Education and instruction are generally considered in the abstract, that is, the question is discussed how in the best and easiest manner to produce a certain act of instruction on a certain subject (whether it be one child or a mass of children). This view is quite faulty. All education and instruction can be viewed only as a certain relation of two persons or of two groups of persons having for their aim education or instruction. This definition, more general than all the other definitions, has special reference to popular education, where the question is the education of an immense number of persons, and where there can be no question about an ideal education. In general, with the popular education we cannot put the question, "How is the best education to be given?" just as with the question of the nutrition of the masses we cannot ask how the most nutritious and best loaf is to be baked. The question has to be put like this: "How is the best relation to be established between given people who want to learn and others who want to teach?" or, "How is the best bread to be made from given bolted flour?" Consequently the question of how to teach and what is the best method is a question of what will be the best relation between teacher and pupil. Nobody, I suppose, will deny that the best relation between teacher and pupil is that of naturalness, and that the contrary relation is that of compulsion. If so, the measure of all methods is to be found in the greater or lesser naturalness of relations and, therefore, in the lesser or greater compulsion in instruction. The less the children are compelled to learn, the better is the method; the more--the worse. I am glad that I do not have to prove this evident truth. Everybody is agreed that just as in hygiene the use of any food, medicine, exercise, that provokes loathing or pain, cannot be useful, so also in instruction can there be no necessity of compelling children to learn anything that is tiresome and repulsive to them, and that, if necessity demands that children be compelled, it only proves the imperfection of the method. Any one who has taught children has no doubt observed that the less the teacher himself knows the subject which he teaches and the less he likes it, the more will he have to have recourse to severity and compulsion; on the contrary, the more the teacher knows and loves his subject, the more natural and easy will his instruction be. With the idea that for successful instruction not compulsion is wanted, but the rousing of the pupil's interest, all the pedagogues of the school which is opposed to me agree. The only difference between us is that the conception that the teaching must rouse the child's interest is with them lost in a mass of other conflicting notions about "development," of the value of which they are convinced and in which they exercise compulsion; whereas I consider the rousing of the pupil's interest, the greatest possible