was a man of partial intuitions—­a man who had occasional flashes of insight rather than a man of systematic thought.  His first great success at Stantz was achieved when he had no books or appliances of ordinary teaching, and when “the only object of his attention was to find out at each moment what instruction his children stood peculiarly in need of, and what was the best manner of connecting it with the knowledge they already possessed.”  Much of his power was due, not to calmly reasoned-out plans of culture, but to his profound sympathy, which gave him a quick perception of childish needs and difficulties.  He lacked the ability logically to co-ordinate and develop the truths which he thus from time to time laid hold of; and had in great measure to leave this to his assistants, Kruesi, Tobler, Buss, Niederer, and Schmid.  The result is, that in their details his own plans, and those vicariously devised, contain numerous crudities and inconsistencies.  His nursery-method, described in The Mother’s Manual, beginning as it does with a nomenclature of the different parts of the body, and proceeding next to specify their relative positions, and next their connections, may be proved not at all in accordance with the initial stages of mental evolution.  His process of teaching the mother-tongue by formal exercises in the meanings of words and in the construction of sentences, is quite needless, and must entail on the pupil loss of time, labour, and happiness.  His proposed lessons in geography are utterly unpestalozzian.  And often where his plans are essentially sound, they are either incomplete or vitiated by some remnant of the old regime.  While, therefore, we would defend in its entire extent the general doctrine which Pestalozzi inaugurated, we think great evil likely to result from an uncritical reception of his specific methods.  That tendency, constantly exhibited by mankind, to canonise the forms and practices along with which any great truth has been bequeathed to them—­their liability to prostrate their intellects before the prophet, and swear by his every word—­their proneness to mistake the clothing of the idea for the idea itself; renders it needful to insist strongly upon the distinction between the fundamental principle of the Pestalozzian system, and the set of expedients devised for its practice; and to suggest that while the one may be considered as established, the other is probably nothing but an adumbration of the normal course.  Indeed, on looking at the state of our knowledge, we may be quite sure that is the case.  Before educational methods can be made to harmonise in character and arrangement with the faculties in their mode and order of unfolding, it is first needful that we ascertain with some completeness how the faculties do unfold.  At present we have acquired, on this point, only a few general notions.  These general notions must be developed in detail—­must be transformed into a multitude of specific propositions, before we can be said to