces are wasted in vain, and the masses, who at the present moment are thirsting for education, as the dried-up grass thirsts for rain, and are ready to receive it, and beg for it,--instead of a loaf receive a stone, and are perplexed to understand whether they were mistaken in regarding education as something good, or whether something is wrong in what is being offered to them. That matters are really so there cannot be the least doubt for any man who becomes acquainted with the present theory of teaching and knows the actual condition of the school among the masses. Involuntarily there arises the question: how could honest, cultured people, who sincerely love their work and wish to do good,--for such I regard the majority of my opponents to be,--have arrived at such a strange condition and be in such deep error? This question has interested me, and I will try to communicate those answers which have occurred to me. Many causes have led to it. The most natural cause which has led pedagogy to the false path on which it now stands, is the criticism of the old order, the criticism for the sake of criticism, without positing new principles in the place of those criticized. Everybody knows that criticizing is an easy business, and that it is quite fruitless and frequently harmful, if by the side of what is condemned one does not point out the principles on the basis of which this condemnation is uttered. If I say that such and such a thing is bad because I do not like it, or because everybody says that it is bad, or even because it is really bad, but do not know how it ought to be right, the criticism will always be useless and injurious. The views of the pedagogues of the new school are, above all, based on the criticism of previous methods. Even now, when it seems there would be no sense in striking a prostrate person, we read and hear in every manual, in every discussion, "that it is injurious to read without comprehension; that it is impossible to learn by heart the definitions of numbers and operations with numbers; that senseless memorizing is injurious; that it is injurious to operate with thousands without being able to count 2-3," and so forth. The chief point of departure is the criticism of the old methods and the concoction of new ones to be as diametrically opposed to the old as possible, but by no means the