—_Browning._ CHAPTER IX A GREAT EDUCATIONALIST (_A REVIEW_) =We look to Germany for Educational Reform.=—We in England require, every now and then, to pull ourselves together, and to ask what they are doing on the Continent in the way of education. We still hark back to the older German educational reformers. We may not know much of Comenius, Basedow, Ratich; we do know something of Pestalozzi and Froebel; but how much do we know of the thought of Johann Friedrich Herbart, the lineal successor of these, who has largely displaced his predecessors in the field of Pedagogics? =Herbartian Thought the most advanced on the Continent.=—How entirely German educators work upon Herbart, and Herbart only, is proved by the existence of a Herbartian educational literature greatly more extensive than the whole of our English educational literature put together. A little volume on the _Outlines of Pedagogics_,[8] by Professor W. Rein, of the University of Jena, is offered to us by the translators, C. C. and Ida J. Van Liew, as a brief introduction to the study of Herbart and his school, the author making due allowance for the advances that have been made in the decades that have elapsed since Herbart’s death. As Herbart and his interpreters represent the most advanced school of educational thought on the Continent, it will, perhaps, be interesting to the reader to make a slight comparison between the educational philosophy I am trying to set forth, and the school of thought which exercises such immense influence in Germany. =Comparison with P.N.E.U. Thought.=—One of the most characteristic features of Herbart’s thinking, and that feature of it which constitutes a new school of educational thought, is, that he rejects the notion of separate mental faculties. The earlier reformers, notably Pestalozzi and Froebel, divide the faculties up with something of the precision of a phrenologist, and a chief business of education is, according to them, ‘to develop the faculties.’ =The Development of the Faculties.=—There is a certain pleasing neatness in this idea which is very attractive. We want to know, definitely, what we have to do. Why, develop the perceptive faculties here, with the conceptive there, the judgment in this lesson, the affections in the other, until you have covered the whole ground, giving each so-called faculty its due share of developmental exercise! But, say the followers of Herbart, we have changed all that. The mind, like Wordsworth’s cloud, moves altogether when it moves at all.