But in a few points Fichte did not agree with Pestalozzi. One is in regard to the position of reading and writing in the education of the masses: Pestalozzi cherished, so thought Fichte, too innocent a belief in the tradition of ages, in that he set up these two as though they were the end and goal of instruction, when, in fact, they have hitherto been the very instruments to enwrap men in the mist and the shadow of learned ignorance, and to make them over-intelligent. They take men away from the immediate perception to the mere symbol, from the concentration of mind to its diffusion. Instruction in letters and words, therefore, is not only unessential for the education of the people at large, but even harmful. In the second place, Fichte did not quite agree with Pestalozzi in the method of sense-education. The Pestalozzian idea of the A. B. C. of perception is a praiseworthy one, but it cannot be attained through words. Fichte asks: “How can a child obtain the knowledge of his body without having first learned to use it?” According to Fichte’s theory of knowledge, self-activity precedes every content of consciousness, and the vague feeling or sensation of this primordial, subjective activity is the first beginning of our knowledge. Consequently, “the true foundation of instruction and knowledge must be, to use the Pestalozzian expression, the A. B. C. of sensation” (3: p. 407). The child is to learn to clearly perceive and distinguish the various sensations which he experiences, and to express them, each in distinction from others. Impressions at first produce a chaos in the infant, but by learning to discriminate them he comes to perceive the objects impressed upon him: thus from the A. B. C. of sensation he is led to the A. B. C. of perception. Language should not be imparted from outside as a mere symbol, but should develop in the child as the progressively differentiating expression of his inner self or subjective experience. In this way knowledge and speech become living things and parts of the child’s own being.