ht this always to be so? Ought it to be so for every child, for every
youth? Will not a time come at last, come perhaps soon, when the
experience, the insight, the knowledge of age, and wisdom herself, shall
build up a defence, a shelter, a protection for the childhood of youth?
Of what use to mankind is the old man's experience and the greybeard's
wisdom when they sink into the grave with their possessors?

At first my life and my work with my pupils was confined within narrow
limits. It consisted in merely living, lounging, and strolling in the
open air, and going for walks. Although I was disgusted with the methods
of town education, I did not yet venture to convert life amidst Nature
into an educational course. That was taught me by my young pupils
themselves; and as from the circumstances of my own culture I eagerly
fostered to my utmost every budding sense for Nature that showed itself,
there soon developed amongst them a life-encompassing, life-giving, and
life-raising enjoyment of natural objects. In the following year[62]
this way of life was further enhanced by the father giving his sons a
piece of meadowland for a garden, at the cultivation of which we
accordingly worked in common. The greatest delight of my pupils was to
make little presents of the produce of their garden to their parents and
also to me. How their eyes would gleam with pleasure when they were
fortunate enough to be able to accomplish this. Pretty plants and little
shrubs from the fields, the great garden of God, were transplanted by us
to the children's gardens, and there carefully tended. Great was the
joy, especially of the two younger ones, when such a colonist frankly
enrolled himself amongst the citizens of the state. From this time forth
my own childhood no longer seemed wasted. I acknowledged how entirely
different a thing is the cultivation of plants, to one who has watched
them and studied them in all the stages of their own free development,
from what it is to one who has always stood aloof from Nature.

And here already, living cheerfully and joyfully in the bosom of Nature
with my first pupils, I began to tell myself that the training of
natural life was closely akin to the training of human life. For did not
those gifts of flowers and plants express appreciation and
acknowledgment of the love of parents and teacher? Were they not the
outcome of the characteristic lovingness and the enthusiastic
thankfulness of childhood? A child