Influence with cover

inner life led them both forward as they could only be led by this mutual self-vivification. ***** Dear Friend! You have heard this crowd of collective learners and seen its courage and joy. Say yourself how you felt when you saw it. I saw your tears, and in my heart arose wrath towards men who could still say, “The improvement of the people is a dream.”

No; it is no dream. I will put skill into the hand of the mother, into the hand of the child, and into the hand of the innocent; and the scorner shall be silenced and shall say no more—“It is a dream.” ***** I am now thoroughly convinced; it was a long time before I was; but I had children in Stanz whose powers, not deadened by the weariness of unpsychological home and school discipline, developed more quickly. . . I saw the capacity of human nature, and its peculiarities in many ways and in most open play. Its defects were the defects of healthy nature, immeasurably different from the defects caused by bad and artificial teaching–hopeless flagging and complete crippling of the mind. ***** I learned from then what a disadvantage this one-sided letter knowledge and entire reliance on words (which are only sound and noise when there is nothing behind them) must be. I saw what a hindrance this may be to the real power of observation, and the firm conception of the objects that surround us.

44