ptivated every boy and girl who could collect groschen enough
to buy a copy. When they had ceased reading it they were filled with the
idea that they were naturally perfect.

Pestalozzi belongs rather to the present than to the last century, but
he stands highest in the catalogue of the educational reformers who
arose during the meridian strength of Rationalism. He was a Swiss by
birth. In 1798 he went to Stanz and labored for the amelioration of the
orphan children whose parents had fallen in the French wars.[38] His
idea was, to make the school an educating family, into which the ease
and pleasure of home should be introduced. He, too, believed in man's
natural goodness, and held that true education is not so much the
infusion of what is foreign to, as the educing of what is native in the
child. But he warmly encouraged youthful acquaintance with the Bible,
and said that the history of Christ is an indispensable ingredient in
the education of every young mind. But while these few men, both by
their active life and facile pen, contributed their share to the
improvement of the youth of Germany, there was a large class of writers
for the young, whose productions became as plentiful as autumn leaves.
Some were sentimental, having imbibed their spirit from _Siegwart, La
Nouvelle Heloise_, and similar works. Young men and women became
dreamers, and children of every social condition were converted into
premature thinkers on love, romance, and suicide. Whoever could wield a
pen thought himself fit to write a book for children. There has never
been a period in the whole current of history when the youthful mind was
more thoroughly and suddenly revolutionized. The result was very
disastrous. Education, in its true import, was no longer pursued, and
the books most read were of such nature as to destroy all fondness for
the study of the Bible, all careful preparation for meeting the great
duties of coming maturity, and every impression of man's incapacity for
the achievement of his own salvation.

The teachers in the common institutions of learning having now become
imbued with serious doubts concerning the divine authority of the
Scriptures, their pupils suffered keenly from the same blight. In many
schools and gymnasia miracles were treated with contempt. Epitomes of
the Scriptures on a philosophical plan were introduced. Ammon, in one of
his works, tells the young people that the books of the Old Testament
have no divine wor