“With the exception of Pestalozzi,” says Spielmann, “Herbart has exercised the most important influence upon pedagogy.” Pestalozzi gave the first impetus to “psychologizing” the process of education; Herbart, continuing this movement, tried to make a science of it, and became the father of the great school of pedagogy which bears his name, and is represented by such renowned pedagogues as Mager, Strümpell, Story, Waitz, von Sallwürk, Ziller, Vogt, Willmann, Rein, Just, Dörffell, Frölich, Leutz, Frieck, and Helm. No academic pedagogy probably has exerted such a wide and systematic influence upon the field of education, especially of school instruction, as the Herbartian school has. No such technicality and doctrination has, with the probable exception of the Froebelian pedagogy among kindergartners, ever so ruled the thought and practice of school teachers. Yet it has received at the same time a strong and healthy opposition, chiefly directed against its overdone methodization and schematization carried on by his disciples rather than by Herbart himself. “Return to Pestalozzi,” is the cry we have been hearing in some quarters from German pedagogues. But though for the impartial learner no system of pedagogy is absolutely binding authority, yet at the same time every original thinker is to be our teacher, guide, and benefactor. When we go back directly to him we find him speaking with the living power of his personal experience and insight; it is the blind followers who kill him by idolizing him. Herbart indeed advocated making a scientific pedagogy the basis of the practice of education. Yet he admits that “long will it be before we have it, longer still before we can expect it from teachers.” Moreover, even when this is reached, “it can never be a substitute for observation of the pupil; the individual can only be discovered, not deduced” (9: p. 83). As to his own system of pedagogy, it certainly “affords an opportunity for estimating the breadth and the sphere of education and the vastness of problems lying before it” (9: p. 77), and also for seeing the exceeding complexity of every apparently simple matter in it. He and his school unquestionably deserve an important place in the history of pedagogy. But we must remember that psychology, which is, according to him, the foundation of pedagogy, has made progress by leaps and bounds since his day; that the social conditions and needs also have seen a considerable change. Therefore, to those who are disposed to linger at the starting-point of the great road opened by him, instead of marching on along it with the same eagerness and pioneering spirit which inspired Herbart himself, we offer the words which he wrote to Herr von Steiger in reference to “the most abiding of all the rules I send you”: “Remember, you must not be in the least slavishly bound by them; I mean them rather as hints” (9: p. 8). REFERENCES