from the stream which flowed down from him ought for once to go directly to its very source, and receive its refreshing benediction, which, in the phrase of John Morley, “admitted floods of light and air into tightly closed nurseries and schoolrooms” (8: ii, p. 249). Return to Nature! was the war cry of Rousseauean pedagogy as it was that of his whole life and philosophy. Here is his often quoted passage with which he opens his proclamation of war against the conventional attitude of education: “All things are good as they come out of the hand of their Creator, but everything degenerates in the hand of man.... He is not content with anything in its natural state, not even with his own species. His very offspring must be trained up for him, like a horse in the menagerie, and be taught to grow after his own fancy, like a tree in his garden” (17: i, p. 7). This may sound to some like an advocacy of _laissez faire_ principle. But the very word Nature presents an ideal, and to return to it or to preserve it, there is the need of educative effort. For: “Should a man in a state of society be given up from the cradle to his own notions and conduct, he would certainly turn out the most preposterous of human beings.... His humanity would resemble a shrub, growing by accident in the highway, which would soon be destroyed by the casual injuries it must receive from the frequent passenger” (17: i, pp. 7-8). To preserve and develop “the natural man in a state of society” (17: i, p. 337) is the aim of education. By “natural” he does not necessarily mean primitive and savage traits of man only, but all those tendencies, dispositions, qualities, which are inherent, essential, and universal to all mankind, whether inborn or developed in life and society. He writes: “After taking a comparative view of as many ranks and degrees of people as I have met with during a whole life spent in observing them, I have thrown aside as artificial all the peculiarities of particular nations, ranks, and conditions; and have regarded those things only as incontestably belonging to man which are common to men of all countries, ages, and circumstances of life” (17: ii, p. 79). From this view follows, however, the elevation of the generic fundamental traits of man which express themselves in his instincts, sentiments, intuitions, and common sense, accompanied by the depreciation of the individual mental superstructure, which is seen in our reason, learning, artistic accomplishments, etc. Thus, to interpret in modern terms, the development of the generic psychophysical organism is the essential task of the education of the young as understood by Rousseau.