562. Women as Educators.—One of the characteristic features of the pedagogy of the nineteenth century is the constant progress in the education of women. Woman will be better instructed, and at the same time she will play a more important part in instruction. Primary schools for girls did not exist, so to speak, in France, at the commencement of this century. Fourcroy, who reported the bill of May 1, 1802, declared that “the law makes no mention of girls.” But through the efforts of the monarchy of July, and still more of the liberal laws of the second and of the third Republic, the primary instruction of girls will become more and more general. Secondary public instruction will be created for women by the law of December 20, 1880, and the equality of the two sexes, in respect of education, will tend more and more to become a reality, through the influence of governmental action as well as that of private initiative.

But not less remarkable is the important part which women, by their abstract reflections or by their practical efforts, have taken in the progress of pedagogy. In the history of education, the nineteenth century will be noted for the great number of its women who were educators, some who were real philosophers and distinguished writers, and others, zealous and enthusiastic teachers.

563. Madame de Genlis (1746-1830).—While she does not belong to the nineteenth century by her pedagogical writings, Madame de Genlis has certain rights to a foremost place in the list of the educational women of our time. She had in the highest degree the pedagogic vocation; only, that vocation became a mania and was squandered on everything. Madame de Genlis wished to know everything in order that she might teach everything. “She was more than a woman author,” says Sainte-Beuve, wittily; “she was a woman teacher; she was born with the sign on her forehead.”

Young girls of their own accord play mamma with their dolls. From the age of seven, Madame de Genlis played teacher.

“I had a taste for teaching children, and I became school-mistress in a curious way.... Little boys from the village came under the window of my parents’ country-seat to play. I amused myself in watching them, and I soon took it into my head to give them lessons.”

Twenty years later, the village teacher became the governess of the daughters of the Duchesse de Chartres, and the governor of the sons of the Duke de Chartres (Philippe-ÉgalitÉ).

564. Pedagogical Works.—The principal work of Madame de Genlis, Letters on Education (1782), treats of the education of princes and also of “that of young persons and of men.” In giving it that other title, AdÈle and ThÉodore, the author indicated her intention of rivaling Rousseau, and of educating a man and a woman more perfect than Émile and Sophie.

Although she had a profoundly aristocratic nature, Madame de Genlis, after the revolution of 1789, seemed for an instant to follow the liberal current which was sweeping minds along. It was then that she published the Counsels on the Education of the Dauphin, and some parts of her educational journal, entitled Lessons of a Governess. She never ceased to preach love of the people to sovereigns, and in justice this must be said to her credit, that she did not write merely for courtly people. She protests, and with spirit, “that she is the first author who has concerned herself with the education of the people. This glory,” she adds, “is dear to my heart.” In support of these assertions, Madame de Genlis cites the fourth volume of her ThÉÂtre d’Éducation, which is, she says, “solely intended for the children of tradesmen and artisans; domestics and peasants will there see a detailed account of their obligations and their duties.”

565. EncyclopÆdic Education.—It has been said with reason that Madame de Genlis was the personification of encyclopÆdic instruction.[237]

“Her programme of instruction had no limits. She favors Latin, without, however, thinking the knowledge of it indispensable. She gives a large place to the living languages. At Saint Leu, her pupils garden in German, dine in English, and sup in Italian. At the same time she invents gymnastic apparatus,—pulleys, baskets, wooden beds, lead shoes. Nothing takes her at unawares, her over-facile pen stops at nothing; she is universal. A plan for a rural school for children in the country is wanted, and she furnishes it.”

566. Imitation of Rousseau.—Madame de Genlis never ceased to criticise Rousseau, and yet, in her educational romances, the inspiration of Rousseau is everywhere present. How can we fail to recognize a pupil of Rousseau in the father of AdÈle and ThÉodore, who leaves Paris in order to devote himself entirely to the education of his children, to make himself “their governor and their friend, and finally, to screen the infancy of his son and daughter from the examples of vice”? And the methods manufactured by Rousseau, the unforeseen lessons, the indirect means employed to instruct without having the appearance of doing so,—Madame de Genlis desires no others. Nothing is more amusing than the description of the country-seat of the Baron d’Almane, the father of AdÈle and ThÉodore. It is no longer a country-seat; it is a school-house. The walls are no longer walls; they are charts of history and maps of geography.

“When we would have our children study history according to a chronological order, we start from my bed-chamber, which represents sacred history; from there we enter my gallery, where we find ancient history; we reach the parlor, which contains Roman history, and we end with the gallery of Monsieur d’Almane (it is the Baroness who speaks), where is found the history of France.”

In her pedagogic fairyland, Madame de Genlis does not wish the child to meet a single object which may not be transformed into an instrument of instruction. AdÈle and ThÉodore cannot take a hand-screen without finding a geography lesson represented on it, and drawn out at full length. Here are pictures worked in tapestry; they are historical scenes; on the back of them care has been taken to write an explanation of what they represent. At least, those five or six movable partitions which are displayed in the apartment on cold days have no instructive purposes? You are mistaken. There is painted and written on them the history of England, of Spain, of Germany, and that of the Moors and the Turks. Even in the dining-room, mythology encumbers the panels of the room, and “it usually forms the subject of conversation during the dinner.” In that castle, bewitched, so to speak, by the elf of history, there is not a glance that is lost, not a minute without its lesson, not a corner where one may waste his time in dreaming. History pursues you like a ghost, like a nightmare, along the corridors, on the stairs, even on the carpet on which you tread, and on the chairs upon which you sit. The true way to disgust a child forever with historical studies is to condemn him to live for eight days in this house-school of Madame de Genlis.

567. Miss Edgeworth (1767-1849).—It is with the Scotch philosophy and the psychological theories of Reid and Dugald Stewart, that were inspired in different degrees two distinguished women, who honored English pedagogy at the beginning of this century,—Miss Edgeworth and Miss Hamilton.

In her book on Practical Education, published in 1798,[238] Miss Edgeworth does not lose herself in theoretical dissertations. Her book is a collection of facts, observations, and precepts. The first chapter treats of toys, and the author justifies this beginning by saying that in education there is nothing trivial and minute. It is first by conversations, and then by the use of the inventive, analytical, and intuitive method, that Miss Edgeworth proposes to train her pupils; and her reflections on intellectual education deserve to be considered. In moral education she agrees with Locke, and seems to place great reliance on the sentiment of honor, and on the love of reputation. In every case she absolutely ignores the religious feeling. The characteristic of her system is that it makes “a total abstraction of religious ideas.”

568. Miss Hamilton (1758-1816).—Miss Hamilton is at once more philosophical and more Christian than Miss Edgeworth. It is from the psychologist Hartley that she borrows her essential principle, which consists in making of the association of ideas the basis of education. Hartley saw in this the sovereign law of intellectual development. But, on the other hand, she declares “that she follows no other guide than the precepts of the Gospel.”

The principal work of Miss Hamilton, her Letters on the Elementary Principles of Education (1801),[239] has a more theoretical character than the book of Miss Edgeworth. With her it is above all else a question of principles, which, she says, are more necessary than rules. We find but few reflections on teaching proper. She borrows the very words of Dugald Stewart to define the object of education:—

“The most essential objects of education are the following: first, to cultivate all the various principles of our nature, both speculative and active, in such a manner as to bring them to the greatest perfection of which they are susceptible; and secondly, by watching over the impressions and associations which the mind receives in early life, to secure it against the influence of prevailing errors; and, as far as possible, to engage its prepossessions on the side of truth.”[240]

To cultivate the intellectual and moral faculties, Miss Hamilton places her chief dependence, as we have said, on the principle of the association of ideas. We must break up, or, rather, prevent from being formed, all false associations, that is, all inaccurate judgments. Order once re-established among ideas, the will will be upright, and the conduct well regulated. In other terms, this was to subordinate, perhaps too completely, the development of the moral faculties to the culture of the intellectual faculties.

“It is evident,” says Miss Hamilton, “that all our desires are in accord with ideas of pleasure, and all our aversions with ideas of pain.”

The educator will then try to associate the idea of pleasure with what is good and useful for the child and for the man.

Let us also note, in passing, the solicitude of Miss Hamilton for the education of the people:—

“From most of the writers on education it would appear that it is only to people of rank and fortune that education is a matter of any importance.... My plan has for its object the cultivation of the faculties that are common to the whole human race.”[241]

On this point her thought was the same as that of Miss Edgeworth, whose father, in 1799, in the Irish Parliament, had caused the adoption of the first law on primary instruction.

569. Madame Campan (1752-1822).—Twenty-five years’ experience, either at the court of Louis XV., or in the school at Saint-Germain, which she founded under the Revolution, or finally in the institution at Écouen, the direction of which was entrusted to her by Napoleon I., in 1807,—such are the claims which at once assure to Madame Campan some authority on pedagogical questions.[242] Let us add that good sense, a methodical and prudent mind,—in a word, qualities which were reasonable rather than brilliant,—directed that long personal experience.

“First I saw,” she said, “then I reflected, and finally I wrote.”

570. Eulogy on Home Education.—From a teacher, from the directress of a school, we would expect prejudices in favor of public education in boarding-schools. That which secures our ready confidence, is that Madame Campan, on the contrary, appreciates better than any one else the advantages of maternal education:—

“To create mothers,” she said, “this is the whole education of women.” Nothing seems to her superior to a mother governess “who does not keep late hours, who rises betimes,” who, finally, devotes herself resolutely to the important duty with which she is charged.

“There is no boarding-school, however well it may be conducted, there is no convent, however pious its government may be, which can give an education comparable to that which a young girl receives from a mother who is educated, and who finds her sweetest occupation and her true glory in the education of her daughter.”

Madame Campan, moreover, reminds mothers who would be the teachers of their own daughters, of all the obligations which are involved in such a charge. Too often the mother who jealously keeps her daughter near her, is not capable of educating her. In this case there is only the appearance of home education, and as Madame Campan wittily says, “this is no longer maternal education; it is but education at home.”

571. Progress in Instruction.—FÉnelon was Madame Campan’s favorite author. On the other hand, there was some resemblance between the rules of the school at Écouen and those of Saint Cyr. The spirit of the seventeenth century lives again in the educational institutions of the nineteenth, and Madame Campan continues the work of Madame de Maintenon.

However, there is progress in more than one respect, and the instruction is more solid and more complete.

“The purpose of education,” wrote Madame Campan to the Emperor, “ought to be directed: 1. towards the domestic virtues; 2. towards instruction, to such a degree of perfection in the knowledge of language, computation, history, writing, and geography, that all pupils shall be assured of the happiness of being able to instruct their own daughters.”

Madame Campan desired, moreover, to extend her work. She demanded of the Emperor the creation of several public establishments “for educating the daughters of certain classes of the servants of the State.” She desired that the government should take under its supervision private institutions, and contemplated for women as for men a sort of university “which might replace the convents and the colleges.” But Napoleon was not the man to enter into these schemes. The schools of “women-logicians” were scarcely to his taste, and the teaching congregations, which he restored to their privileges, the better served his purpose.

572. Interest in Popular Education.—One might believe that Madame Campan, who had begun by being the teacher of the three daughters of Louis XV., and who associated with scarcely any save the wealthy or the titled, had never had the taste or the leisure to think of popular instruction. It is nothing of the sort, as is proved by her Counsels to Young Girls, a work intended for Elementary Schools.

“There is no ground for fearing that the daughters of the rich will ever be in want of books to instruct them or of governesses to direct them. It is not at all so with the children who belong to the less fortunate classes.... I have seen with my own eyes how incomplete and neglected is the education of the daughters of country people.... It is for them that I have penned this little work.”

The work itself has not perhaps the tone that could be desired, nor all the simplicity that the author would have wished to give it; but we must thank Madame Campan for her intentions, and we count among her highest claims to the esteem of posterity the effort which she made in her old age to become, at least in her writings, a simple school-mistress and a village teacher.

573. Madame de RÉmusat (1780-1821).—Madame de RÉmusat has written only for women of the world. Herself a woman of the world, lady of the palace of the Empress Josephine, she had no personal experience in the way of teaching. She had nothing to do with the practice of education save in supervising the studies of her two sons, one of whom became a philosopher and an illustrious statesman, Charles de RÉmusat. The noble book of Madame de RÉmusat, her Essay on the Education of Women, does not commend itself by reason of its detailed precepts and scholastic methods, but by its lofty reflections and general principles.[243]

574. Sketch of Feminine Psychology.—Let us first notice different passages in which the author sketches by a few touches the psychology of woman, and determines her sphere in life:—

“Woman is the companion of man upon the earth, but yet she exists on her own account; she is inferior, but not subordinate.”

The expression here betrays Madame de RÉmusat, and it would be more accurate to say that woman is not inferior to man, that she is his equal, but that in existing civil and social conditions she necessarily remains subordinate to him.

But with what perfect justness the amiable writer characterizes the peculiar qualities of woman!

“We lack continuity and depth when we would apply ourselves to general questions. Endowed with a quick intelligence, we hear promptly, we even divine and see just as well as men; but too easily moved to remain impartial, too mobile to be profound, perceiving is easier for us than observing. Prolonged attention wearies us; we are, in short, more mild than patient. More sensitive and more devoted than men, women are ignorant of that sort of selfishness which an independent being exhibits outwardly as a consciousness of his own power. To obtain from them any activity whatever, it is almost always necessary to interest them in the happiness of another. Their very faults are the outgrowths of their condition. The same cause will excite in man emotions of pride, and in woman only those of vanity.”

575. The Serious in Education.—Madame de RÉmusat, still more than Madame Campan, belongs to the modern school. She desires for woman an education serious and grave.

“I see no reason for treating women less seriously than men, for misrepresenting truth to them under the form of a prejudice, duty under the appearance of a superstition, in order that they may accept both the duty and the truth.”

She does not in the least incline to the opinion of the over-courteous moralist Joubert, who, with more gallantry than real respect for women, said: “Nothing too earthly or too material ought to employ young ladies; only delicate material should busy their hands.... They resemble the imagination, and like it they should touch only the surface of things.”[244]

Madame de RÉmusat enters into the spirit of her time, and her admiration for the age of Louis XIV. does not make her forget what she owes to the new society, transformed by great political reforms.

“We are drawing near the time when every Frenchman shall be a citizen. In her turn, the destiny of woman is comprised in these two terms: wife and mother of a citizen. There is much morality, and a very severe and touching morality, in the idea which ought to be attached to that word citizen. After religion, I do not know a more powerful motive than the patriotic spirit for directing the young towards the good.”

It is no longer a question, then, of training the woman and the man for themselves, for their individual destiny. They must be educated for the public good, for their duties in society. Madame de RÉmusat is not one of those timid and frightened women who feel a homesickness for the past, whom the present terrifies. Liberal and courageous, she manfully accepts the new rÉgime; she proclaims its advantages, and, if she writes like a woman of the seventeenth century, almost with the perfection of Madame de SÉvignÉ, her chosen model, she at least thinks like a daughter of the Revolution.

576. Philosophical Spirit.—That which is not less remarkable is the philosophical character of her reflections. She believes in liberty and in conscience. It is conscience which she purposes to substitute, as a moral rule, “for despotic and superficial caprices.” It is no longer by the imperative term, you must, but by the obligatory term, you ought, that the mother should lead and govern her daughter.

“On every occasion let these words, I ought, re-appear in the conversation of the mother.”

This is saying that the child ought to be treated as a free being. The end, and at the same time the most efficient means, of education, is the wise employment of liberty. While keeping the oversight of the child, he must be left to take care of himself, and on many occasions to follow the course that he will. By this means his will will be developed, and his character strengthened; and this is an essential point according to Madame de RÉmusat.

“If under Louis XIV.,” she says, “the education of woman’s mind was grave and often substantial, that of her character remained imperfect.”

577. Madame Guizot (1773-1827).—Madame Guizot first became known under her maiden name, Pauline de Meulan. In the closing years of the eighteenth century she had written several romances, and had contributed to the review of Suard, the Publiciste. In 1812 she married Guizot, the future author of the law of 1833, who had just founded the Annals of Education.[245] From this period, all her ideas and all her writings were directed almost exclusively towards ethics and education. She published in succession, Children (1812), Raoul and Victor (1821), and, finally, her masterpiece, the Family Letters on Education (1826).

578. The Letters on Education.—To give at once an idea of the merit of this book,[246] we shall quote the opinion of Sainte-Beuve:—

“The work of Madame Guizot will survive the Émile, marking in this line the progress of the sound, temperate, and refined reason of our times, over the venturesome genius of Rousseau, just as in politics the DÉmocratie of De Tocqueville is an advance over the Contrat Social. Essential to meditate upon, as advice, in all education which would prepare strong men for the difficulties of our modern society, this book also contains, in the way of exposition, the noblest moral pages, the most sincere and the most convincing, which, with a few pages from Jouffroy, have been suggested to the philosophy of our age by the doctrines of a spiritualistic rationalism.”

579. Psychological Optimism.—The philosophical spirit is not lacking in the Letters on Education. The whole of Letter XII. is a plea in behalf of the relative innocence of the child. That which is bad in the disorderly inclination, says the author, is not the inclination, but the disorder:—

“The inclinations of a sentient being are in themselves what they ought to be. It has been said that a man could not be virtuous if he did not conquer his inclinations; hence, his inclinations are evil. This is an error. No more could the tree produce good fruit, if, in pruning it, the disorderly flow of the sap were not arrested. Does this prove that the sap is harmful to the tree?”

It follows from these principles that discipline ought not to be severe.

“Do you not think it strange,” exclaims Madame Guizot, “that for centuries education has been, so to speak, a systematic hostility against human nature; that to correct and to punish have been synonymous; and that we have heard only of dispositions to break, and natures to overcome, just as though it were a question of taking away from children the nature which God has given them in order to give them another such as teachers would have it?”

580. Nature of the Child.—That which gives a great value to the work of Madame Guizot is, that besides the general considerations and the philosophical reflections, we there find a great number of circumstantial experiences and detailed observations which are admissible in a sound treatise on pedagogy. Like the psychology of the child, pedagogy itself, at least in its first chapters, ought to be conceived and written near a cradle. Madame Guizot forcibly indicates the importance of the first years, where the future destiny of the child is determined: “In those imperfect organs, in that incomplete intelligence, are contained, from the first moment of existence, the germs of that which is ever more to proceed from them either for better or for worse. The man will never have, in the whole course of his life, an impulse which does not belong to that nature, all the features of which are already foreshadowed in the infant. The infant will never receive a keen and durable impression, however slight, an impress of whatever kind, whose effects are not to influence the life of the man.”

At the same time that she sees in the infant the rough draft of the man, Madame Guizot recognizes with a remarkable delicacy of psychologic sense, that which distinguishes, that which characterizes, the irreflective and inconsiderate nature of the child. What is more just than this observation?

“We often deceive ourselves in attributing to the conduct of children, because it is analogous to our own, motives similar to those which guide ourselves.”

What better observation than the example which Madame Guizot cites in support of this statement!

“Louise, by a sudden impulse, drops her toys, throws herself upon my neck, and cannot cease kissing me. It seems that all my mother’s heart could not sufficiently respond to the warmth of her caresses; but by the same playful impulse she leaves me to kiss her doll or the arm of the chair which she meets on her way.”

581. Philosophic Rationalism.—Madame Guizot pushes rationalism much farther than Madame de RÉmusat, and still farther than Madame Necker de Saussure. She is first a philosopher, then a Christian. She more nearly approaches Rousseau. She would first form in the minds of children the universal idea of God before initiating them into the particular dogmas of positive religions. She bases morals on the idea of duty, which is “the only basis of a complete education.”

“I would place,” she says, “each act of the child under the protection of an idea or of a moral sentiment.”

Recalling the distinction made by Dupont de Nemours between paternal commands and military commands, the first addressing themselves to the reason, the others to be observed without protest and with a passive obedience, she does not conceal her preference for the use of the first, because she would form in the woman, as in the man, a spirit of reason and of liberty. She absolutely proscribes personal interest, and hence declares that “rewards have always seemed to her contrary to the true principle of education.”

Let us say, lastly, without being able to enter into detail, that the book of Madame Guizot deserves to be read with care. There will be found in it a great number of excellent reflections on instruction which ought to be substantial rather than extensive; upon the reading of romances, and upon the theatre, which she does not forbid; upon easy methods, which she condemns; and, finally, on almost all pedagogical questions.[247]

582. Madame Necker de Saussure (1765-1841).—There are in the history of education privileged moments, periods that are particularly and happily fruitful. It is thus that within the space of a few years there appeared in succession the books of Madame de RÉmusat, of Madame Guizot, and, the most important of all, the Progressive Education of Madame Necker de Saussure.[248]

A native of Geneva, like Rousseau, Madame Necker de Saussure has endowed French literature with an educational masterpiece, which for elevation of view and nobleness of inspiration, can take rank by the side of the Émile. Though she may sometimes be too logical and too austere, and while in general she is lacking in good humor, and while she looks upon life only through a veil of sadness, Madame Necker is an incomparable guide in educational affairs. She brings to the subject remarkable qualities of perspicacity and penetration, and a spirit of marked gravity. She takes a serious view of life, and applies herself to training the noblest qualities of the human soul. Profoundly religious, she unites a “philosophical boldness to the submission of faith.” She is, in some measure, a Christian Rousseau.

583. Madame Necker de Saussure and Madame de StaËl.—The first work of Madame Necker, Notice of the Character and the Writings of Madame de StaËl, already gives proof of her interest in education. The author of the Progressive Education here studies with care the ideas of her heroine on education and instruction. It is plain that she has profited by some of the solid reflections in the noble book on Germany, and particularly by this opinion on the gradual and progressive method of Rousseau and of Pestalozzi:—

“Rousseau calls children into activity by degrees. He would have them do for themselves all that their little powers permit them to do. He does not in the least force their intelligence; he does not make them reach the result without passing over the route. He wishes the faculties to be developed before the sciences are taught.”

“What wearies children is to make them jump over intermediate parts, to make them advance without their really knowing what they think they have learned. With Pestalozzi there is no trace of these difficulties. With him, children take delight in their studies, because even in infancy, they taste the pleasure of grown men, namely, comprehending and completing that on which they have been engaged.”

Moreover, Madame Necker must have recognized her own spirit, her preference for a severe and painstaking education, in this passage where Madame de StaËl vigorously protested against amusing and easy methods of instruction:—

“The education that takes place through amusement dissipates thought; labor of some sort is one of the great aids of nature; the mind of the child ought to accustom itself to the labor of study, just as our soul to suffering.... You will teach a multitude of things to your child by means of pictures and cards, but you will not teach him how to learn.”

584. Progressive Education and Rousseau.—It is undeniable that Madame Necker owes much to Rousseau; but she is far from always agreeing with him.

For Rousseau, man is good; for her, man is bad. The first duty of the teacher should be to reform him, to raise him from his fall; the purpose of life is not happiness, as an immoral doctrine maintains, but it is improvement; the basis of education ought to be religion.

Even when she is inspired by Rousseau, Madame Necker is not long in separating from him. Thus we may believe that she borrows from him the fundamental idea of her book, the idea of a successive development of the faculties, to which should correspond a parallel movement in educational methods. Like the author of the Émile, she follows the awakening of the senses in the infant. She considers the infant as a being sui generis “who lives only on sensations and desires.” She sees in the infant a distinct period of life, an age whose education has its own special rules. But at that point the resemblances stop; for Madame Necker de Saussure hastens to add that, from the fifth year, the child is in possession of all his intellectual faculties. He is no longer simply a sentient being, a robust animal like Émile; but he is a complete being, soul and body. Consequently, education should take account of his double nature. Moral education ought not to be separated from physical education, and cannot begin too soon.

“It is a great error to believe that nature proceeds in the systematic order imagined by Rousseau. With her, we nowhere discern a commencement; we do not surprise her at creating, and it always seems that she is developing.”

So, in education, we must know how to appeal, at the same time and as soon as possible, to the different motives, instinctive or reflective, selfish or affectionate, which sway the will.

Often, in practice, the two thinkers approach each other, and, even in her protestations against her countryman, Madame Necker de Saussure preserves something of Rousseau’s spirit. Thus, she does not desire the negative education which leaves everything to nature. The teacher ought not to allow the child to do (laisser faire), but cause him to do (faire faire). But, at the same time, she demands that the will be strengthened, so that education may find in it a point of support; that the character be hardened; that some degree of independence be accorded to the child; “that in permissible cases he be allowed to come to his own decision; and that half-orders, half-obligations, tacit entreaties, and insinuations, be avoided.” Is not this retaining all that is just and practical in Rousseau’s theory, namely, the necessity of associating the special and spontaneous powers of the child with the work of education? Madame de Saussure adopts a just medium between the active education which makes a misuse of the master’s instruction, and the passive education which makes a misuse of the pupil’s liberty. She would willingly have accepted this precept of Froebel, “Let teachers not lose sight of this truth: it is necessary that always and at the same time they give and take, that they precede and follow, that they act and let act.”

585. Originality of Madame Necker.—Though she had reflected much on the writings of her predecessors, it is nevertheless to her personal experience and to her original investigations that Madame Necker owes the best of her thought. She had herself followed the advice which she gives to mothers, of “observing their children, and of keeping a journal, in which a record should be made of each step of progress, and in which all the vicissitudes of physical and moral health should be noted.” It is a rich psychological fund, and at the same time a perpetual aspiration after the ideal, which makes the strength and the beauty of the Progressive Education. With what penetrating insight Madame Necker has pointed out the difficulty and also the charm of the study of children!

“It were so delightful to fix the fugitive image of childhood, to prolong indefinitely the happiness of contemplating their features, and to be sure of ever finding again those dear creatures whom, alas, we are always losing as children, even when we still have the happiness of keeping them!”

“We must love children in order to know them, and we divine them less by the intelligence than by the heart.”

Thanks to the pronounced taste for the study of child nature, the most just psychological observations are ever mingled, in the Progressive Education, with the precepts of education, and it has been truly said that “this book is almost a journal of domestic education which takes the proportions of a theory.”

586. Division of the Progressive Education.—The Progressive Education appeared in 1836 and 1838 in three volumes. The first three books treat of the history of the soul in infancy; the fourth examines the general principles of teaching, independently of the age of the pupil; the fifth studies the child of from five to seven years of age; the sixth takes us to the tenth year; the seventh shows “the distinctive marks of the character and the intellectual development of boys, during the years which immediately precede adolescence.” Finally, the last four books form a complete whole, and treat of the education of women during the whole course of life.

587. Development of the Faculties.—We cannot attempt in this place to analyze a work so rich in ideas as the work of Madame Necker. Let us limit ourselves to indicating the essential points in her system of education. First, it is the preoccupation of training the will, a faculty which is too much neglected by teachers, but which, nevertheless, is the endowment which dominates life. Madame Necker treats this subject in a masterly way in a chapter to which she prefixes these words as a superscription:—

“Obedience to law constrains the will without enfeebling it, while obedience to man injures it or enervates it.

“It is, above all, to place the interior education of the soul above superficial and formal instruction.

“To instruct a child is to construct him within; it is to make him become a man.”

588. Culture of the Imagination.—Whatever importance she attaches to the active powers, Madame Necker does not neglect the contemplative faculties. The imagination, next to the will, is the faculty of the soul which has most often engrossed her attention.

“She has made it appear,” says a distinguished writer, “that this irresistible power, when we believe it to have been conquered, takes the most diverse forms; that it disguises its power and arouses with a secret fire the most miserable passions. If you refuse it space and liberty, it slinks away in the depths of selfishness, and under vulgar features it becomes avarice, cowardice, and vanity.”

“So it is necessary to see with what tender anxiety Madame Necker watches its first movements in the soul of the child; with what intelligent care she seeks to make of it from entrance upon life, the companion of truth; how she surrounds it with everything which can establish it within the circle of the good. The studies which extend our intellectual horizon, the spectacle of nature in her marvelous diversities, the emotions of the arts,—nothing seems to her superfluous or dangerous for directing the imagination in the way that is good. She fears to see it escape, through the lack of pleasures that are intense enough, in the direction of other routes.”[249]

In other terms, it is not proposed to repress the imagination, still less to destroy it; but merely to guide it gently, to associate it with reason and virtue, to awaken it to a taste for the good, and to an admiration for nature.

“Show him a beautiful sunset, in order that nothing which can enchant him may pass unnoticed.”

589. The Education of Women.—In her special studies on the education of women, Madame Necker, who in other parts of her work sometimes makes an improper use of vague declarations of principles, without entering sufficiently into the details of practical processes, has had the double merit of assigning to the destiny of women an elevated ideal, and of determining with precision the means of attaining it. She complains that we too often adhere to Rousseau’s programme, that of an education which relates exclusively to the conjugal duties of the woman. She recommends that the marriage of young girls be delayed, so that they may have time to become “enlightened spirits and intelligent creatures”; so that they may acquire, not “an assortment of all petty knowledges,” but a solid instruction, which prepares them for the duties of society and of maternity, which make of them the first teachers of their children, which, in a word, starts them on the way towards that personal perfection which they will never completely attain except by the efforts of their whole life.[250]

590. Madame Pape-Carpentier (1815-1878).—With Madame Pape-Carpentier, we leave the region of theories to enter the domain of facts; we have to do with a practical teacher. In 1846, after several trials at teaching at La FlÈche, her native city, and at Mans, she published her Counsels on the Management of Infant Schools. In 1847 she founded at Paris a Mothers’ Normal School, which the next year, under the ministry of Carnot, became a public establishment, and which, in 1852, under the ministry of Fortoul, took the distinctive title Practical Courses on Infant Schools. It is there that during twenty-seven years Madame Pape-Carpentier applied her methods and trained a large number of pupils, more than fifteen hundred, who have propagated in France and abroad her teaching and her ideas. In 1847 she was removed from the management of her normal school through intrigues; but her loss of position was not of long duration. A little later she was appointed inspector-general of infant schools.

591. General Character of her Works.—Madame Pape-Carpentier may be considered as a pupil of Pestalozzi and of Froebel. She was specially occupied with elementary education, and carried into her work a spirit of great simplicity. We must not demand of her ambitious generalities nor views on abstract metaphysics; but she excels in practical wisdom, and speaks the language of childhood to perfection.

592. Principal Works of Madame Pape-Carpentier.—Among the important works of Madame Pape-Carpentier we shall recommend the following in particular:—

1. Advice on the Management of Infant Schools (1845). In her preface the author excuses herself for undertaking “a subject of such gravity.” But she goes on to say that “no instruction has yet been given the teacher on the education of the poor child,” and she asks the privilege of speaking in the name of her personal experience. This book, often reprinted, has become Enseignement pratique dans les salles d’asile.[251]

2. Narratives and Lessons on Objects (1858). This is a collection of little stories, “simple as childhood,” which were tested before children before being written, and in which Madame Pape-Carpentier attempts to teach them things which are good: “I mean,” she says, “things really, seriously good.”

3. Pedagogical Discussions held at the Sorbonne (1867). During the Universal Exposition of 1867, Monsieur Duruy had assembled at Paris a certain number of teachers before whom pedagogical discussions were held. Madame Pape-Carpentier took upon herself the special task of explaining to them how the methods of the infant school might be introduced into the primary school.

4. Reading and Work for Children and Mothers (1873). Here Madame Pape-Carpentier is especially intent on popularizing the methods of Froebel; she suggests ingenious exercises which can be applied to children to give them skill in the use of their fingers, and to inspire them with a taste for order and symmetry.

5. Complete Course of Education (1874). This book, which would have been the general statement of the pedagogical principles of the author, was left incomplete. Only three volumes have appeared. A few quotations will make known their spirit.

“To co-operate with nature in her work, to extend it, to correct her when she goes wrong,—such is the task of the educator. In all grades of education, nature must be respected.

“The child should live in the midst of fresh and soothing impressions; the objects which surround him in the school should be graceful and cheerful.

“Socrates has admirably said, ‘The duty of education is to give the idea birth rather than to communicate it.’”

6. Note on the Education of the Senses, and some Pedagogical Appliances (1878). Madame Pape-Carpentier is very much interested in the education of the senses, because, she says, “every child born into the world is a workman in prospect, a future apprentice to an occupation still unknown.” It is then necessary to perfect at an early hour the natural tools he will need in order to fulfill his task. The education of the senses will have its place some day or other in the official programmes, and, for this sense-training, instruments are just as necessary as books are for the culture of the intellect.

593. Lessons on Objects.—“The object-lesson is the new continent on which Madame Pape-Carpentier has planted her standard.” She herself wrote a number of works which contain models of object-lessons; she has stated the theory of them, notably in her discussions of 1867. It is even permissible to think that she has made a wrong use of them. With her, the object-lesson becomes a universal process which she applies to all subjects, to chemistry, to physics, to grammar, to geography, and to ethics.

However it may be, this is the course to follow according to her: it is necessary to conform to the order in which the perceptions of the intelligence succeed each other. The child’s attention is first struck by color. Then he will distinguish the form of the object, and would know its use, its material, and mode of production. It is according to this natural development of the child’s curiosity that the object-lesson should proceed.

Moreover, it can be given with reference to everything. Madame Pape-Carpentier admits what she calls “occasional lessons”; but she also thinks that object-lessons can be given according to a plan, a fixed programme.

Madame Pape-Carpentier deserves, then, to be heard as an experienced adviser in whatever relates to elementary instruction; but that which we must admire in her still more than her professional skill and her pedagogical knowledge, is an elevated conception of the teacher’s work, and a lofty inspiration coming from her devotion to children and her love for them.

“To educate children properly,” she said, “ought to be for the teacher only the second part of his undertaking; the first, and the most difficult, is to perfect himself.”

“What we are able to do for children is measured by the love we bear them.”

594. Other Women who were Educators.—If the education of women has received an important development in our day, it is due, then, in great part to the women who have shown what they were worth and what they could do, either as teachers or as educators. And yet the history whose principal features we have just traced remains very incomplete. By the side of the celebrated women whose works we have studied, we should mention Mademoiselle Sauvan, who, in 1811, founded at Chaillot an educational establishment which she did not leave till about 1830, to take the intellectual and moral direction of the girls’ schools of Paris;[252] Madame de Maisonneuve, author of an Essay on the Instruction of Women,[253] in which she sums up the results of a long experience acquired in the management of a private boarding-school.

But men have also contributed by their theoretical objections, or by their practical efforts, to the progress of the education of women. It would be of interest, for example, to study the courses in secondary instruction of Lourmand (1834), and the Courses in Maternal Education, of LÉvi AlvarÈs (1820). “Monsieur LÉvi,” says GrÉard, “makes the mother tongue and history the basis of instruction. He himself sums up his methods in this formula of progressive education: Facts, comparison of facts, moral or philosophical consequence of facts; that is, seeing, comparing, judging. This is the very order of nature.” Let us mention also the work of AimÉ Martin, The Education of Mothers,[254] which for several years enjoyed an extraordinary reputation that it would be rather difficult to justify.

595. Dupanloup and the Education of Women.—A bishop of the nineteenth century, Dupanloup, has assumed to rival FÉnelon in the delicate question of the education of women. Different works, and in particular the one which he esteemed most, his Letters on the Education of Girls, published after his death in 1879, give proof of the interest which he took in these questions. These letters are for the most part real letters which were addressed to women of the time. Notwithstanding the variety and the freedom of the epistolary form, the work may be divided into three parts: 1. the principles of education; 2. the education of young women; 3. free and personal study in the world. Dupanloup should be thanked for having summoned woman to a true intellectual culture, and for not consenting to have her faculties remain “smothered and useless.” Through the revelations of the confessional and the spiritual direction of a great number of women, Dupanloup knew exactly what a void an incomplete education of the mind and heart leaves in the soul. He is indeed willing to acknowledge that piety is not enough, and with a certain breadth of spirit which drew upon him the censure of the ultramontane press, he recommends the serious studies to women. His counsels, however, are addressed only to women of the middle classes, to those who, he says, “occupy the third story of houses in Paris.” His book is rather a reminiscence of the seventeenth century, of its manners and its habits of thinking, than a living work of to-day, adapted to the needs of modern society.